Dariia Zakrevska, 25 years

From the pandemic and volunteering to e-commerce with hobby kits

My name is Daria Zakrevska, and today I am an entrepreneur building an e-commerce business around the idea of helping people discover new hobbies.

We create and sell kits, games, and quest boxes—formats that offer a ready-made leisure-time activity without the need to go anywhere. I came to entrepreneurship not through romanticized notions, but through an inner conviction formed in childhood: working for someone else would not give me the scope I needed. That is why, from an early age, I read business books and looked for ideas I could implement independently. N

y professional development was significantly shaped by two environments. The first was the pandemic: in the field where I was working at the time, conditions, levels of responsibility, and management practices changed dramatically, which significantly accelerated my growth as a manager.

The second was the full-scale war. I immersed myself in entirely different tasks, including civic projects related to telemedicine centers, and experienced firsthand how quickly reality can change. At the same time, I was launching a business with my brother, and the hardest part for me was not the actual “opening” but leaving salaried employment—consciously giving up stability at a time when the business was still operating at a loss. At the beginning, I handled literally every function myself: from communicating with customers to packing and shipping orders. On the very first day, I nearly “closed up shop” because I was overwhelmed. Over time, we grew to a team of seven and built monitoring systems: daily analytics for websites, sales channels, managers, and products.

For me, the foundation was a combination of strong communication skills, mathematical thinking, product development experience, and a habit of learning new things quickly—over the past six or seven years, that has been part of my everyday work. The most valuable mistake at the start was wanting to sell “the way I saw it,” rather than what people actually buy. I wanted to create grown-up leisure activities “for myself,” without a childlike perspective, in the form of a surprise subscription. But the market responded differently. The turning point was deciding to listen to customers systematically: gathering feedback through managers, correspondence, short interviews, and business-to-business conversations, and strengthening the solutions people already wanted.

This shift in mindset brought the greatest growth and became the foundation for the business’s continued development.

A surprise subscription the market didn’t accept—and the transformation into hobby boxes

How did the business idea come about?

The business idea came from a desire to create a subscription for surprise hobby boxes. It was a format my brother immediately said he would be happy to order for me as a customer. However, while testing the hypothesis, we saw that most people wanted to know in advance exactly what they were buying. That is why we transformed the business model: we moved away from a completely surprise-based format and switched to boxes with clearly defined hobbies and contents.

Communication, mathematics, and a systematic view of business—the three skills that launched the company

What key skills helped you launch the business?

Communication and structured thinking were key skills, particularly my mathematical background, which became the basis for marketing and analytics. Product development experience and creating educational content—mini-courses and instructions—also played a significant role. The ability to learn quickly and master new tools through courses, podcasts, and consultations was another important advantage. It is also worth noting my systematic view of the business: I am responsible for marketing, strategic planning, and finance, while my brother focuses on sales, including some business-to-business work and retail.

Operational overload, cash-flow gaps, and the search for new products

What were the 3 most difficult challenges you addressed in the early years?

The first serious challenge was operational overload at the start. I was responsible for customer communication, shipping orders, and building processes all at once, which quickly revealed the limits of the “I do everything myself” approach. The second challenge was cash-flow gaps and financial management. There were periods when the business showed revenue growth but was actually operating at a loss because funds were tied up in inventory and purchases. The third challenge was constantly looking for products that remained interesting to customers. Some products see high demand for only one or two months, after which interest fades, so refreshing the offering became an ongoing process.

Advent calendars arrived on December 10 instead of the 1st—and the team worked manually to get through the crisis

What crises has your business faced, and how did you overcome them?

Our business is highly seasonal. The most difficult period is summer, when there are fewer holidays, people travel more and spend less time at home, while many of our products require a workspace or table. This often creates what you might call an information crisis: when sales fall, we start to feel we are heading in the wrong direction. The most stressful case involved advent calendars that were supposed to arrive by December 1 but were actually delivered around December 10. By then, we had already sold a significant number and had communicated specific timelines to customers. We had to respond quickly to negative feedback, offer solutions such as refunds or waiting, and manually speed up packing and delivery within a very tight timeframe. We managed to get through it thanks to teamwork and highly transparent communication: managers contacted customers personally, we made decisions quickly, and looked for every possible logistics option to meet our commitments.

Learning, daily analytics, and new products—what led to doubling growth

Which decisions proved most effective for the company’s growth?

Three decisions had the greatest impact on the company’s growth. First, continuous learning: consultations at the start, mentoring, courses, and podcasts, from which I select practical tools and quickly test them in the business. Second, relying on data and automation: regular daily and monthly analytics by sales channel, manager, product, and financial indicator made it possible to make decisions based on numbers rather than intuition. Third, expanding the product portfolio and improving team effectiveness. Thanks to new products and better execution, this year we doubled in some areas.

Defending the “right” product for too long—and deciding in time to listen to customers

What mistake do you now consider your most valuable experience?

For a long time, I held on to my own idea of the “right” product and positioning: focusing on the surprise, the subscription, and an adult audience, while consciously rejecting certain categories as “not for me.” Eventually, the market showed that this approach limited growth. The most valuable experience was recognizing the mistake in time and starting to listen to customers systematically: analyzing exactly what they buy, how they perceive products—including as gifts—and what they feel is missing. This allowed us to strengthen what was already working and build our assortment around people’s actual behavior.