Oksana and Andriy Solodovnyk are the owners of the Allwoodenbiz brand, which specializes in creating personalized wooden children’s products. Their toys are high-quality, eco-friendly, safe, and they also develop creativity, engaging 100% of a child’s imagination. According to customers, it’s hard to imagine a better gift to distract children from phones and other devices.
How it all began
Before the married couple Solodovnyk launched the Allwoodenbiz brand seven years ago, Andriy had already worked two jobs — he needed to support a young family, as he married early at the age of 19. His first job involved woodworking for doors, the second — carving iconostasis. Professionally, Andriy is a carver, a maker of artistic wood products, so he tried to find a position that would help him realize his Potential. But it so happened that he had to leave both jobs. They paid little, even though the work required significant effort.
“I saw that my husband’s talent was very undervalued,” recalls Oksana. “He could turn terribly damaged, beaten, broken doors into new, even better ones than before. Restored to sellable condition, the doors sold well, but it did not affect his pay — at the factory where Andriy worked, he received a minimum wage. Such injustice tormented me. I tried to convey my opinion to him, to make him value himself a bit more.”
Listening to his wife, Andriy took up carving. Worked for himself. Later, he bought a used German jigsaw for $100 — this was his first investment on the way to his dream of realization and independence. With this jigsaw, on the ninth floor of a one-room apartment, he carved alphabets and small wooden figures for their son.
“You could say our son became my inspiration,” smiles Andriy. “Instead of buying low-quality plastic toys, I wanted to create something with my own hands for him. That’s how the first, second, and third alphabets appeared. It turned out pretty well, so we decided to develop this theme further. Moreover, the demand for wooden children’s toys in Ukraine was high.”
The young married couple consulted with their family and, upon receiving permission, moved to the outskirts of Ternopil, to Andriy’s grandparents. There, they simultaneously took care of the old house and worked a little in a workshop they converted from an old shed.
“For a long time, our relatives, especially the older generation, didn’t understand how Oksana earned money sitting at the computer,” describes Andriy’s difficulties. “It seemed like she wasn’t doing anything because I was the one coming home covered in sawdust. They told us, ‘Go get a normal stable job, some government enterprise.’ It took about a year and a half to convince relatives that my products sell because of Oksana, as she handles marketing and sales.”
Three years have passed, two of which the wooden toys successfully sold in the Ukrainian market.
“Another reason we started making toys is that I am an English teacher by profession,” adds Oksana. “I taught and worked as a defectologist with children with intellectual disabilities: Down syndrome and autism. For lessons, I needed educational toys: alphabets, numbers, pyramids, various figures, houses, and furniture for the houses. I thought these things would interest children. When I was a child myself, I dreamed of a similar house with tiny furniture. Andriy exceeded all my expectations. His work shocked me. I had never seen such high-quality craftsmanship and such wonderful design execution.”
The first house was purchased by friends from Kyiv. They also appreciated the beauty and skill with which the toy was made. Gradually, orders began arriving from all over Ukraine. This motivated them to create various product variations to expand their range.
Shop on Etsy
It didn’t take long before one of the houses, through pastors and the church, ended up in America.
“We, Ukrainian producers, were targeted specifically to make orders in our store. That’s when we realized that there is a huge demand for the items we produce across the ocean. In fact, this interest has a historical background. It’s that 30-40 years ago, making toy houses was very popular in America. Parents created them from various improvisational materials for their children. Now these children have grown up, become parents themselves, and want similar toys for their own children.”
It was 2016. There were no courses on how to work correctly on the Etsy marketplace. Initially, Oksana and Andriy tried to figure it out themselves, but still lacked enough knowledge for productive work. That was when they met Oleksandr Radiche, an e-commerce expert and practicing seller who taught Ukrainian entrepreneurs how to run their business on Etsy, eBay, and Amazon.
“After taking the course, our store started operating globally. We tripled our sales. Relatives, several artisans, and designers joined us. Before the war, we had a staff of ten people. Now some serve in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, others have dispersed. We had to optimize production. Planning and CNC machine tools greatly helped accelerate work. Now three good workers can perform the work that ten used to do.”
It’s hard to imagine that once the production was cramped into a four by four meter shed. Later, one wall of the shed was moved back to increase the working space, and repairs were made inside. After a year, the couple decided to rent a large space of one hundred square meters at a factory, but it was very cold and lacked any comfortable working conditions.
“We paid crazy amounts for rent and electricity, even when we didn’t use the lights. It couldn’t go on like that, so we started looking for other options.”
The search led to Kickstarter. The entrepreneurs decided to launch their project on the platform to raise funds for creating their own workshop. Unfortunately, the idea was not successful. They raised money for the construction themselves. However, Oksana and Andriy still remained winners — thanks to Kickstarter, many people learned about the Allwoodenbiz brand. They visited the Etsy store page and became regular customers.
“In my opinion, to start your own business, you need to have a dream and a purpose,” believes Andriy. “Without a dream, everything will lack meaning. My wife and I, for example, wanted to be free, not depend on anyone’s opinion, and do something nice for people using the talent God gave us. The feedback we get from grateful customers shows us we are on the right path. So, all our efforts weren’t in vain.”
“From my side, I can add that I, as a wife, really wanted my husband to realize himself. To be satisfied with the work he does. To be appreciated for his unique artistic vision. I am upset that talented people in Ukraine are undervalued, capable of creating extraordinary things.”
Besides dreaming and having a goal, Oksana and Andriy also recommend having a business plan. It helps to better understand what exactly you want and how to step-by-step achieve your goals.
“Drifting along, you can’t develop. If you don’t develop, you start to degrade,” believes Andriy. “In the second year of our work, I deliberately took a business planning course. At the end of the course, we had to write a business plan for our business idea. We thought long and hard about everything. Our business plan was designed for three years, but we actually executed it within a year.”
After February 24
Like many Ukrainians, waking up on the morning of February 24, Oksana and Andriy did not want to believe that a full-scale invasion from Russia had begun.
“We knew that the war would start sooner or later because everything was heading towards that. But when it happened, we didn’t know what to do, where to go.”
When the initial shock passed, the couple immediately began offering their help to everyone in need.
“I have many friends in Kyiv and all over Ukraine,” notes Oksana. “I was texting them on Facebook, everywhere I had some chats, groups, communities, telling them ‘People, come to me. I will take you all in.’”
The first month passed with phone communication. Oksana answered calls, organized the relocation of people from Kyiv, helped them leave for abroad, especially to Poland. The private house where they lived was transformed into a hostel. All rooms were occupied by displaced persons staying for one or two nights, sometimes a whole week.
No one was thinking about work then. Regular clients and even competitors, who, following Allwoodenbiz, created similar products, offered to move to a safer place, but the couple refused. Unlike relatives and friends, they stayed in Ukraine the entire time.
With the start of hostilities, the workshop immediately lost three leading workers. One craftsman went to serve and has been in the Armed Forces for a year. The designer and customer relations manager became volunteers from their side.
“It was only me, Andriy, and two novice guys who came to us and said they were ready to start working the next day,” recounts Oksana. “They very quickly got involved in the work and, within a few weeks, mastered all the high-precision tasks, as they were so motivated by the war. Besides, now we have two more displaced persons working with us.”
Due to the war, the manufacturing scheme also changed. Now the brand works less with custom orders that needed to be made from scratch, and more with designs that have already been popular with clients. Changes also affected the delivery of large items — big houses and playgrounds are shipped to Poland, and from there, via FedEx, sent to customer addresses.
Stories that fill life with meaning
The driving force for change and experiments for Oksana and Andriy has always been their clients.
“People came to us with their ideas and designs, asked us to make houses exactly as they imagined,” smiles Oksana. “We often invested ourselves in such projects without knowing what would come out of them or if these products would sell further. It’s very hard to take on individual designs. They require a lot of human resources and emotions. But it didn’t stop us. We took such orders, argued over them, but still saw them through. Customers always liked the result.”
Several client designs went viral and immediately became quite popular. However, there was an instance when one house remained unsold for several years. And when they decided to withdraw it from sale, a boom happened — the product suddenly became a bestseller, selling 30-50 pieces per year.
“There was a funny story with a product we shipped in two different parcels. One was sent via Ukrposhta on a ship across the Pacific Ocean, and the other was headed to the customer across the Atlantic. The parcels took a very long time. About three to four months somewhere. The customer already demanded a refund. He gave us a deadline. And on the very day we were supposed to return $1000, the second parcel finally reached its recipient. That’s a funny story.”