Matviichuk Viktoriia Viktorivna, 26 years

Today, I am the —founder  of Pam.Parfum and am responsible for the strategic development of the business. The description that fits me best is —a marketer and a perfume enthusiast.

My entrepreneurial journey began with a job. I built a marketing department from scratch at a company that imported and exported vehicles, and I genuinely loved my work. But over time, the workload became critical: I didn't redistribute it in time, and high expectations — both my own and those of my employer — led to burnout.

The turning point came when I lost focus amid a constant stream of tasks and stopped understanding which outcomes were truly essential. During that period, my colleague Andrii, a photographer, asked me a simple question: did I have a hobby? That question became the trigger for change.

I realized I wanted to pursue my own goals, rather than just work toward results for someone else's business. So I decided to launch my own project. It started with social media pages and gradually grew into a structured retail business with a team, a website, and its own operational solutions.

The full-scale invasion was another stage in the business's growth. A business that had started operating steadily in November 2021 found itself in a new reality just a few months later. I moved to Warsaw and had to build the entire management system remotely.

This became a turning point in the business's rapid maturation: I moved from hands-on control to building autonomous processes and a strong team.

How did you come up with the business idea?

The idea for Pam.Parfum emerged at the intersection of a personal crisis and a professional search.

At the time, I was burned out because of an excessive workload at my job and a lack of clear focus. The simple question «Do you have a hobby?» made me look at my own interests from a different perspective.

I decided to turn my passion for perfumery into a business. I combined my marketing experience with this niche and started with the basics — creating social media pages.

Gradually, a website, a team, and operational processes followed. The format of selling portions from a single bottle created the need for an unconventional operational model, which we developed ourselves.

What key skills helped you launch your business?

My foundation — is a combination of two groups of skills.

The first — is strategic marketing: digital, content, and working with traffic and conversion. I developed this expertise in my previous job, where I built a marketing department from scratch.

The second — is the ability to be visible and engage with an audience. I became the face of the Pam.Parfum brand and actively created content, building trust through personal communication.

I had essentially been honing this skill since childhood by taking part in events and speaking publicly at school and university.

What were the 3 most difficult challenges you overcame in the first years?

The first challenge — was the full-scale war. The business only began operating steadily in November 2021, and just a few months later we had to make decisions amid total uncertainty while also moving to Poland.

The second — was limited startup capital. I started with up to 5000 dollars and also used credit, which I invested in inventory and operational processes.

The third — was the complexity of the operational model. Standard CRM systems did not support the format of selling portions, so we had to develop our own solution tailored to our processes.

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

The first crisis — was the combination of war and forced relocation. I lost the ability to manage processes in person and had to move the business entirely online.

My decision — was not to stop. We continued investing in advertising, inventory, and content. At the same time, I redesigned operations so they could run autonomously without my constant involvement.

This produced an unexpected result: I was able to focus on strategic tasks, and the team — became more self-sufficient.

The second crisis is ongoing. Customer behavior has changed: purchasing power has fallen, impulse buying has decreased, and people have become more rational in their choices.

Sensitivity to the brand and the founder's stance has also increased. We are adapting to these changes, but it will take time to fully assess the results.

Which decisions proved most effective for growing the company?

The first — was focusing on organic traffic through social media. This allowed us to turn over funds quickly and avoid accumulating excess inventory.

The second — was creating our own CRM system and organizing operational processes around the specific needs of the business. This made the business manageable and scalable.

The third — was entering the Polish market as a way to diversify. When demand falls in Ukraine, the Polish market helps keep the business stable overall.

Which mistake do you now consider your most valuable learning experience?

The most valuable lesson was becoming overly dependent on social media as our primary sales channel.

Organic growth enabled rapid scaling and built a loyal audience. But at the same time, it made the business vulnerable.

In 2024, we faced attacks from competitors, phishing campaigns, and attempts to hack our accounts. This showed how risky it is to depend on a single sales platform that we do not own.

After that, we completely rethought the customer journey. We shifted our main focus to our own website, which gives us virtually complete control, security, and enormous opportunities to manage the business, limited only by our imagination.

How did you earn your first $100?

I earned my first money—not $100, but a little more ——when I was 14. Right after 9th grade, I went to Poland to work, where I picked strawberries. During that period, I earned about 600 dollars.

How did you earn your first $1 000?

I also earned my first thousand dollars as a teenager. I went to work in Sweden while most of my peers were on vacation. At 17, I became fully financially independent and learned to manage the money I had earned and plan my budget well into the future.

How did you earn your first $10 000?

I earned my first 10 thousand dollars through my own business, developing Pam.Parfum.

How did you earn your first $1 000 000?

At the moment, I haven’t yet earned my first million dollars in income.

I can be useful to entrepreneurs in three key areas.

First — marketing. This includes digital marketing, content, customer database management, email marketing, and systematic communications.

Second — building a systematic content operation. At Pam.Parfum, we create more than 100 pieces of content every month. This is not the result of overloading the team, but of a clearly designed structure: roles, processes, and planning.

Third — launching a business in Poland for entrepreneurs from Ukraine. I have practical experience entering the local market and working with a Polish audience, which is our primary target group.

Your experience: how do you systematize a business?

My approach to systematization starts with an honest understanding of my role.

I’m more focused on ideas than on operational systems. So the first step — is to address these gaps by building a strong team. I bring in people who are good at working with processes, and create clear expectations, motivation, and a comfortable environment for them.

It’s important to me that the team receives not only financial compensation, but also a sense of contributing to a shared result.

The second step — is maximum automation. We deliberately did not expand the team to handle routine tasks. We automated everything that could be automated without sacrificing quality.

We invested resources in developing our own software solutions and integrations. One of the key elements — is our own CRM system, which we developed because standard solutions did not fit our partial-sales business model.

Your experience: how do you grow twofold in a year?

The potential for growth ×2 depends on the stage of business development.

At the beginning, growth often happens naturally — through entering the market. But once a business stabilizes, different tools are needed.

In our case, these included scaling up investment in products, advertising, and the team; geographic expansion — entering the Polish market, with further plans to scale into other countries.

My practical formula is this: to grow ×2, you need to be ready to invest significantly more — not only money, but also management attention, decision-making speed, and process quality.