From Bulgaria to Baker City

Published 9:00 am Friday, July 15, 2022

BAKER CITY — This summer, some parents of young children in Baker City will smile and wave to a tall young man dressed in a light-colored polo tucked into his shorts and carrying a binder of educational pamphlets.

The man is Stoyan “Tony” Ivanov, Baker City’s newest peddler.

He traveled a great distance to offer his wares, coming to Baker City from Bulgaria.

“I see my clients around a lot,” Ivanov, 28, said recently, waving at a woman as she passed through the drive-thru window while he paid for a drink at the Little Pig restaurant on 10th Street.

About a month ago, Ivanov moved from Bulgaria to Baker City for the summer with a cultural exchange visa, and his work has already fostered ties to the community. He recently received his official peddler’s license from the city, allowing him to do his job — go door to door each day selling educational materials to families.

Ivanov said his goal is to provide educational resources to people in rural towns who might not have access to these resources otherwise.

“In the countryside, nobody will knock on your door and try to show you some educational books,” he said.

That’s why he decided to travel from Bulgaria, a country of about 7 million residents in the Balkan region of the southeastern European country, to Baker City.

“I like the area, I like the mountains, I like the people,” Ivanov said.

His passion for education, he said, comes from his own family.

“I come from a very educated family in Bulgaria,” Ivanov said. “Education is a priority for me.”

In his hometown of Pazardzhik, his grandmother taught kindergarten for 10 years and was a librarian for another 20, while his mother has been teaching for 28 years.

And Ivanov is quite educated himself.

He has two bachelor’s degrees — one in business administration and one in tourism — from two Bulgarian universities, and he’s working on his master’s degree in marketing and management from a third university.

To pay for all those degrees, he sells the books.

It’s his sixth summer working with Southwestern Advantage, a Nashville, Tennessee, publishing company that employs college students from more than 200 campuses around the world to visit American towns to sell educational materials. And in his six years, Ivanov has been around — he has peddlers permits in about 40 American towns — from Colorado to Iowa to Washington to Idaho to Oregon.

This is his third summer working in the Beaver state.

“Oregon is the best place I’ve worked so far,” Ivanov said. “I love Oregon.”

He said he also loves his job, though it’s not always easy.

“Believe it or not, it’s a hard job,” he said. “A lot of rejection, hot weather, rain, even snow last year.”

He said he works 12 to 13 hours every day except Sundays, and meets with 20 to 30 families per day. His gratification, he said, comes from interaction with clients.

“Seeing those people have something that would save them time on homework, help them go to college and get good scholarships, that’s the main reason I’ve been doing the job for six summers,” Ivanov said.

Those families that do talk with Ivanov have the chance to interact with a student of relative status in Bulgaria. Ivanov represents his university on the national student council in Sofia, the nation’s capital. He’s one of 11 students on an executive team that works with officials like the Bulgarian Prime Minister and Minister of Economics on education and other social issues.

What makes Ivanov’s presence even more unique is that another book salesman from the program won’t be back for at least 10 to 15 years.

And people in Baker City who buy Ivanov’s books have another connection in Bulgaria to look forward to: he plants a tree back home for each one of his clients. He’s planted 3,105 trees so far.

Ivanov will leave Baker City in mid-August to work in Burns for a month before heading back to Bulgaria. He said he doesn’t know if he’ll work selling books for the seventh straight summer next year.

But he does plan to become even more educated — with another master’s in marketing and eventually a doctorate, so he can become a college professor.

“I love education,” Ivanov said. “Education can get you from one state to another or from one country to another.”

“I love education. Education can get you from one state to another or from one country to another.”

— Stoyan “Tony” Ivanov, a Bulgarian resident who is selling books in Baker City this summer