Tiki Int Tiki International In A JOURNEY WORTH CELEBRATING Radenko Vujadinovic is the founder and owner of Tiki International corporation. Today, Vujadinovic talks about how his experiences shaped the company he and his wife own today.
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anada is my home country. When civil war broke up (the former) Yugoslavia, which was one of the best countries in the world, in my opinion, my family settled in another world-class country – Canada.
asked, “what will you do if you don’t get a job offer?” I said I would keep volunteering. Even if I worked without pay, I would be the “goods” in a window display; someone would see my hard work and offer me a job.
We came to Canada in 1994 with two daughters, one five months old, and one five years old. First, we settled in Winnipeg. Our first winter in Canada was sunny with no clouds, but a constant -40C. I didn’t speak English, so I would go out on the streets to test my emerging English skills. I met a man from Ghana who told me there is a lot of sunshine here, but it doesn’t work. That’s why it’s -40C!
My strategy worked. Soon I had the opportunity to help build a new Canadian Tire and a Home Depot. However, on those jobs I didn’t see a lot of opportunity for personal and professional growth, so in 1999, we opened Tiki International and used our experience to build big-box retail faster and better. This was not an entirely new concept for me. In Sarajevo, my wife and I owned Tiki Engineering. We are both structural engineers and equal business partners – both in Tiki Engineering and now in Tiki International Inc. With our engineering background, it was much easier to start a construction work/management company.
After a few ESL (English second language) courses, I started working as a volunteer for Manshield Construction (now M Builds) in Winnipeg. Before my volunteer work was over, friends asked me if Manshield was going to offer me a job. My answer was, “I don’t know.” They 1
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