From Working in Sales to Building a Footwear Business
I'm Yana Makaryk, and I live and work in Kyiv.
I didn't enter entrepreneurship with a ready-made idea. After the full-scale war began, everyone switched to remote work, and I had some free time to think about what to do next.
At the time, I was employed. My colleague and I often talked about what we could do together. We had worked with clothing before, so we definitely didn't want to return to clothing. We considered accessories and various options for women, but none of them gave us the feeling that we really wanted to pursue them. Then, by chance, we went to a footwear exhibition and realized that footwear was exactly what we wanted to do. That's how our business began.
Before that, I had always worked in sales. I found my first job right after school. I wanted to live separately from my parents, so I got a summer job at a store selling clothing by Ukrainian designers. Later, I worked at BBT Fashion Group, where staff training sessions were held regularly. Over time, I moved into managing the sales department. I was also working on my own business, but for a long time I combined the two jobs.
At the beginning, we did a lot ourselves - taking orders, shipping them, communicating with suppliers, and handling advertising and content. Gradually, we realized that the business was growing too slowly this way. We started calculating the economics, changing our pricing, hiring people, and redesigning our operations.
Now we're expanding our offline presence, automating the business, and completely changing our warehouse system because we have more warehouses and products are constantly moving between them.
Sales, Numbers, and Getting Organized
What key skills helped you launch your business?
- Sales management and sales experience. I worked in this area for many years, including managing a sales department. That experience helped me understand the structure of a business - pricing, business model calculations, and assessing demand and the market. Next came operational discipline, implementation, and business process automation.
For me, it's important not just to sell something, but to understand how the business works, how much it actually earns, and what needs to change to make it work better.
The Wrong Price, a Supplier, and Money Tied Up in Stock
What were the 3 most difficult challenges you faced in the first years of running the business?
When we started the business, we didn't have a clear structure in mind. Like anyone starting their first business, we didn't immediately understand how important it was to calculate the business model and pricing correctly, assess the market, and measure demand.
The first serious realization came when we understood that the business was breaking even, and that when we accounted for our labor, it was actually operating at a loss.
Our pricing system was poorly designed, we had chosen the wrong primary supplier, and we weren't communicating with them effectively. During the off-season, we were left with a large quantity of footwear, with a significant amount of our money tied up in it. That's when we realized we had to change something. We changed our approach, and after that the business started moving forward more successfully.
Now the next big phase is expanding our offline presence. We're automating the business, completely changing our warehouse inventory system, and redesigning our operating system.
When a Day Job Starts Holding a Business Back
What crises has your business faced, and how did you overcome them?
For a long time, we lived parallel lives - working our day jobs and then working on the business in the evenings. This had a major impact on how quickly we could grow.
At a certain point, we realized that this schedule was holding us back, and we made the final decision to leave our jobs. We both left our jobs at almost the same time and focused entirely on the business. After that, we were able to scale much more effectively.
Transparent Numbers, People in the Right Roles, and Leaving Our Jobs
Which decisions proved most effective for the company's growth?
The first decision was to calculate our expenses and see how much we actually earned from each sale. That was one of the most effective decisions we made.
The second decision was to delegate operational work. Like many entrepreneurs at the beginning, we spent a long time doing everything ourselves - taking orders, shipping them, communicating with suppliers, and handling advertising and content. So hiring people to take over our roles gave the business a major boost.
Mistakes That Help Us Avoid Repeating Old Decisions
Which of your mistakes do you now consider your most valuable learning experience?
I can't single out one major mistake. We had different situations and shortcomings, and gradually learned from each one.
There were decisions that seemed right at the time, but later we realized they didn't work. We might have miscalculated something or acted more on inspiration and energy, especially when everything was going well.
Now we try to avoid major mistakes, but we don't turn every setback into a tragedy either. Sometimes you can calculate everything five times and still never get anything done. So we try to act thoughtfully, without letting the fear of making a mistake stop us.
