How a 34-year-old Ukrainian founder created scrappy business opportunities amid the chaos of war

• Alina Kachorovska has kept her business afloat thanks to scrappy opportunities amid the war.
• She's made boots for Ukrainian soldiers and focused on international expansion to sustain the brand.

On March 12, 2022, two weeks after Russian air raids marked the start of the war in Ukraine, an order for heeled booties appeared on Alina Kachorovska's computer.

"This moment is forever in our hearts," Kachorovska, the founder, CEO, and designer of her eponymous footwear-and-accessories brand, said. "This was a celebration of life."

The order, which came from the eastern part of the country — an area that Russia had recently bombed — restarted production at Kachorovska's 16-year-old business after the war had paused operations.

Kachorovska, which relied heavily on domestic direct-to-consumer sales before the war, felt a major impact from the displacement of Ukrainians. However, the 34-year-old founder is keeping her company afloat thanks to strategies such as streamlined communication systems, assembly-line project planning, and scrappy opportunities amid the chaos, without losing her optimism and dreams for international expansion.

"I was not afraid since the first moment the war began, because we know what we stand for, what we fight for," Kachorovska said.

Kachorovska, who spoke with Insider via video call from her generator-lit apartment in Kyiv, revealed how she's continuing a multigenerational tradition of shoemaking despite the war.

A family legacy takes a modern step

Kachorovska said she remembers the smell of leather and glue wafting through her childhood home. Her grandmother started making shoes in 1957 during the Soviet occupation of Ukraine. In the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union dissolved and restrictions on starting entrepreneurial efforts for profit eased, her mother opened an atelier. Both matriarchs taught Kachorovska the craft of shoemaking through trying times.

"It was not a mission of their lives to become great shoemakers," she said. "It was just life."

But Kachorovska saw shoemaking as something more: She combined her family history and love of fashion to achieve her dream of being a designer.

"There is definitely one thing that did not change," Kachorovska said. "It's the passion for shoes, the obsession with shoes, and the excitement for what fashion can bring to a woman."

Opportunities during wartime

When the war began, "you thought that you lost everything in a second," Kachorovska said.

When the dust settled, she focused on survival. To keep her business operating, she's had to adapt to the consequences of war: citywide blackouts forced her to purchase generators for the factory, and she had to find alternative routes for transporting products when the roads became blocked with debris from bombings.

"Our strategy is to fight," she said of herself, of her community, and of her business.

She also found business opportunities in unlikely places, such as creating boots for soldiers.

In March 2022, when the Ukrainian government asked those who were able to join the fight, there was an increase in demand for army boots. Kachorovska teamed up with other factory owners, each contributing a different component of the boots — such as leather, soles, or labor — to produce and donate a hundred pairs, she said.

When the demand for boots remained high, Kachorovska raised funds to produce more, which also supplied the salaries for her employees.

"They were so grateful because, in these circumstances when you think that everything is lost, just to know that you have a job and will be paid encouraged people," she said.

Looking toward international expansion

In mid-March, after the army-boot initiative, Kachorovska aimed to generate international buzz to scale her business. MICAM Milano, an international footwear exhibition in Milan, was coming up, but Kachorovska found that the cost to participate was out of reach.

She wrote to the international financial institution the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development asking if it would finance the cost of her entry. The investment bank agreed two hours after Kachorovska sent her email.

There, Kachorovska inked a deal with the Canada-based Maguire Shoes, which produces shoes and accessories from brands across the world, to create a product line for its stores. Separately, she's in negotiations with Canadian and US department stores to sell her creations in North America.

Kachorovska first dreamed of taking her brand international six months before the war with Russia began, she said. Despite the many challenges she faces as a business owner in a war zone, she's ready to grab any opportunity available to continue her dream and her family legacy.

"I put together all of my dreams to create something bigger," she said. "And I think I did it."