The manager: Rossen Jekov
The job: Manager of International Affairs
The company: Founded six years ago, Treality is committed to creating new technical and aesthetic creative content, digital imaging and compositing, object 3D modelling, 2D and 3D animation, interactive multi-media and computer programming. By integrating technology, architecture and animation, Treality creates realistic films and interactive solutions for architectural presentation of urban habitats, landscapes, recreational and tourist areas, multi-purpose corporate buildings. Treality also offers architectural solutions with challenging technological features and new forms of interior design and interactive responsive environments.

Portfolio
Treality works for the biggest international companies from a wide range of industries including marketing, services, architecture, design, culture and education. Some of the big names are United Nations, Airbus, Kellogs, Nestle Bulgaria, Nestle France, Lazard Groupe, and Piere Fabre, among many others. Treality takes great pride in its client: the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) which is the government agency responsible for shaping and implementing France’s space policy in Europe.
In 2006 things went up for Treality in Bulgaria and in April the company moved its headquarters into new, bigger, office premises. Treality has offices in Paris, Toulouse, Nice, Mill Valley, California, Le Chable and Sofia.

That Treality probably came from three-dimensional reality is what I first think when I see the business card of Rossen Jekov, manager of international affairs at the Sofia-based studio. Later, when meeting him for an interview, he says the company name means reality on one hand, and on the other, a triality between animation, design and programming – the three basic tools that Treality uses in creating its products.

Jekov is in charge of management and co-ordination of the firm’s international clients and connections abroad, which cover about 70 per cent of its customers.

“We also have representation in Paris, as well as representatives in other European cities. The Paris branch is fully dependent on us and in the other cities we have something like trade mediators, who represent us economically. They are independent; we work with them on contracted agreements,” Jekov says. The company is represented in France, California and Switzerland.

Reality cubed
“Treality is a trademark,” Jekov says. His first company’s name was Reality OOD and another company joined – Reality Invent OOD. Now the two work under one roof, after having merged at the end of 2005 to form Treality.

“In 2005 the merger between the two was followed by a big increase of our team. This was a huge step for us, which took us from a small business to a higher level and now we have a staff of more than 20 people without the freelancing crew, who work with us when there is a certain project,” he says. “At our office we have huge empty spaces, but at certain moments it is filled with people.”

The company produces three-dimensional images and films, along with two-dimensional animation. One of the departments is engaged with architecture – modelling of architecture projects, which do not exist yet in reality and are to be built. “We make the pictures, but the thing that differentiates us is that we do animation,” Jekov explains, showing 3D advertising films of business buildings, tourist complexes and sport centres on his laptop.

“We create virtual reality, making real advertising films for architecture projects, including real videos of actors in order to reproduce as concretely as possible the actual environment of the project that will be constructed.”

In the beginning, Treality worked with clients from France where the things had developed very fast, and continue to advance with high heady speed, according to Jekov.

Frequently travelling, by the time of the interview he had just come back from Paris, where he had “very interesting meetings”.

“We modelled aircraft for Airbus and we also made films for the staff of the Airbus A318 and A320; we made parts for the A380 that are being tested at the moment and will come into use,” he says. “We can model everything that we can see around us. We made 3D models of trams, aircraft, spaceships for the centre for space surveys in France, helicopters. Architecture is a field that is developing very well right now. Animation is a very good way of representing a project.

“It has existed in the United States for many years, but in Europe, clients are still learning. Even for clients in France this is something new, something interesting that they are still not used to. But at a certain moment, they realise that this is a very strong communication tool that gives them many advantages. Then we appear – one of the few companies in Europe that can make such things. We do everything with computer animation.”

To create their products, sometimes they need to take pictures of a city from a helicopter and afterwards to integrate these images in the existing sequences of a new centre that is to be constructed and then to present how exactly this will happen so the public can understand what the goals of the project are, what the idea is and why this is good for the clients.

“This type of presentation is much more advanced than presenting of plans or pictures,” Jekov says.

Such 3D films correspond to reality 80 to 90 per cent, and in some cases 100 per cent. Investors give the company plans on paper or in digital form, following which Treality teams work on them to create a virtual reality.

“We strive to create an advertising product, which really serves sell, not only because of the architecture itself, but also because of the way of living, love-style, emotion, not so much architecture-wise but in terms of the comforts that the people will have,” Jekov says.

It all comes from somewhere
Previously, Jekov spent six months in France at a French university, where the idea of the company was born.
“Before I left, I had serious experience in the media sector; I worked at Spisanie 1 (One Magazine) – I am one of the people who started the project,” he says.
Asked how he learned the profession, Jekov explains that, when he was 19, a close friend of his started to work at a film studio and because Jekov was also good at computers, he was hired there as well. After the three-month training course, it appeared that he was quite good at video production and, “thanks to the digital revolution, at one moment many specialists were excluded from the market because they could not cope with the computers that were entering the market and replacing the old methods for work in this field”.

Jekov also has family who worked at Boyana Film Studio in Sofia, and since he was very young he has loved photography, taking photos in his free time, and now he considers photography as one of his hobbies.

He graduated from Sofia University with a degree in business management and obtained his master’s in management information systems. In France, he obtained a second master’s in media management “because at one point, after five or six years work in media, and study connected to management and business, I decided that I have to do a master’s connected to communication and media, so to say, to affirm the knowledge I received so far”.

“Media management is different because you work with artists, actors, people who are very different to people who work in a bank or in a transport company, for example. This is not what I particularly like so much, maybe because partly I am more of an artist,” Jekov says.

When he was 21, he created his first company, which did work for several film studios in video production. “For a few years, things were really developing,” he says.

Markets here and there
Treality is now trying to establish itself as a quality reference on the French market and is also trying to break into the Belgian market as well, Jekov says. “There are not many companies that do the same, there are only a few of them in the US.”

“Our representations abroad are co-ordinating our projects and are looking for new clients. Most of our clients are foreign companies. Only in the past year, since the construction boom in Bulgaria, we have been doing projects for Bulgaria as well, but most of them are foreign investments, as well, in 99 per cent of the cases,” he says.

“When I was creating the company, my idea was to have something that worked everywhere and for our clients to be based everywhere, but as such, our competitors are also everywhere.”

Questioned as to how he copes with competition, he says: “Business activity is very important – to find more clients, to keep the client’s faith. It is much better and cheaper to keep one client and to prove that you are good than to look for new clients.”

“Important for us is for the client to be satisfied with the quality of the end product, so he will come back to us. On the other hand, our reaction ability is important as well – at the moment a client has a problem, we can be there and resolve the problem. This is a way of thinking,” he says.

Can do
In addition to the architecture department, part of the company makes classical animation for TV ads, flash animation for internet sites, and internet sites as well. “We make only boutique websites – sites used personally or for supplementing our presentations. We can also make interactive CDs, DVDs and internet presentations with hosting capabilities and else everything necessary.”

Triality’s core business is still 3D and animation. Everything else exists around it as support, “so clients can come to us and stay with us”.

In Jekov’s opinion, this complex service is very important because instead of going to five different companies and trying to co-ordinate all the advertising materials, it is much easier for the client to work with one company.

According to him, for Bulgaria, more important during recent years has been the TV advertising business. “We are now more seriously on the market as a studio that makes TV ads. Now we have about 30 advertisements that are regularly shown on television,” Jekov says, while showing an advert of an animated mobile phone.

“Still, this is something new that we developed in the last several months, we started it because no one knows us here and this is one way to become known in Bulgaria,” he says.

“Abroad we are in contact with PR agencies, architecture and construction companies. We have mostly met at exhibitions, until now as visitors – that is where we establish contacts with firms.”

Currently, the company is in process of making a newsletter for the existing about 200 clients.

“The thing that I love most is when we have a strenuous project with a very demanding client who wants us to create something of high quality and we are under pressure for some time to deliver the end product to the client and he says: yes, this is good, even if he has some comments.

All about the people
“It is a pleasure for me to work with people at every moment and the most important is that my way of management is always putting the person in the centre. Everything connected to techniques, offices, administration is of secondary importance,” Jekov says.
“In the people who work for me, I value most highly their qualities, motivation, their problems – professional or personal – and, respectively, the way they integrate in the team,” he says.

“I very much value qualities like honesty and frankness, creativity and an unusual way of thinking. I very highly value people with ideas, sometimes with crazy ideas. I listen to them and think whether and how this idea could be used, now or later.”

He considers his work very much to be listening, watching and observing, and then “putting the pieces together to create something better”.

“I travel a lot and when I come back, my colleagues are joking that something starts happening because I always talk to people, probe them until they talk about their ideas, try to stimulate them to be more active. The other thing I value very much is action. When somebody has ideas and a willingness to make or change something, I am always ready to listen to this person,” Jekov says.

The only change he sees since Bulgaria has entered the European Union is a small increase in the trust level of clients.

“It is too early to say that this is a real process. In our business, there has not been a significant change,” he says. “But maybe now we can reach foreign clients more easily.”

Questioned as to what made him come back to Bulgaria after living abroad, Jekov says he went to France to gain experience and knowledge, to see how was the live in the western part of the continent. “When I left, I never intended to stay there.”

And other
In his free time, he loves travelling. “Last year I spent seven months in Ivory Coast, Africa, as a human resources volunteer and finance director in a hospital, on a project of the humanitarian mission Doctors without Borders. I am very happy I did this, I learned a lot there.”

Global roads have also taken Jekov to Indonesia, Thailand and Laos.

He also loves to be in the mountains or at the seaside in his free time. Skiing, at which he has great skill, brings him much pleasure.

 “Lately I have been going to wild places and avoiding the big winter resorts. The pleasure is different than going by car to Bansko, for example,” he says.

“I carry all my ski equipment when I go on business trips abroad, even if I have only a day or two. I tried pistes in the Alps, in the Pyrenees, and almost everywhere in Bulgaria where one can ski and I hope to be able to find new horizons in this matter.”

Jekov is one of the first members of Bulgarian Extreme Free-Ride Ski Association, which organises free-style ski competitions, competitions for best picture and courses for avalanche safety in the mountains. It also took part in tree planting on Mount Vitosha in the beginning of May.

Jekov also plays tennis and squash, snowboards and wake boards.

In addition, he is a the president of the new French-Bulgarian association Communications without Borders (Communication sans Frontieres). The goals are to work on creating campaigns treating problems “forgotten by the businesses and the government”, and to help organisations create advertising strategies and online campaigns for their voices to be heard as well. It will provide non-governmental organisations in Bulgaria an opportunity to reach specialists in the communications field, help them form advertising campaigns, and advertising materials at low prices or free of charge.

In this way, every small organisation can be publicised on a larger scale and more professionally, Jekov says.