Dancing To Her Own Beat

As the interior design industry continues to grow, so do the challenges that come with running a small and medium enterprise. Kristina Zanic shares why she doesn’t believe in conforming to pressures of maintaining high visibility and quoting lower fees, even if it means bagging more projects

- Shweta Parida

It has been quite a task to pin her down, as she jets around the world working on new commissions. Kristina Zanic, while well-known in the industry, remains somewhat of an enigma due to her reluctance to be under the spotlight. Having won the Interior Design of the Year: Hotel category at the 2018 Commercial Interior Design Awards for the refurbishment of the Ritz Carlton Al Wadi in Fujairah, Zanic has immersed herself in some of the top hotel projects, which include both renovation as well as new builds in the region and overseas.

Is eschewing the limelight for a more work-focused approach, a deliberate strategy? “I love to go out to some of the client events, but generally, I keep it private,” says Zanic, who runs her eponymous firm founded in 2012 in the UAE. “I do make an effort to meet people. However, I just want to do great work. I have never been one to self-promote myself. There is so much more when you’re running a company.”

Further explaining the challenges of running a boutique practice, the Australian native says that you have to be prepared to juggle several roles at once such as managing people, business, collecting payables, among many others. “You’re always preoccupied with a lot of different things,” says Zanic. “We are a small firm, so I’m very hands-on with a lot of things. We don’t have a big team, so we multi-task. We don’t outsource our work, we do everything in-house.”

Zanic, who was one of the founders of renowned practice, Design Worldwide Partnership (DWP), was based in Bahrain prior to her relocation to Dubai. “When I left the firm seven years ago, because I didn’t want to continue working in a corporate structure, I decided to move to Dubai as my partner was based here,” she shares. “I promised myself that I didn’t want to work for a while, and I didn’t for a few months.”