Editor’s note: This article is part of a series of profiles highlighting successful Ukrainian startups and businesses. The series is funded by the regional investment fund Ukraine-Moldova American Enterprise Fund (UMAEF) and created in partnership with Spend With Ukraine, a non-profit organization that launched a platform to showcase businesses with Ukrainian roots and provide one more meaningful way to support Ukraine – by choosing to spend with Ukraine. The series’ sponsors are not involved in the editorial process of the writing of these profiles.
Ukraine has long suffered from what could be called a “brand problem.”
For decades, the country remained little-known and seldom explored by outsiders. When the message did get out, it was too often one of a turbulent transition to democracy, struggles with rooting out corruption, and war.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, many of Ukraine’s creators sought to harness the global attention on the war by adding to the conversation with a different message. Since 2022, they have created various online platforms promoting and highlighting successful Ukrainian brands and companies.
“There are all these creative businesses and nobody has the slightest idea they’re rooted in Ukraine,” said Andrey Klen, co-founder of pet tech company Petcube and co-creator of Spend With Ukraine, a website that promotes over 200 successful and reputable Ukrainian brands and services from tech companies to fashion brands.
The Spend With Ukraine platform is “just one way to get the message across” to show the world what Ukraine has to offer and ultimately, “build a better brand,” Klen told the Kyiv Independent.
Every country has its “brand,” its external reputation that governs how the world perceives and judges it. Take France, renowned for its fashion, or Japan, for its advanced technology, or the Scandinavian countries for their minimalist furniture.
Having a good “brand” can go a long way for a country. It often dictates how much attention a country receives, whether that’s in tourists per year, or, in the case of Ukraine, how much support it receives in fighting a war.
Others in Ukraine have also understood the importance of elevating Ukraine’s reputation. Similar projects include Angel for Fashion, a site with Ukrainian fashion brands co-created by Ukrainian fashion designer Alina Kachorovska, and online Ukrainian marketplaces, Shop Ukrainian, Visit Ukraine Shop, and Buy for Ukraine.
Showing the world a different side of Ukraine is also a means of combating centuries of Russian attempts to obscure Ukrainian culture through propaganda, or destroy it outright with aggression.
“Russia has been doing this work for centuries. During the Soviet Union, how much money was spent on propaganda, cultural expansion, and planting people in different societies to basically run certain narratives? It's a great infrastructure,” Klen said.
“It's nice to see it crumbling, but it’s still strong.”
Unraveling Russia’s propaganda narratives about Ukraine won’t happen overnight and is likely to be a decades-long process.
“We haven't been part of the global community for a long time. We were pushed away from it by a greater power so it is still very hard to get a voice over all of that. It takes time and effort,” Klen said.
“Soft power is a slow game, but we're slowly advancing.”
“Soft power is a slow game, but we're slowly advancing.”
Spend With Ukraine employs a number of search-engine optimization tools and social media campaigns to get eyes on its website to promote brands, and ultimately, a different narrative about Ukraine.
One such campaign on Instagram highlighted celebrities from Beyonce to Paris Hilton wearing Ukrainian fashion brands.
If a person abroad learns that their favorite celebrity — and one of such high profile like Beyonce — is wearing Ukrainian fashion designer Ruslan Baginsky for example, “surprises them, and that hooks them in,” Klen said.
For the companies and services on Spend With Ukraine and other similar platforms, the benefit is clear — more exposure leads to more sales. Some brands on Spend With Ukraine had their first international orders after being added to the platform.
The brands featured on Spend With Ukraine also tell their own story: of how much Ukraine has changed since it gained independence, and especially in the last 10 years since the EuroMaidan Revolution and the start of Russia’s war in 2014.
Nearly every single company on the Spend With Ukraine platform was created in the last 10 years.
Due to its Soviet legacy, Ukraine has always been a country of engineers. This formed the foundation for what would become a thriving tech scene that for years was almost entirely based on serving foreign clients that were outsourcing to a more affordable Ukrainian workforce.
It has since grown to include Ukrainian-founded companies that sell their products around the world, like Grammarly or Preply. Petcube, Klen’s company, was founded by people who worked for outsourcing companies before going on to create their own global, product-based company.
After 2014, when Ukraine started to shift westward in the wake of the revolution and Russian aggression and the country began a process of discovering and uncovering its own tradition and roots separate from Russia, people’s tastes and visions for consumer products began to change.
New brands, many of which derive their inspiration from Ukrainian heritage, began to emerge and flourish. With the onset of the full-scale invasion and the increased exposure among the outside world has only added momentum to the shift.
There is a common refrain that Russia’s full-scale invasion has done more to solidify the Ukrainian identity than anyone else ever did — it may have done more for its brand as well.
“Getting back to the brand — you gotta keep at it and see more success stories. It's very natural how the tide shifts,” Klen said.
Liliane Bivings
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