Julia Lisovska discusses the origins of Tivoli, her family-run furniture company in Ukraine, and its mission to overcome the challenges posed by Russia’s invasion. She discusses the company’s response to the crisis, the resilience of Ukrainian businesses and the importance of showing Ukrainian design to the world. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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I'm Tom Edwards.
Julia Lisovska is the commercial director at Tivoli, a family run furniture manufacturer in Ukraine.
As one of the daughters of the founder, Julia and her family are managing the business amidst the challenges of the Russian invasion, including closed borders, cash flow issues and reduced sales resulting from the conflict.
So how do you even attempt to grow a business in a time of war?
Well, here is Julia Lisowska now with more.
Our parents founded this company and it's part of our life.
And I think that you can't rely more on some other partner than on the part of your family.
It makes our connection even stronger.
You can't step back, you can step only forward.
We are kind of a small animal which survives in any circumstances.
But I don't know how long the quick small animal can run.
I believe long time still.
But once we face this challenge, I should tell that first of all my father told we don't stop because everybody was shocked.
I woke up that morning in Kiev and we just packed the most necessary things and went to the factory where was our father.
And he told no, we don't stop because here we have to work.
We were like 200 people.
And he told that, you understand how many families are in our bags that we can't stop anyway, we will find a solution.
So we kept working.