Section 1: About me. Dossier.
«The decision to always work.»
Oleksandr Smetana
Insights from private meetings and member stories are in our Telegram channel.
Join the clubSection 2. About the business. Dossier.
Section 3: Biography.
I am Oleksandr Smetana, a Ukrainian entrepreneur and co-founder of the company ONE BY ONE, which has been operating in the women’s fashion and retail sector for over 11 years. My business journey began with minimal investment and trading, which gradually grew into our own production and the creation of a brand.
Today, my company is part of the YBC 10 Million Club, has a team of 100 to 1000 people, and operates in Ukraine and Poland. My core principles have become making decisions quickly, working systematically, and knowing how to build a team. These have helped me overcome financial crises, scale the business, and create a strong corporate culture.
For me personally, the defining events in my life have been the birth of my children, starting my own business, and the war, which changed my outlook on life. The influence of my father and my first wife, who was also my business partner, shaped me as an entrepreneur. My guiding motto in life is: «It needs to be done yesterday».
I enjoy padel, mixed martial arts, and traveling. I love films about business and finance, as well as books about strong personalities. My experience is a story of how modest resources and consistent work «here and now» can build a large-scale company that continues to grow and develop internationally.
The idea started with something simple: I needed more money.
The business launch and creation of the trademark happened in several stages.
The first stage was trading.
At the very beginning, my partner and I decided to buy some of the goods in advance so that our online storefront would look like that of a real shop with products available «here and now». The remaining items were effectively available by order. In practice, this meant that we would quickly find the product a customer wanted through our partners and suppliers, and only then confirm the order with the customer.
The goal at the start was simply to buy something and sell something, with an investment of a thousand hryvnias, because we simply didn’t have more to invest. That’s how we got our first, relatively inexpensive products, while the rest were entirely made to order. This was how the trading business got started, gradually evolving over the years into something more like a brand.
The move to our own production
Later, once we had trading, a dropshipping system, and wholesale sales, my partner came up with the idea of sewing our first tank dress. My aunt was a seamstress, so we took the idea to her. We made the first tank dress, and it immediately sold out through the network we had built. Sales of our own products took off, but at that point there was no brand, no brand identity—just a retail network.
The arrival of the brand and the first store
Later, we created a brand and opened our first store on the third floor of a space that was not really designed for retail. We already had a name, but it was a working, temporary name, chosen more for internal use than as a fully fledged brand.
After moving the entire company and production facility to the city center, we opened a retail space in a small shopping center, now fully under a brand name. It was not yet called One by One, though. The space combined a beauty salon and a clothing store, while production operated behind the wall and also fulfilled custom orders for customers.
We worked in that format for about a year. After that came a rebrand and the first full-fledged opening under the new name.
The key skills were speed and the «everything yesterday» mindset. Nothing that could be done today was put off until tomorrow.
Speed, commitment, and sincerity are three of the company’s most important qualities to this day.
Working systematically, making decisions quickly, and knowing how to build a team.
If we consider the first two or three years as foundational to the business, then the main challenge in the first year was simply getting trading underway so the company could earn at least some profit. In the first few months, my partner said something that captures that stage well: «Just earning 8000 hryvnias a month would be enough—not net profit, but revenue». That was the first challenge: finding customers.
The second challenge, for me personally, was building a team. Imagine the situation: you’re nobody, nobody knows you, and you have no office—just a tiny private company with minimal turnover. And in those circumstances, you have to invite people to work in our first, rather makeshift office, even though I had no entrepreneurial experience. Yes, I had an economics degree, specializing in business economics, but education is not experience.
The third challenge was launching our own production in a small town, where we had only one person with relevant expertise: a seamstress. Production requires technologists, pattern cutters, seamstresses, and a whole range of other specialists whose critical importance you only understand later. At the time, we had to get everything going without experience, consultants, or anything else. We had to buy two ordinary household sewing machines and try to make something work with the seamstress. There was no budget for consultants or specialists, of course, so I learned how to set up production through YouTube, Google, and trial and error. The turning point for me, and the moment I realized production would happen no matter what, was when I assembled an industrial sewing machine with my own hands, without even knowing what a bobbin was at the time :)
One of the main difficulties for me has been managing money.
Because our company is not an investment company and has never brought in external funding, managing money has always been the main difficulty. Purchasing goods and raw materials still requires substantial financial resources, and our lack of those resources has led to serious cash-flow gaps. This is an extremely dangerous situation: when a cash-flow gap becomes severe, a company is on the verge of bankruptcy.
The second difficult situation, for me personally, was related to scaling. In 2021, we began actively developing our offline business, while our online project was also scaling up. Both areas required the same resources: raw materials, products, and financing. On top of that, we were investing in building new retail locations and lacked experience in scaling effectively. As a result, the company was constantly under financial strain, which took a serious toll on its condition.
The third challenge, which was especially acute in the early years, was the need to constantly adapt to processes that seemed to change every day. As soon as you establish one process, you have to revisit it: either it is no longer relevant, or it was set up incorrectly from the outset because of a lack of experience. While we were organizing and refining something new—a product, business area, or procedure—the company was rapidly scaling and accumulating more and more processes that we simply could not keep up with. This created a snowball effect and put enormous pressure on the team, me, and our partners.
The decision to scale offline.
This case seems simple and obvious to me now, but at the time it became a truly valuable experience. I’m talking about creating our first website, where I failed to take the right approach to delegation and project management. The main lesson I learned from those mistakes was that every process and every project must have someone responsible for the outcome.
Trying to control everything myself instead of delegating.
I earned my first $100 working as a laborer on a construction site.
My first thousand dollars came from selling cassette tapes at the market.
My first $10 000 came from my first business venture, which later grew into ONE BY ONE.
I earned my first $100 000 through that same business venture.
As soon as the first million dollars appears in my personal account, I’ll be sure to tell you about it.
Section 4: How can I be useful? Experience I can share.
I can share my expertise in the following areas:
• Consulting and practical assistance with clothing and footwear manufacturing;
• Consulting on ERR systems;
• Experience implementing retail systems and CRM
• Recommendations on how to avoid mistakes when developing a website
• General advice on building an IT function in your own company
For me, business systematization is based on three foundations: a clear company structure with processes described in detail, a specific owner for every process, and clearly defined responsibilities for each participant.
For a relatively stable business, my approach is as follows: hold a strategy session with the decision-makers and clearly determine exactly how the company can achieve 2x growth. Next, choose a direction, assign responsibilities, and work toward this goal without fixating on obstacles. There will always be obstacles; they simply need to be overcome. The main thing is not to stop every time a difficulty arises, but to get on with it.
Section 5: Club value
