Ukraine is full of creative producers who are winning global recognition by developing its industries. These two-seat planes have attracted customers all around the world. Yuriy Yakovliev is an engineer and founder of the plane manufacturer Aeroprakt. It is a world leader in ultralight aircraft production. Aeroprakt started out as Soviet amateur aircraft design club in 1986. After Ukraine gained its independence, Yuriy and his business partner registered Aeroprakt as a business and found their first investors Aeroprakt has produced over 1,000 two-seat sports planes that fly in the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Germany and other countries.
Yuriy and the team of engineers design the planes, create the parts and assemble the aircraft at their factory in Kyiv Yuriy, who is also a pilot, tests the planes and participates in flying competitions.
He is also fighting for the liberalization of air traffic laws In 2008, he helped change Ukraine’s regulation that required a permit for takeoff in advance. Now, Yuriy is striving to abolish the complicated procedure for small aircraft owners to fly abroad.
After 2014 Euromaidan revolution, the rekindled popularity of the Ukrainian embroidered shirt called the vyshyvanka has been widely admired by world fashionistas. This brand has won fans by modernizing vyshyvanka’s traditional design
Andiriy Cherukha started selling vyshyvankas online in 2009. Before he started his own production with designers, Andriy was selling vyshyvankas made by artisans from villages in western Ukraine. Now, his vyshyvankas are worn by the country’s celebrities and officials including Ukraine’s president and first lady. Etnodim modernizes traditional designs in modern shapes to make their clothes fit for everyday wear.
“We are making vyshyvankas that people want to wear not only on Vyshyvanka or Independence Day, but to the office, as well”. The brand produces around 600 vyshyvankas per month sold in shops and online. To discover new talents, they launched a mentoring program for aspiring designers.
As their main goal has been popularizing Ukrainian ethnic clothing, Andriy is excited to see mass market brands like H&M and Zara selling vyshyvankas all over the world.
Manufacturers in Ukraine enrich the global market with innovative ideas. Oleksandr Doroshenko is the co-founder of Universum Guitars. This Ukrainian brand of exclusive guitarshas fans among the world’s top musicians such as Grammy Award nominee John Patitucci.Oleksandr and his business partner Vadym Gavrylenko founded the brand in 2016 in their native Bila Tserkva near Kyiv. Universum Guitars has developed over 30 unique models of guitars with innovations that are unparalleled by other manufacturers. “Here we have a prototype of our very innovative bass. It has a speaker here which can produce a whole range of sound that the bass has to produce”
Apart from producing instruments, they are going to open a museum of guitars in Kyiv with a rare collection of European, Japanese and Soviet guitars Oleksandr says that there’s only a handful of guitar museums in the world.
Some of the musical instruments that will be exhibited cost tens of thousands of dollars. His museum will showcase guitars played by members of Beatles in the early stages of their career but also their own brand’s most exclusive productions.
While Universum Guitars is more famous abroad than it is in Ukraine, Oleksandr hopes his museum will put Kyiv on the map of top destinations for music lovers.
Author: Anna Yakutenko
The material was prepared with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework of the project Stories from Ukraine. The material reflects the position of the authors and does not necessarily coincide with the position of the International Renaissance Foundation.
