Isa Menau, founder and owner of Dream Workshop, an animation company for birthday parties, weddings, baptisms and other events that is already the market leader in the Algarve, does not stop. His next project is to create a party design shop, «with a personalized offer».
In this future store, the businesswoman will be able to count on the collaboration of Inês Pestana and her Wish Color, a project that, based on the art of illustration and watercolor painting, gives more and more color to many spaces and special moments.
Isa Menau and Inês Pestana were the guests of the most recent Beta Talk, which took place on the 16th, as always at Café Concerto do TEMPO, the Municipal Theater of Portimão.
The hypothesis of collaboration between the two entrepreneurs resulted from the conversation in which both told a little about their life story, sharing their successes and difficulties.
Isa Menau even began by wanting to be a teacher, having completed, in 2002, a degree in Teachers of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education. But that straw didn't open the door to a job, so she ended up changing her dream of being a teacher for working in animation. go to the children's entertainment area.
This change of direction was not always well accepted by her family and friends, who criticized her for having changed her status as a teacher for the uncertain life of a “clown”. “In the family, sometimes they told me: Isa doesn't work, she does some monkey business”.
The result is that, he stressed, «while my company is doing well in the market and continues to grow, my colleagues have been jumping for 10 years from replacement to replacement, from bags back across the country, when they get a job as teachers. I'm still a clown, but working»…and making money.
Isa Menau explains that, «in the middle of my clowning, I'm a teacher. I am always trying to introduce what I have learned into what I do, as I am always dealing with children».
Oficina de Sonhos, which started with an inflatable and a single client, is today the market leader in children's parties in the Algarve region, being responsible for the animation of hundreds of events throughout the year, in private homes, hotels, institutions, companies.
Summer is the time of most work, but Isa Menau ends up being busy throughout the year: «at the end of the summer, I'm already preparing Halloween, then Christmas, then Carnival…there's always a lot to do».
But don't think that, since she is the market leader in the Algarve, the businesswoman can rest on her laurels, quite the opposite. “The market is constantly changing and we have to keep up, or we are left behind”, he stresses.
Isa Menau and her collaborators can be fairies, princesses, witches, pirates, or even a superhero or a cartoon character. Your goal is to make the kids happy, at least for a few hours. "The best thing that can happen to us is that girl or that boy to whom the party is intended to come and tell us, in the end, that she liked it a lot."
Over the ten years he has worked in this area, Isa has accumulated many victories, some defeats, a lot of mistakes and a good batch of hilarious stories. Like the one the day the car broke down, in the rain, and she was dressed as…spider woman.
It's true that the monkeys from Isa already mean an annual turnover of 100 euros. Requests have increased and the company is even looking for collaborators. They have to be people "capable of wearing the shirt and defending our image". Therefore, anyone who thinks they have the right profile should follow the links provided in this article and apply.
For the future, as already mentioned, the businesswoman wants to open the first party design shop in the Algarve. It will no longer be a store where you can buy plastic cups and plates with Princess Elsa's designs, since this, he stresses, “can be bought at any hypermarket”. Rather, it will be «a store with personalized things, where you can think of the party in all its details, but adapting it to each situation».
And it is in this future store that one day the paintings with watercolors by Inês Pestana, the creator of the Wish Color. The curious thing is that Inês, in professional terms, comes from an area miles away from her current pastel-colored and innocent-looking drawings: she has a degree in Pathological, Cytological and Thanatological Anatomy.
She started her career at Hospital de Santa Maria and today, after moving to Lagos in January 2012, she works part-time for a laboratory, analyzing samples from the uterine cancer screening (the Pap test, which all adult women know). And how does a person with a job linked to illness and death begin to dedicate himself to drawings and decorations for children's rooms?
It all started with the painting lessons of Inês' mother-in-law, to whom she gave a thousand and one pieces of advice, until the lady, probably fed up with so many guesses, asked her why she wasn't going to learn it herself. And that's what Ines did.
At first, his watercolors and drawings were only for his own consumption, then family and friends. Finally, there were so many successes and requests that Inês decided to create a facebook page where she shows her work and which, in the end, serves as a showcase.
That's when two important bloggers met her – mother360 e cacomae – and they commissioned her work, making them known later. "They were my first two clients," said Inês, at Beta Talk.
From this world of bloggers, Facebook and Instagram, Inês Pestana and her Wish Color have become known. The work you do won't make you rich any time soon, but it gives you a lot of satisfaction. In such a way that, on a ride with other companies, it has already participated in specialized fairs.
“Most of my clients come from blogs, but I have tried to be present at some fairs,” he said. In addition to drawings and watercolors to decorate rooms, the Wish Color It is now also exploring “the market for baptisms and first communions”, namely through the creation of an exclusive line of baptismal saints.
Through all this creative activity, Inês has not abandoned her profession, dedicating three days a week to laboratory work. But he confesses that the Wish Color it takes up more and more time. And she announces an achievement that fills her with pride: having been invited to illustrate the “Livro do Bebé”, by professor and pediatrician Mário Cordeiro, which will be launched around Christmas.
From the inspiring conversation of yet another Beta Talk, what can you retain? That it is necessary not to give up on dreams, to try and try again, sometimes making mistakes, and to let yourself be led along the paths that life opens up. And that nothing is done without work, a lot of work.
Photos of: Carolina Isento and Alexandra Ciobanu/ Multimedia Technician Course - Poeta António Aleixo School Grouping, Portimão:
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