Yuliya Lyakhovych, the co-founder of GNP Fruits: We still use information from almost every learning module
Two years of implementation, more than 1,100 graduates, significant changes in the approach for the international sale of the products of companies participating in the Creative Export Ukraine project, which is coming to an end now. We want to share one of success stories of GNP Fruits company that participated in the Programme.
Yuliya Lyakhovych is the co-founder of GNP Fruits and successfully completed a training under the Creative Export Ukraine Programme in 2019-2020. She also participated in Tallinn Design Festival in 2020 where she could apply the gained knowledge in practice: «Our company, GNP Fruits, produces apple chips, which are quite popular abroad. We realized at once that our business model should take into account our export potential.
One of the essential skills we gained as part of the Programme is the ability to analyse the market and to identify the market potential. Export business was a rather vague thing to us, we did not understand where to move and what to start with. Now we have knowledge and understand how we have to plan our presence in the international market and how to plan our export business in a systemic way, not on the ad hoc basis», Yuliya says.
The co-founder of GNP Fruits shared her impressions about the learning process: «During the training we could prove some of our own hypotheses as well as developed new packages and design for our products and calculated our prices including all delivery details (for instance, Incoterms, which we learnt during the Programme as well). We also understand what customers can be interested in our products and what customers we could engage in a long-term partnership.
Generally, we became more focused: instead of looking at several directions, we have identified our priority areas that require our efforts. On the one hand, each company finds its priority business fields in an evolutionary way, but, on the other hand, the Programme helped us find them faster.
The online format turned out to be very comfortable. The Programme was designed in a way that made it impossible to be out of schedule. I planned my learning sessions every week: I looked through some of the materials for several times and made notes that I can use now, if needed. Another useful exercise was to prepare the profile of our company based on the template we had from the Programme – now we use it for our pricing calculations or for presentations. The information in this profile is professional and complete, it gives our potential partners a clear idea of our company, its size, production capacities, prices, etc».
«We still use information from almost every learning module, including trade mark registration, patent issues, Incoterms, package adjustment for different markets, preparation of exhibition, pricing, etc. We felt the support of our mentors during the entire training, especially at the final stage. In the feedback sessions we received concrete, direct and structured answers and recommendations related to our brand. The mentor paid special attention to our products and asked to specify all important details.
The Programme helped us develop a clear understanding of our export-oriented brand, we have a clear plan to follow».
We are happy about the success of GNP Fruits and wish them a further cool development! Export together with the Export Promotion Office, the world needs more products made in Ukraine!
The Programme was developed by the Marketing Institute of Estonia jointly with the Export Promotion Office and with the support of the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture of Ukraine. The Programme is financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia (Cooperation Development and Humanitarian Aid Project).