Ivana Vrdoljak

Ivana has been in cigar business for about 10 years, ever since she co-founded our cigar club in Split in 2010. Her main role in the club from the beginning was to do logistic work; organization, permits, reports, coordination... Since she has a legal background, she does most of the legal work for the club; internal and external, as well as legal work around their main event Cigar Smoking World Championship. Ivana also does a lot of coordination regarding CSWC, when it`s necessary to keep an eye at all pieces of the club, so at the end they would fit in perfectly and create the image that we wanted to present to the world. Her job is to work hard so the end result of what they are doing would seem as if it all happened very naturally and without too much effort. When everything is easy going for their guests and members, then they know they are doing a good job.

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Ivana had her first cigar shortly after they started our competition in 2010. She joined Marko`s project mainly because she was great at organizing things, so for the first couple of months she didn`t even consider smoking cigars. She didn`t think it would fit her “behind the curtain” role. And then New Year 2011 came. She just got her heart broken by a very unimportant guy and all my girlfriends where there cheering her up. Back then they all smoked cigarettes. She was the only one who didn`t. So, as they were sitting on her apartment balcony, while they were all smoking, she remembered she have one cigar inside. One she had taken as a souvenir from a previous event. It was Vegas Robaina Marshall, Habanos regional cigar produced for Adriatic region. She had kept it because she knew it was limited edition. Back then, she didn’t know much about cigars, but she knew what “limited edition” meant. And that is basically how her cigar journey started. It wasn`t love at first sight. She didn`t like it at all. She didn`t like the taste of it, but in some strange way, she liked the way it made her feel; made her feel powerful. Like she can overcome anything and that feeling she did like. In the following years, as she was getting more involved into the cigar business and became part of the cigar family, she got to smoke many different cigars in many different occasions. She got to meet a lot of new, interesting people and she has learned to understand the mindset of people who smoked cigars. She have learned to enjoy both cigars and the company. For Ivana, cigar wasn’t love at first sight, but from the very first moment there was respect. And where there is respect, love usually follows.

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