First-person story

At certain moments in life, circumstances force us to change the familiar order, disrupt the usual course of events, make new decisions, and start again.

In 1995, I suddenly found myself without a job. And not only me, but also several of my close friends who, like me, worked in the cooperative “Leader” in Dnipropetrovsk before that. At that time, finding work — or rather, paid work — was extremely difficult. Therefore, over the course of several years, I dragged many friends and comrades to me, and, therefore, was responsible for the income of their families. In addition, I felt “soulful” with them. We had known each other for a long time and knew, probably, everything about each other, and therefore felt each other’s shoulder.

Because of this, the search was not just for a job, but for a business in which we could all be needed. There was also a certainty that each of my close friends was unique in his own way, both as a person and as a specialist.

This raises the question: “Why am I the only founder?”

The experience gained in the cooperative gave me an understanding of the following: in a business there should be only one person who makes the final decision. And responsibility can only be personal. Therefore, I am against collective business (if it is possible).

А day before I was doing repairs and was faced with the lack of parquet glue. People of the Soviet generation were used to relying on themselves. I turned to my acquaintances, the “Kulibins”, with a request to come up with something to glue the parquet. Of course, the choice of raw materials was not large, so they did it using what was available: liquid glass, clay and flour. This served as the raw materials. The parquet was laid. The problem was solved, you can forget about it.

And six months later I remembered my former problem and thought that other people might have such a need. It was decided to produce parquet glue.

The enterprise was registered at the legal address in Dneprodzerzhinsk, where the “Secondary resources” were located on Shiroka street, 107a. There, the director was Shyba Boris Onisymovych. I had met him earlier, because one of the areas of activity of the cooperative “Leader” was the processing of plastic and glass waste. Given that Shyba B.O. at one time refused to pay extra money into his own pocket, and for the proposal he made, he scolded me in a fatherly way, I respected him. It should be noted that in those days, the “red” directors did not work otherwise. He was unique in his entrepreneurial streak. Although the staff consisted of 34 people, he managed to build two nine-story buildings, each of which had 72 apartments. Being an “old-fashioned” person, he sometimes gave invaluable advice: “Oleg, I don’t understand your business, but listen to me, son. Earn one penny — give it to those who helped you. Earn a second — give it away as well. From the third, take a little for yourself. If there is not enough left, don’t worry. If you share, you will earn a fourth, and you will have something from it too.”

We rented an office and a 140 m2 space, which in the first years served us as a warehouse for raw materials, and a production facility, and a warehouse for finished products, and a place where corporate events were held on various holidays.

I must say that the smaller the organization was, the more friendly and close-knit it was. There was a feeling that we were one big family.

My sister, Lyuda, and I took the name of the organization from the first letters of the name “Zakhorolsky Ivan Petrovich” – a person close to us, our father, had died the day before. It turned out to be “ZIP”.

The first mixer was assembled from scrap metal that anyone could get from anywhere. We have preserved it as a relic to this day. Now it is a monument near the “factory gate”. A plastic 60-liter tub with the top cut off served as a mixing container.

The first starting capital was money from a deal to resell polyethylene. My friend, and later the first director of ZIP, Serhiy Naumenko, and I found 12 tons of high-pressure polyethylene in one of the collective farms. I bought it for $5,000, after settling with Serhiy, for the car, and other expenses, about $5,000 remained – this was the first capital. All further financing was done through private loans from my friends or acquaintances, and in the first years the interest rate was never less than 10% per month — in U.S. dollars. I had borrowed the last private money in 1995, and I paid it back in 2004. Around the same period, and probably later, we started taking out loans from banks. Previously, we had no property as collateral, and we had no idea how to draw up documents for loans.

We easily sold the first half-ton of products we produced, as well as the first tons that followed. Now I understand that there was a commodity “hunger” at that time. No matter what you produced, you could sell everything. At that time, it seemed to us that this was our merit.

Of course, we wanted to earn a lot. There was a thirst for growth. But “expanded” production requires “expanded” sales.

Initially, the company had two sales departments – in Dniprodzerzhynsk, at the company, and in Dnipropetrovsk. Our friend Sanya Porokhnia was just there. He followed us from Leader, lived in Dnipropetrovsk, and he also needed a job.

There was an understanding that the bet of that period had to be made on the population, because the enterprises of Ukraine were in decline: non-payments, barter – everything was stagnant. And in order to collect a penny from the population, it was necessary to make the products affordable. After all, a citizen would not go from Odessa to the Dnieper for parquet glue.

The search began for organizations that would want to engage in the sale of our KS-3 glue. We offered conditions that we ourselves would not refuse if someone offered us such. The conditions were as follows: we will deliver the products to your warehouse at our own expense, we will hold advertising events at our expense, if it is profitable for you, then we will provide you with more goods.

Our goods began to travel around the country. I did not have time to borrow money for reproduction. There was an understanding that in order for us to be more interesting, we need to expand the range. We began to package liquid glass, PVA glue.

Everything looked very simple. A two-inch pipe with a ball valve came out of a large container with a cone. Under them were ordinary store scales, on which a worker filled the jar. Another screwed the lid and glued a paper label on it. Later, the worker collected six jars in a metal frame, wrapped them in polyethylene and sealed the ends with a soldering iron. Then the packages were stacked on a metal pallet with “corners”, which allowed creating multi-tiered racks from the same pallets by installing them on top of each other.

Over time, it became clear that our sales departments are more efficient than our partners in other territories. It is easier to return money. The activity of people for whom this is the main job and the only source of income is much higher. Sales departments, unlike other companies, have responsibilities and we can clearly see the whole process.

It was decided to start organizing branches in other cities.

The branches were decided to be formed without the status of a legal entity, in order to avoid problems with local authorities and so that the branch, as a sales department, would not be involved in anything else (accounting, statistical reporting, personnel, etc.).

The key figures in the company became the heads of the branches. Experience shows that even fair agreements between equal parties can later be perceived as unfair by one side. For agreements to be long‑term, they must be simple and transparent. I should not even be able to act dishonestly — even if I wanted to. Relationships with branch managers were built as with independent entrepreneurs.

They operated on a self‑sufficiency basis, managing 10 kopecks from every 1 hryvnia transferred to the company’s main account.

Often, branch managers were random people, and this led to many mistakes.

At first, it was economically reasonable to be present in cities with populations of over one million, then 700,000, then 500,000, and so on. We understood that deeper market penetration required expanding the assortment. We experimented with producing bleach, office glue, and bottled PVA glue. After unsatisfactory results, we finally realized our true niche — the construction materials market.

We also began producing our own polyethylene containers — black, thick-walled, and inexpensive, as they were made from recycled waste. Later, when we noticed polypropylene buckets on the food market, we realized that as long as we produced our own containers, we would never buy them. We decisively shut down that production area: some equipment was sold, but most of it went for scrap metal. I am glad these decisions were made quickly and without regret. Fear of loss is a dangerous brake on development, and fortunately, it seems we do not suffer from it.

The search for the range led us to paints. Paint has many colors, which means a large range. This is also the construction sector. It has a fairly fast turnover. In addition, we believed we were perhaps too clever for our own good. The industry used iron cans, and we wanted to pack in plastic buckets – cheap and beautiful, but at that time we did not know that polypropylene does not retain aromatic hydrocarbons, we suspected that there was a reason, we were looking for an answer to this question, but could not find it.

Serhiy Naumenko and I took knowledge about paint production from the library. It seemed that we were already professionals. We wrote all the technical specifications for the products we produced ourselves and defended them at the State Standard, because we did not have technologists.

In 1997, we went to the exhibition in Moscow “Chemistry-97” and signed a contract with the Germans for the supply of equipment “Neitch”. We purchased a dissolver, 2 horizontal bead mills of 20 liters each, a bowl and laboratory equipment. The equipment was larger for automotive paints. It provided a grinding degree of ingredients of 3-5 microns, while for construction paints the grinding starts from 25 microns. The grinding technology allowed us to be very flexible in production, because one batch is only 700 kg. The equipment was small in terms of washing and allowed us to make any colors in turn.

The problem arose when we calculated the cost of raw materials. It was twice the price of paint already on store shelves. After all, the recipes were from textbooks, and had no information about the cost reduction. Enamel production is like cooking borscht – the ingredients are the same, but each housewife has a different taste. It is important that it is tasty, but it is more difficult to achieve a consistent taste. You need to replace meat with something that smells like meat, but costs less. We did not know how to do this. Therefore, our paint was expensive. However, it was a very high-quality product.

During the Soviet period, production cooperation chains between state enterprises were well established. Alkyd resins were produced only by large paint plants — for themselves and for specific partners. Competition was unnecessary for them. We were refused the sale of varnishes and driers. As a result, we began importing alkyd resin from the Slovak company Chemolak. Its quality exceeded that of Ukrainian-produced resins. The same situation initially arose with driers, which we began importing from the Baltic states — a newer and higher-quality generation.

Color is critical for paint, so we could not understand why the industry flagship, the DLKZ plant, took pride in offering only 12 dull colors. We began purchasing pigments in Germany from BASF and later from other manufacturers. We created a catalog and increased the number of colors to 36 — rich, vivid colors. This created two new challenges: inventory management and how to present all colors to consumers. We designed color displays with samples of every shade and executed them with exceptional craftsmanship. The goal was to install these displays in every store where our Zebra brand was sold. Customer inquiries about specific colors pushed retailers to order more colors than they could physically display. Looking ahead, we produced around 2,000 displays. Naturally, production was done in-house, which led to the creation of a model workshop. The workshop developed rapidly, and by 2006 more than 30 artists worked there. We built a two-story production building for them. However, the broader our focus became, the less attention we paid to individual directions. Without entrepreneurial drive concentrated in one place, businesses decline — and that eventually happened to our model workshop as well.

Once, one of our friends bought 20 tons of water-based paint, and then it turned out that he urgently needed money. We bought the paint, repackaged it, and also sold it. From that moment on, we imported a lot of water-based white paint from Slovakia. However, the question that kept bothering me was: “What about colors?” Foreign catalogs offer hundreds of colors, but no budget can afford such stocks.

And it was at that time that the Moscow company “TEXA” proposed to consider the development of coloring, the purchase of colorants and studios that are installed in retail outlets to give the paint the selected color. This was a new solution. Our young technologists felt their strength in this matter, after which (without thinking too much) we began to purchase and install color studios. We brought the number to 200 units. We saw that there was almost no return, stopped and instead of taking quick, deliberate actions, we postponed this issue as being immature. I think this is our mistake. Over time, the market structure changed much faster than we imagined, and even more so than we wanted.

In 1998, we sold only 78 tons of paints and almost 1,500 tons of glue. The products we manufactured were for sale by our clients, many of whom owed us money, but in hryvnias, and my debts to creditors were in dollars. “Black Tuesday” in 1998, when $1 cost 1.6 UAH in the evening, 3.2 UAH in the morning, and 4 UAH two weeks later. It was very difficult for us. However, our reputation was above all.

We had debts, equipment, burning desire, and no working capital.

The fact that it was not only us that was in trouble gave us hope. In the city of Dniprodzerzhynsk there was a paint and varnish plant “Spektr”, the director of which was Oleksandr Oliynyk. Soon the shareholders fired Sasha and he came to us with a proposal that we make paints for his orders. Along with him were the sources of raw materials, sources of sales, and his knowledge of how and from what the factories produce paint. He began working with us as a “”supplier of raw materials”. At the end of the year, Sashko bought a factory in the village of Bile, Luhansk region, and continued to produce his paints there on his own, taking our shop manager with him. I think we are grateful to each other.

At the end of my diary from 1999, I unexpectedly found a wish that I had made to myself for the New Year at the beginning of the year: “To sell 300 tons of paint in a year”. Having calculated it, I was pleased to note that in 1999 we sold over 3,000 tons of our enamel. Of course, we were proud of ourselves.

We came to understand the need for a technologist, and Valery Karpovich Myasnikov came to work for us. There are many things that are not written about in textbooks, only in 1999 did we learn about such a filler as chalk, about methods of measuring grinding particle size, and much more.

In 2000, we invited future chemical technologists Zharov Sergey and Myronenko Andriy to do their pre-graduate internship. The guys turned out to be smart and we offered them to return to work with us after defending their diplomas under the obligation to provide an apartment for a year. The following year, another specialist arrived – Vlasov Andriy, and a year later – Zapyshny Mykolay. Over time, they got married and “settled” in the city. These people became the core of our laboratory, the only unit where we welcome an increase in the budget. We have a very well-equipped laboratory accredited in the UkrSepro system. The guys have the opportunity to study in any country in the world. They use it. They studied and from time to time continue to study in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Holland. Later, each of them grew professionally and moved on to independent careers. I am proud that many good people and specialists have grown up here. It has become a forge of personnel for most manufacturers of paint and varnish products in Ukraine. The problem of today is that we do not have enough space for the laboratory’s expansion. And I also have an idea – to create a personalized named laboratory for each leading technologist.

If you remember, we were on a rented territory, and for every little on it thing you have to pay, but the main thing is that you can always be kicked out. Production requires powerful electricity, a water circulation system, ventilation, fire, and other engineering structures. The equipment is attached to the foundations – so any movement is like the end of the world, and perhaps even business. In 1999, we managed to buy out the farmyard of “Vtorresursiv” that we rented, through the tax inspectorate, to pay off our debts to the budget. At that time, their people almost did not receive salaries, and we had debts to almost all contractors. Of course, we employed the team, there were only 20 of them, and there were about 200 of us. For some time, we were forced to deal with waste paper. Along the way, we created a library and a section for cutting the pieces of cardboard we needed from waste, which at that time saved us 12 kopecks from one package of products.

After the army, in 1983, I came to work at Vtorresursy, it was known that you could quickly get an apartment here. I was refused, I went back and was very glad that I was interviewed so politely. The interview was conducted by the master of Vtorresursy, Lyudmila Gavrilivna Rebryk. At that moment I thought that you need to be able to refuse so politely and I remembered that moment well. Did I think that years would pass, and I would hire that master and the entire team to work for my enterprise? And they would work for me for many more years.

After buying the territory in 1999, we began to build. Since the shortage of premises was terrible. The development period was very rapid. When we finished building the facility on the territory, we saw that this was no longer enough. About 120 people worked at the construction site. But it is bitter that all this time we fought with the permit system. In the end, we always won. The absurd overregulation of the system, which breeds a voracious class of officials who demand maintenance of their apparent usefulness, is surprising. Sometimes it seemed that common sense did not live in our country.

A little later, we purchased a Hungarian bead mill with a volume of 140 liters. We use the same ones today. So, for each color we need a separate bead mill, and at that time it cost 60 thousand dollars. I do not know how we would have solved the problem if it were not for our local “Kulibins” Vasyl Loza and Vovka Davydova. Knowing how much this machine costs, and knowing that the guys were well acquainted with it, I asked provocatively:

Is it difficult to make one like this?

To which I received the answer:

Why difficult? If you help cast the cast iron frame and relieve me of my duties for a few months, we can do it easily.
And how much will it cost?
Let me think about it.

The next day, I barely waited for him:

So how did you calculate it?
Yes. Oleg, don’t be offended, although you and I are friends, we drink 100 grams together, but this is a side job and we want to earn money, so don’t be afraid, but we want to get $4 thousand for our work. If it’s a lot – let’s bargain.
Agreed. But I suggest starting 10 pieces at once.

Those bead mills worked for a long time, until we still replaced them with factory ones.

In the Soviet country – the best mechanic lived in the village and worked on a tractor. There are no spare parts, and you need to sow. This is exactly how our Davydov was. Unfortunately, he died. Loza Vasyl went into business. When we had technical problems, he was the last resort for a long time.

During the establishment of the enterprise, the enterprise often encountered the fact that some necessary service was unavailable or the quality was not satisfactory, or the cost was unacceptable. Very often, bankrupt enterprises handed over metalworking equipment for scrap. Of course, we could not pass by, so we formed a small machine park and a section for the manufacture of metal structures.

The newly created enterprise “MasterZIP” absorbed all the created auxiliary sections under its roof: a mock-up workshop, a construction section, mechanical and metalworking sections. We began to understand what and how much it costs us. Believe me, for enterprises it is not very simple, but important.

Another example.At the beginning, we rented cars for transportation, then we bought our own “GAZ”, then “KamAZ”, then “MAZ” flatbed, then a tractor with a trailer. This gave us the opportunity to deliver the goods to the branch strictly on time. The other side of the coin was that it was necessary to pay for a round trip, monitor the maintenance of cars, and when there were more of them, a significant problem of parking arose. All together – a separate branch of activity. Therefore, the enterprise “PromZIPaktiv” was registered as a transport company. A repair and dispatching service was created. For parking and repair, we purchased part of the territory of the third auto depot (the city name of the organization). However, we were able to start operating this site only a year after the construction of the boiler house. A classic example of doing things backwards: act first, think later. We often had the opposite. Over time, we purchased 20 MAZs and 20 Renaults (10 units per year).

Now, “ZIP” paid for transportation in one direction, but the transport enterprise “PromZIPaktiv” had losses, despite the fact that the cars were returned loaded and paid for by other customers.

Due to the low barriers to entry, many people from the struggling population were willing to work for very little money. Such as depreciation and “unpaid” taxes for individuals – profit. The crisis years of 2008 and 2009 forced us to abandon the operation of MAZ cars – we put 17 of them up for sale (at almost any price to sell) and the budget for 2010 began to balance. So, it turned out that the less we work, the less losses. In 2012, Shostak Roman, who started his career here, became the director of the transport enterprise.

Until 2013, the company was planned to be unprofitable, but it provided an advantage at that time that we highly valued: the rhythm of deliveries according to plans. We worked like clockwork. This gave us savings on inventory levels and the absence of shortages for these reasons. At first, it was an auxiliary production with elements of testing the competitive waters. But since 2013, it has been a competitive carrier. Profit appeared, which instead of updating the equipment, we used to plug other financial gaps.

By 2022, we had only 3 mainline vehicles left, and a truck maintenance station. Now we have expertise in this area and an understanding of our erroneous decisions. This direction is one of those to which we are returning now.

Since 2016, we have begun to invest additionally in a new direction. Learning to fill aerosol cans. It turned out that this is not entirely simple. There are probably no mistakes that we haven’t made… Due to the specific technical requirements and the danger of the facility, we built a workshop on a separate territory, purchased an automatic packaging line. And аt that time during the war this was one of the things that made it possible to survive. We now have ambitious plans for the future in this business.

The 90s were remembered for poverty and misery – people were beggars. I look at lunch, my uncle is eating bread with a cucumber, I think: “what about in winter?”. I thought that food should be free – it is a necessity for people and business should cover these costs.

At first, we started to attract people for whom lunches were a family business. We ordered food according to the number of employees. Every week, each employee gave an assessment. Those suppliers who received the best assessment at the end of the month received a larger quota; Those who had a low rating received a smaller quota. If the rating was the lowest for three months, they changed the supplier. It seems that everyone is satisfied.

One day the workers said, “We have a 12-hour shift, can we add a first course (soup)?” We contact our suppliers, but they do not want to deal with the “first” – it is troublesome. At that time, we had just purchased a neighboring territory. According to the documentation, there was a kitchen in one of the rooms. (A very strict permit system existed). We started cooking the first, then the salad, then the second. Thus, our partners lost us as customers. It seems that everything is fine in this matter, but only a lot of waste is generated. They even offer to raise pigs for our waste. When they introduced a 25% payment for lunches – the pigs became hungry.

Conclusion: a person does not appreciate what he gets without work. At least minimal solidarity is necessary for the realization of value.

Today, our kitchen is struggling. Our territory is closed, and the number of people has decreased. Additionally, the kitchen makes pastries and dishes to order. I think someone would be more clever and could develop this business. Now we have 2 types of food: buffet – for money and social – by collective agreement. People decide for themselves what is best for them.

We also have a sewing workshop. It arose from despair, back in the 90s. We bought blue fabric, anxiously agreed on a model of overalls (almost all employees participated). The overalls turned out quite successful. Beautiful. But we are growing, new people appear. They also need to be dressed, and there was no blue fabric, only red, we bought it. Some wear blue, others wear red, and then these colors disappeared. We bought green. Here they found blue fabric and bought it several years in advance.

The Ivorian sewing factory (where the patterns were made) could not accept orders because it sewed clothes for foreign countries under well-known brands. It was then that we remembered that we had an acquaintance, Balanda Lidia Alekseevna, a seamstress, but without a job. And I needed an industrial sewing machine. Having put them together, we started sewing ourselves. Since 2013, we moved it outside the company fence and hoped that it would someday become economically viable. Today, the sewing workshop feeds itself. Thank you to them. It has become like a hobby for my sister.

Around 2000, the paint and varnish market “noticed” us. First, at the initiative of DLFZ (Dnipropetrovsk Paint and Varnish Plant), we were subjected to a prosecutor’s inspection with passion, as a result of which a criminal case was opened, and for a year I was dragged through interrogations. Then there was a trial, where the verdict was made – there was no crime. I don’t even want to mention this nonsense. But thank you very much for the lesson. If you want to develop your business, make sure it’s legitimate.

Secondly, since our products were very successful, they started counterfeiting us. There were two types of counterfeits:

They bought one can of our paint. They made two cans of it with something added. The task was to sell one can without a label. Given how people read the contents of labels, it wasn’t difficult, because consumers most often don’t need a label.
The second type is industrial production with labels from any manufacturer: “What do you want?”. Usually, traders preferred us. Don’t ask what they put in there. But the complaints went to the manufacturer.

We tried to fight these phenomena, counting on the help of law enforcement agencies. They rushed into battle and imitated the rapid activity, but the fakes did not disappear. Usually, the security forces began to provide protect them.

We came to understand that if we did not cope with the problem, the business would end. Fighting smart people is tantamount to fighting windmills. All we needed was a technical solution that would be difficult to replicate in Ukraine.

When we started producing enamels, we needed a metal can. Paint cans were produced at paint factories, because transporting this container over long distances was like transporting air. The factories also refused to sell us cans.

We found an entrepreneur in the Kirovograd region who bought a vegetable base with a canning shop. He converted the equipment that was there to produce paint cans. We started transporting from there, of course it was expensive. In addition, this entrepreneur loved to drink. This very often got in the way of things. It was still good if 2-3 cans out of a thousand leaked. But there was a lot of pollution from that! We decided to make the can ourselves at any cost.

Added to this was the need for fairly strict adherence to a single standard can size due to the technical solution to protect us from counterfeiting, which was invented. We decided to use a novelty of that time – a heat-shrink label. It made it possible to make a “control feature”. In addition, the can was made ribbed, this label copied the side surface of the can, unlike the other. The label could only be bought abroad, by special order.

There was a related problem of putting on and heat-shrinking the label. It is not difficult to do it manually, but we needed to make up to two million cans per month. Experimental equipment was ordered in Taiwan in the amount of 3 pieces. I myself am not able to answer now how it was possible to order experimental machines in the amount of 3 units. but at that time, it probably seemed reasonable to us. In parallel, for insurance, we ordered manual lines from our “Kulibins”. We then worked on them. We could not start the Taiwanese machines. One is still in the warehouse as scrap metal, the others were sold for nothing.

The technical solution protected us and helped us in 2003 to become the leaders of the Ukrainian market in terms of paint production volumes. By 2009, almost all paint and varnish plants of the Soviet period (DLFZ, “Lakma”, etc.) ceased to exist.

We started making the cans ourselves. Immediately on machines from scrap metal. There was an understanding that packaging is “clothes” and in it you need to keep up with fashion. In 2007-2010, new technological equipment worth almost 6 million euros was purchased, which allowed us to look to the future with optimism. Since 2010, this production was separated into an independent enterprise “Etalon Pak”. We began to “try on” the market: we saw that not everything was as joyful as we initially thought. The poor market does not yet need the high-quality packaging that we can produce, and the price is high, that is, the investments were made thoughtlessly, it became clear later. But now we have a very impressive place for technology demonstrations.

Conclusion: the more resources, the less effective they are. Resources require an entrepreneurial spirit and synergy of various specialists. If this is not the case, then any resources can be “wasted”. Where resources are limited, the best solutions are born.

The production of metal cans has become an independent business. We do only 35% for ourselves. We will take 2nd place in the market of manufacturers. But the size of the need has decreased significantly. Now we are thinking about preserving this direction: “how to make the best of a bad situation”. We have ideas, but we don’t have the money to implement them yet. We’ll see.

Since 1998, I have been a deputy of the city council and every time I couldn’t understand why understandable things were done wrong. I couldn’t understand the civil passivity of the population. In order to form a position different from “the ‘not in my backyard”, I began to publish the city newspaper “Likhtarik”. In order for it to reach every family, a huge amount of work was carried out on the inventory of addresses and the creation of a delivery system (the work of the post office could not stand the criticism). The circulation was over 100 thousand copies. The newspaper was delivered free of charge to every address in Dniprodzerzhynsk every week. I considered the expenses my charitable contribution to the formation of civil society. Almost the entire technical part of the project was done by Kalyuzhna Svitlana. The project lasted for more than a year – it gave a new vision of society.

I also didn’t understand why everything was improving in our company. In 2005, we even sent all the managers, about 30 people, to Prague to raise the level of culture at the enterprise. And in the society behind the fence, development went in the opposite direction.

In 2005, due to the fact that the city was left without a mayor (he was arrested for bribery) and there was no secretary of the city council, the city council deputies were faced with the question of who to elect from among the deputies as secretary. This person automatically became the acting mayor. Three candidates were named as deputies (including mine) and a rating vote was held. I did not vote for myself, but I got only 2 votes out of 66. No, I did not want to be a mayor, but my pride was worried about such a low rating. Then the city held a rating ranking of future possible candidates for mayor, and I was on the list. I had no chance, because I scored a hundredth of a percent. And I admit, we are all human, It gripped me a second time. From a scientific point of view, I had no chance, because it was 4 months before the elections.

In general, I wanted to prove that the impossible is possible. A program was developed, and we ran my campaign effectively. There were 16 candidates. I scored 54% of the votes.

Sobering up came when the election results were announced, and the city council session congratulated me on the election of the City Mayor. These were the first elections on party lists to local councils. I was “lucky”, two strippers, security guards, drivers, housewives, unemployed people and lovers of the leaders of local party branches became deputies. A nightmare began, a real war for influence. If I went with the aim of making local government effective, I suddenly discovered that in the power structures it is necessary to fight simply for common sense. Common sense there was more considered the opportunity to make money. In general, this is a different philosophy and it is not mine. I perceived responsibility as personal and mine.

The work of a mayor is the most interesting job that can be. The world is amazing and much wider than we imagine. The work is very multifaceted.

You can be effective, having a monopoly on power. There are many such successful people in our country, unfortunately. You can be effective in a competitive professional environment, I had some success here. But you need to train all the time – and this drives me.

Looking at this “looking-glass world”, I came to the conclusion that not every pleasant wind is favorable, and you should not roll in the direction where it blows. In 2007, I left of my own free will. The lesson was quite expensive. Quite often I plugged the city’s financial gaps with the company’s resources, and in addition, I was forced to involve “my people” from business in politics as a reliable support.

The lesson is expensive, but worth it, I think, for all of us.

Returning to the company, I was faced with the fact that everything was in motion. I could not get into a rut. In addition, the question arose: “why do the heads of branches give different answers to the same tasks?” Why do global players come to the Ukrainian market and immediately occupy a significant place there? The competitive environment was changing significantly. Foreign manufacturing companies began to appear, and they require different professionalism and systemic solutions.

I came to understand that the competitiveness of enterprises largely depends on the created management system, and not on the exploits of this or that employee.

A person close to me said that even a car driver learns to drive a new car, and I try to manage an enterprise without constant training. I am very grateful to this person who taught me that lifelong learning is essential. But the best teachers are mistakes.

We decided to look at business through the prism of interconnected business processes. And each process must be written down. We started with the “Sales” process. It immediately seemed like there was nothing to write about, and everything was clear. When we finally decided to write about what we do, it turned out to be quite difficult. We started asking ourselves questions and writing answers. The deeper we went, the more blank spots there were and the wider the gap between theory and practice. We persistently created enterprise standards.

We divided the functions of logistics and sales in the branches. An even bigger problem was the implementation of what was written. We had to change 14 managers in the first year branches and a quarter of sales staff. There was a need for training units and the creation of a department for monitoring the implementation of internal standards.

As a result, wasn’t fully thought through. A good management system should be strong at the core, where morality, principles, rules are present, and at the same time flexible at the tip, where operational decisions are made – like a fishing rod. Theory should take into account contexts. And half-baked knowledge is worse than its complete absence. My confidence caused us to tighten procedures too much, and the process began to prevail over the essence. Practice is much more complicated than what we see.

In 2008, we considered the “bottleneck” of the main enterprise’s finished product warehouse. The growth of the assortment led to complications – up to 40% of shipments had errors.

However, an audit of our logistics showed that we only had a nominal process. The work on building the process led to an investment of 2 million euros in equipment and the creation of warehouse automation programs. This warehouse has become our pride. And the logistics process itself is now one of our “trump cards”. I thank our authors: Kalyuzhnaya Svetlana and Kantsyber Inna. Time has passed and our needs now again require innovative solutions.

In 2010, we turned 15, and we gave ourselves an automated line for the production of water-based paints, which eliminated the human factor. Previously, we could not even dream of such equipment. And now even more big “dreams” are becoming a goal and this fills our lives. In 2021, additional modernization was carried out by our own efforts and the mind of our professionals Marushchak Pavel and Gerasimov Valery, which significantly improved flexibility in production. I believe that they were just trying out their talents.

Since construction and modernization projects are not implemented quickly, they require significant and long-term financing. We do it with our own funds, which must be earned immediately. This factor, and constant inflation, leads to a shortage of working capital. It hurts us because the lending rate of over 20% forces us to work for the welfare of the banking system and be little competitive in the economy. Struggle gives birth to talents, this is what our financial director, Schemelev Alexey, says.

The results of each of the following years were not what we expected at the beginning of the year.

In 2013, the first indicator was the liquidation of the construction and repair company “MasterZIP”. 130 people were laid off during the year. This was the first, but, unfortunately, not the last reduction.

Some achieve success when they forget about their responsibility to consumers. We believe that business is, first of all, relationships. And they should be based on the responsibility of expert manufacturers and moral principles. We understand that salvation lies in products with a quality lower than what we allow ourselves to produce. Sometimes it is a pity, but I am comforted by the fact that it is “my reputation on the line”.

Changes are happening again and again, which everyone is tired of. But I understand that only they help to survive in this aggressive world. The changes that are happening in society sometimes inspire hope, sometimes despair. Our team is a team of optimists. Let us feel like a “a coiled spring ready to act”: we stand in the mud, but we look above the clouds.

The development of the company changes the requirements for the way of managing the company. Sometimes the charisma of the leader must give way to systemic management decisions. And when there is less intelligence than power, it is dangerous. I moved away from operational management even earlier. I became free. But every person needs their own business.

Once my son asked me:
– Dad, what did you dream of doing since childhood?
– No, of course, that’s how it turned out. I dreamed of doing something important for people, and now I’m 60, and I still continue to dream … to do something important.
– And if I had to start from the beginning, what would you do?

And then I realized how important it is to ask yourself such simple questions. And look for an answer for yourself. So I had a new dream.

We, Ukrainians, consider our country an agricultural state, a breadwinner, and what have we offered the world besides raw materials: wheat and sunflower oil? I want to use the advantages of Ukraine: – to deal with food products that are Ukrainian. Also, the war emphasized the value and stability of the food market. The dream is still alive.

Since 2015, we have been selling related products that were in demand by our sales representatives, but which we did not manufacture ourselves. Little by little, the commercial activity of the enterprise began to emerge. Unlike the main direction, it was constantly growing. Its “father” was Stesenko Dmytro.

In 2018, from the enterprise “ZIP”, as a manufacturer of paint and varnish materials, its distribution network with 28 branches was separated into an independent legal entity. We called the new enterprise “Ardor Trade”.

The division of the enterprise allowed the various established areas of activity to clearly understand each of their clients and to focus on each of their goals.

So for the manufacturer “ZIP”, the client is the end consumer. The goal: – development of expertise in the production of “smart chemistry” to meet the needs of its client. The head of ZIP since 2021. is Stesenko Dmytro.

For the distributor “Ardor Traded”, the client is a retail outlet, and the goal is to improve the offers for its business. The head of Ar Tr since 2021 is Ostapenko Leonid.

In 2022, when the war began, we were forced to combine the transport, tinplate, and aerosol directions into one enterprise “Etalon Pak”. Roman Shostak became the head.

All our managers went through the path from the very “bottom” at the enterprise.

The war changed everything. We optimized, downsized, lost assets, but became more efficient. Today, fewer than 500 people remain in the corporation. Over 50 employees serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Some were wounded. Some gave their lives.

Our activities have decreased, but have become more effective. For each year of the war, we pay about 100 million hryvnias in taxes to the state. And we are proud of this contribution. We believe in Ukraine, but the pain of understanding the lack of a strategy in the State is growing. We believe that we will live better – but the deadlines are always moving away.

Key conclusions:

Excess resources hinder effective solutions.
Management decisions can be medicine or poison.
Business bears increasing responsibility for society.
The quality of work life depends primarily on direct managers.
Values matter more than they seem.
I am convinced: desire, professionalism, and life wisdom doom a person to success.

I invite into one team everyone who shares these values and remembers that we live only once. My mission is to create conditions in which those around me can realize their potential.

April 2024.

Sincerely, Oleg Zahorolsky.