"Being part of a culture with a success fixation, I find it helpful to  remember that success is a personal state of mind that comes from within."

 In expressing these thoughts, Sergio Lub indicates he understands an important aspect of the new paradigm. In fact, Sergio Lub may himself be the embodiment of the best in new paradigm living.
If there is a person alive who continually exudes the pure joy of life, it's Sergio Lub. Generous, open, expansive, unpretentious, sharing, enthusiastic, trusting-all are words that fall short of describing his unquenchable spirit. Many people whom he readily names have helped to shape his life, open his heart, and nurture his soul. He returns the favor whenever he can. Sergio distributes his love of people through the art he creates.  He says the purpose of art is to create beauty, to make people feel good about themselves.

Of course, all of this may have come quite naturally to him. He was born of immigrant Russian parents and raised in Argentina, combining the deep soul-filled strains of a balalaika with the lightheartedness of a Latin beat. Sergio's spirit is undoubtedly the result of his family and himself having to face major hurdles and overcome them.

Sergio's father, born under the last czar in 1909 in Byelorussia, spent World War I in Siberia. At the end of the war, fatherless, he returned to Byelorussia with his mother to a community that had been totally destroyed. At age 12, with his home gone, Sergio's father built a small house, really just a room, for his mother and himself.

In 1935 he used all of his savings to immigrate to Argentina, expecting to bring his mother and stepbrothers there as soon as he could afford to. Unfortunately, World War II intervened and, with the exception of one stepbrother, his family in Byelorussia did not survive.

Sergio's father became a skilled carpenter and furniture maker in Argentina. His mother's Russian family had immigrated to Paraguay prior to World War II before immigrating again to Argentina. The arrival by birth of Sergio's sister and Sergio completed the family, which then resided in a working class suburb of Buenos Aires.

By the time Sergio was seven years old, his artistic talents were evident and were encouraged by his mother. He produced and sold small plaster statues and vases, offering them door-to-door to customers in an ever-expanding circle of neighborhoods around his home.

In his early teens, Sergio qualified to attend the best high school in Argentina, requiring him to commute one and one-half hours each way to the center of Buenos Aires. In his second year there, an art teacher, the ex-director of a fine arts college, observed Sergio's work and convinced his parents that he should attend the fine arts college simultaneous to continuing his high school education. Soon he was attending a high school with a strict moral code in the mornings and a progressive art school, complete with nude models, in the afternoons. "It taught me how to mix with many different kinds of people," he wryly muses today.

At age sixteen, tall for his age, with beard and fake I.D., Sergio also became a disc jockey for a time in a night club. At school, working with brass, he invented a unique system to articulate gyroscopic pendants, which he patented, becoming the youngest inventor in Argentina and earning him a spread in Gente magazine.

Soon he began producing necklaces of brass and resin, which he sold in one corner of Feria de San Telmo, an antiques fair held each Sunday catering to tourists who came from around the world.

Sergio's work became well known and customers besieged his booth. Prospering, he soon had a new sports car, an apartment in the city, and was dating famous models.  In 1973, Sergio was able to fulfill a lifelong dream. He took his father back to Byelorussia for a lengthy visit. During the visit his father was honored at a special dinner in Moscow for having organized a relief effort following the war and for assisting the family of who later became a high-ranking Soviet official. His father's stepbrother, a war hero and amputee, the only survivor in his family, attended the ceremony.

By 1975, political conditions were rapidly deteriorating in Argentina. Juan Peron had been re-elected president and then did an about-face, turning on the working class that had supported him. The government became corrupt. People were arrested without apparent reason and disappeared forever. Sergio's family home came under surveillance. Probably because of the visit to Russia, he thought, he was suspected of being a communist. Sergio decided to leave the country.

A friend of Sergio's, a member of the staff of the U.S. embassy, provided him with a visa enabling him to work in the U.S. on his invention. Well on his way by then to becoming an urban architect, Sergio left Argentina without completing his thesis. He first tried living in Chile, then Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and, finally, Venezuela. He didn't find a satisfactory intellectual climate in any of them. He had visited the United States briefly once before, but had run into American con men and had left with a low opinion of the country. However, in the meantime, he had fallen in love with a Swedish Pan Am stewardess who lived in Sausalito, California. He visited her and, finding the San Francisco Bay Area a friendly and intellectually stimulating place, decided to stay.

Both his romance and his career as an architect ended shortly thereafter, however. Sergio started designing jewelry again and began setting up a network of retailers in the U.S. and distributors in several foreign countries. Discovering the craft market, Sergio's big break came in 1980 when he was able to sell at a large craft show in Rhinebeck, New York. He had spent all his money driving from the West Coast to the show.

 Initially only on the waiting list, through a lucky break he was able to enter the show.
"I came back with 40 new accounts, $30,000 in cash, and enough orders to keep busy for four years. But the orders had to be delivered within three months!" The word went out, and friends rallied and worked together to produce the jewelry to meet the deadlines.

Since 1983, Sergio's family-including his parents, his sister and her family--and several close friends have all immigrated to the U.S. Sergio's father died In 1991, but not until after he had learned to drive a car and receive his first driver's license at age 75.

Today, Sergio Lub sells 100,000 pieces of handcrafted bracelets annually through stores and galleries in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, and Europe through an "on approval" system that guarantees retailers in advance that they will be able to sell the jewelry or they can send it back for a full refund. "When we introduced this," he says, "craft people thought I was crazy. But it is important for me that I don't take advantage of anyone. This way I manage to be in the best retail locations. Also, developing long-term relationships with our retailers is very important to me. You need to address their needs."
Each bracelet Sergio Lub sells carries a lifetime guarantee. It will be   replaced free of charge if it ever breaks. "People feel an affinity with us and with our product. We have developed a very loyal clientele." Sergio's picture accompanies each bracelet display and, people often approach him in public places to say that they have collected a number of his pieces.

Sergio has set up his original U.S. employees in independent companies of their own, making Sergio Lub Bracelets for him. Each has four or five employees working for them. His current employees participate with him sharing in the company's profits. He continues design his trademarked products and to concentrate on marketing.

In the next few years, Sergio hopes to create a crafts industry in Russia, furthering their free market development. A member of the Center for Citizen Initiatives, he also helps others by advising them how to do business in Russia. He has been involved in bringing Russians to the U.S. on friendship visits since 1985, and more recently in programs to help Russians learn entrepreneurial techniques through "hands-on" work for a month with an American colleague.

Sergio is a firm advocate for the crafts movement, believing it to be the best way to spread art because its products are affordable for most people. He frequently conducts "how-to" seminars teaching would-be craftspersons a "win-win" approach to selling, and he is active in major national crafts associations.
Sergio's philosophy is best summarized:

In order to avoid costly mistakes, I apply a rule of preventive common sense: Before any major decision I weigh how much I'll enjoy taking each one of the available options-and I keep Having Fun one of my highest priorities.

Public recognition may come and go, but if you are fine-tuned in feeling good about yourself and what you do, then it will matter far less what your neighbor thinks of you. The assumption that one must be successful to be happy is like chasing one's tail. Worry only about how to better enjoy your creative life, using your own joy as your reliable and personal success yardstick. Rule #1: Keep Having Fun!