As a former pilot, he manufactures and exports wooden toys for children to the USA
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Oleksandr Klassovych, an entrepreneur from Poltava, is 55 years old. In the past, he was a pilot, his second profession is a construction worker. In 2000, he decided to start a construction business, and after some time he started manufacturing wooden furniture.
After his retirement in 2000, he decided to start a construction business, and after a while he also started making wooden furniture.
A couple of years ago, the master was approached by a couple – Olena Bogush and Dmytro Salo, who offered to make wooden lamps and wooden toys for children. Olena is a designer by specialty, and Dmytro is an engineer. The couple developed sketches for the lamps, and Oleksandr Klassovych started the process of their production in his workshop.
The lamps were manufactured in an assembled form and focused mainly on the European and Ukrainian market. But this business did not come. Their price was too high for Ukraine, and logistics were expensive for EU countries. In addition, at the height of the coronavirus epidemic, problems began with the delivery of high-quality electrical accessories for production from China.
So we decided to focus on the production of children’s wooden toys under a separate brand. Since Olena and Dmytro were engaged in the development and design of toys, they decided to make the name of the brand from the first letters of their surnames – SABO.
“The very idea of producing toys belongs to our designer Olena. I invested money, founded the company, and we implemented this idea together,” Oleksandr Klassovych notes.
The entrepreneur invested several million hryvnias in production, including the equipment on which he used to make furniture.
The toys are ecological, certified in Ukraine, and also have American and Korean quality certificates. They are made in a minimalist design, have a large palette of warm, translucent colors and do not contain plastic.
“We use water-based Finnish paints for linden production,” explains the entrepreneur.
Toys are made from linden, and there are several reasons for this. Firstly, linden is a material that is very easy to work with. The wood is white in color and can be painted well. In addition, linden wood is light in weight, which reduces logistics costs.
“We have translucent paints, so if the wood was a different color, we wouldn’t be able to convey the entire design palette. We tried to use birch, pear, and beech, but decided to stop at linden, as it is the optimal material in terms of price and quality,” says Oleksandr Klassovych.
In total, the entrepreneur produces more than 100 types of wooden toys.
“These are educational games, wooden toy dishes, food products, sweets. There are also thematic toys, for example, we have developed a gift set “I am Ukraine”, a series of thematic construction toys “Italy”, alphabets”, – adds the co-founder of the brand.
The average price of a set of toys is from UAH 450 to UAH 3,000. In the USA, toys are more expensive than in Ukraine, but the entrepreneur notes that the difference is “eaten up” by logistics and customs clearance.
Participation in international exhibitions and advertising in social networks helps to sell toys abroad. Especially for sales abroad, an employee who speaks English fluently was hired into the team.
“The girls worked with advertising on Instagram. In 2022, we visited an international exhibition in Paris, where we proved ourselves well. Now, in the age of the Internet, there are no problems with showing your products. It is much more difficult to establish cooperation with people and stores,” the entrepreneur believes.
The main foreign market where toys from Poltava are sold is the USA. Small family shops usually buy such toys. The demand for toys here is stable, but increases closer to the holidays.
Production volumes do not yet allow us to enter international e-commerce platforms, such as Amazon, or to cooperate with large chains abroad.
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