New Entrepreneur (NE)
Name & surname: Oleksandra Volkova
Country: Ukraine
Age: 22 years
Sector of activity: Retail
Did you already start your business? No.
Name of business: SashaBaby™
What is your future business? I plan to help my mother expand her clothing manufacturing factory by developing a new line of newborns clothing. SachaBaby will provide quality clothes at competitive prices to the Ukrainian market that consumers are demanding. We carefully select only the best raw materials from suppliers around the world and take special care in the assembly of each piece we produce.
Host Entrepreneur (HE)
Name & surname: Luis Moreno
Country: Spain
Sector of activity: Retail
Experience in running a business: 7 years
Name of business/website: HANDMADE ® BARCELONA / http://www.barcelonahm.com
What is your business? It’s a handmade footwear fashion brand with 7+ stores.
Period of exchange: 02/12/2019 – 17/01/2020
Duration of exchange: 1,5 months
How did Luis manage to expand his business in the virtual world?
Our host, Luis Moreno, runs a company called “Handmade”, based in Barcelona but has also expanded elsewhere. He has been an entrepreneur for more than 7 years, and has built, together with his team, a 1 million € company from scratch. “We know how to scale ideas, organize people and create products and appealing marketing. Now we want to give back, show other young entrepreneurs how it is done, and also learn from them at the same time, as any new generation has knowledge that is key for every established brand”, as he said.
In addition, Luis Moreno is one of the most active hosts as he has hosted several entrepreneurs in his company during the last few years and he has always had great results with these exchanges. It is because of this that he is still interested in the programme and looking for more young entrepreneurs.
“The relationship with Oleksandra (she went by the name Sasha) was one of the key aspects that allowed us to survive this pandemic. It was with her that we created what would become the future of the company with regards to the virtual world: THE ESPADRILLES EXPERIENCE. She was a passionate young entrepreneur, very focused on video content and experiences, and helped us to grow in that field, to the point that today it is 90% of the business. Our video content on Instagram and our famous experiences on Airbnb were all inspired by her input to the company.
Here you can see some of her work and the result of it:
The Virtual Experience: espadrillesexperience.com/online-workshop
The promo video for the Experience: https://youtu.be/v7WqxWyiISU
The main goal of Sasha was to see if she was ready to take over her family business in the upcoming season in 2021. Being daily with me, the young founder of a company that already reached the 1M Euros revenue per year, helped her to see the challenges and difficulties, but also the proximity, the possibility of making it, the not so crazy idea of growing a business in such a competitive market. After our collaboration, she went back to her hometown and communicated to her family that she would now contribute to the day-to-day work of the family business in order to learn everything needed to take it over in a few years. This experience with the EYE program not only helped us to see new possibilities in the virtual world, but also helped her to take a lifetime decision that would change her professional future forever.”