Conversations with Bogdan & Nicole Ionescu

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bogdan & Nicole Ionescu

Hi Bogdan & Nicole, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
We’re amazed by how far we’ve come in such a short period of time, but it all started with a strong foundation and love for the arts and music. We’ve both had a passion for art since we were kids. Nicole was born and raised in Upstate New York and started drawing and painting at a young age. I was born in Romania and grew up in Los Angeles. I’ve loved drawing and graphic design since I was little. We met in 2011 right here in Fuquay. I was in the Army, stationed at Fort Liberty, and she was a student at Campbell University. We embarked on this new chapter in our lives as I was ending my career in the Army and Nicole as an analytical chemist. We just celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary in September.

I was first exposed to stained glass art in high school, by a cousin who was doing it out of his garage, as a hobby. Every window in his mom’s house was stained glass! I played around with it a little, but never seriously.

We started kicking around the idea of doing stained glass in 2022. Not as a business, but as a hobby that we could do together when I retire from the Army next year. However, there’s a huge market for going-away gifts around Fort Liberty. It’s part of military culture; almost every time someone leaves an organization or retires, they’re presented with a gift. The gifts are usually some kind of plaque or shadowbox, and probably made of wood. It occurred to me one day that a lot of people in the area are doing woodwork. I personally know at least five different guys doing it. It felt like EVERYONE was doing wood, so I did some hasty market analysis and discovered that no one was doing stained glass in this market. We wanted to provide a very different alternative to wood, which is getting played out in my opinion. You can easily find a talented artist to make a custom stained glass piece, but not someone with direct ties to the military community. And not a veteran-owned company that specializes in military-themed stained glass art.

We saw this as a unique opportunity to not only make art together, but also for me to maintain a sense of purpose and identity that many veterans lose when they get out of the military. So, we decided to go all in. We formed OGC Stained Glass in 2023 and spent a little over a year perfecting our craft and dialing in our brand and identity. The company’s official name is Ordway Glass Company. You can find the story behind that name on our website.

We launched in June of this year and have been steadily busy. We post all our work on our website, as well as Instagram, Facebook, and even YouTube. We’re super excited about where things are going. The company just got commissioned by the American Legion to do a custom stained glass billiard lamp, which is awesome because we not only get to support a veterans’ organization, but because branching out into lamps was one of our goals. We’re also working on our first custom residential window project, which was another goal of ours. The key word here is custom. Everything we make is one-of-a-kind.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As smooth as a piece of broken glass! There have certainly been challenges along the way. First, we are parents to two healthy and wild boys. Alexander is six and Adrian is four. Starting a business while raising young kids is no joke, but we’re inspiring them to enjoy the beauty of fine arts. We try to include them in the process whenever possible. They love coloring the rough drafts our designs, stretching lead came, and sweeping up the messes we make.

Second, the weird thing about glass is that it tends to break when you don’t want it to. On several occasions, we’ve finished a piece, waxed and polished it, and started packaging it up for shipping. Then we’d notice a chip or tiny hairline crack in one of the pieces of glass. We would just stare at each other silently, because although the customer would probably never notice the imperfection, we noticed it. And we knew we had to fix it, no matter how small. That takes time, and there’s always the risk of causing more damage. It’s almost harder to replace a piece of glass in a finished project than it is to solder all the pieces together initially. But we learned a lot from those hiccups, and they have helped us improve our process and craftsmanship.

Our biggest struggle is making sure we remain true to our mission. We only make custom pieces, so we’re not mass-producing a design and selling it on Etsy or eBay. There’s a lot of money to be made offering your work through those marketplaces, but we want our customers to know that the piece they’re getting is one-of-a-kind. We have been asked to make replicas of pieces on our website, but that’s something we just won’t do. There is a lot of temptation to make easy money in this industry, especially if you have some left-over glass sitting on the shelf. But we’re not doing this to get rich. We want to be known for the craftsmanship, quality, and uniqueness of our art. Custom stained glass art can be pricey, so our customers need to know that no one else in the world has what they have.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
We make custom stained glass art, everything from hangable panels to windows to lamps. Every piece is custom designed and made from hand-cut glass. Except for a table-top grinder, we do not use machines.

Like I said, every piece is one-of-a-kind, so our customers know they’re getting something that we will never make again. We work one-on-one with our customers to take their vision for a project, work up a design, and make it come to life. I would say that we’re best known for our designs and craftsmanship. There are a lot of super talented artists out there working with glass, but none are doing it how we’re doing it. I grew up listening to 90’s hip hop and trip hop. Music is a huge part of our identity. Combining an artform as classic as stained glass with contemporary designs – over a dope beat – just hits so right. We treat our videos like an art project of their own, so even if someone doesn’t commission us to make them a piece, we want them to enjoy our work. And to bob their heads.

We’re proud of every piece we’ve ever made. Nothing leaves our shop unless we’re both completely satisfied. But I think what we’re most proud of is our brand. We built it from the ground up, by ourselves. We spent close to a year just naming the company. Then we went back-and-forth on the logo for months, which we designed together. We agreed that we would always maintain a solid identity, especially with how we showcase our work. We still argue about what song to use for every video, but you can always expect a certain style and swag from OGC. That’s important to us because it sets us apart from others.

We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
N/A – we were not in business during COVID.

Pricing:

• Small projects (1 square foot or less) range from $25 to $100
• Medium size projects (2-4 square feet) range from $250 to $400
• Large projects (6 square feet or more) range from $500 to over $1,000

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Ogcstainedglass.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ogcstainedglass?igsh=MW55bmh6cWo2bmt5aA==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100095226954821&mibextid=ZbWKwL
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ogcstainedglass?feature=shared