IB Woman
Issue No. 11 - June/July 2003
Life in the Business Engine Room
Strength to overcome adversity is a common trait amongst winning people, but Angelique Boileau hardly recognises this quality in herself. She laughs easily, is warm and generous of spirit – and runs a highly successful business in a highly competitive and male dominated environment.
Business may appear easy for Angelique, but her life has not always been comfortable and at times, her very survival was in question.
Angelique was born in Hungary and when her father had to flee the Russian occupation after World War II, he migrated to Australia in 1949, but was unable to bring his wife and two young children. For many years he supported his family by sending parcels filled with carefully hidden nylon stockings and Cadbury chocolate, contraband items and secondhand clothing that six-year-old Angelique sold door-to-door in her village to her well established clientele. She learnt about marketing and selling very early.
Finally fleeing Hungary as refugees after the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 Angelique, her mother and sister joined her father in Adelaide after nearly 14 years apart. After finishing high school, Angelique fulfilled her long time ambition to travel and joined the airlines as a flight attendant and moved to Melbourne. Many years later she resumed her sales career, and became one of the country’s top achieving salespeople for Konica Corporation and indeed in the office equipment industry.
‘I worked extremely hard,’ admits Angelique, ‘but realised very early in my career that this industry truly provided great financial rewards for the achievers. I’d like to think I was also very principled. At one stage I did resign because I didn’t agree with the way an ethics and honesty issue was handled by Management. However they recognised their wrong doings, apologised and therefore I withdrew my resignation". However the trust and feelings were never really the same again, and as the word of her stand on principle swept thro...
