After dedicating ten years to the media business for Cosmopolitan and Harper’s Bazaar in Ukraine, Nataliya moved to New York City where she transformed her career to fashion design. Growing up in Ukraine, Nataliya was immersed in a culture of handcrafted knitwear. The art of knitting has been passed down from generation to generation.
Nataliya Nova has taken up the task of introducing the unknown Ukraine to the world through fashion and knitwear. Through her luxury accessory line, Nataliya Nova delivers impeccable accessories for every occasion, while paying homage to Ukraine.
What is your company all about?
Art and fashion are two fields of ongoing innovation and creative expression. American luxury accessories brand Nataliya Nova repeatedly turns to art to imbue their creations with this flair of artistic freedom, giving way to sensational art and craftsmanship – meets-fashion philosophy.
We even had a beautiful collaboration with Harper’s Bazaar Ukraine. We were able to design beautiful silk scarves and a capsule collection with contemporary art prints “Waves” and “Puzzles” with the talented editor-in-chief Anna Zemskova.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I was always a very creative person. As a kid I was playing piano, performing in kids and school theater and my biggest passion was craftsmanship classes and creating clothes for my dolls. Crochet, knitting, and making clothes is my cultural heritage, we learn it in school as part of an official program. I took it further; I was swapping these dolls’ clothes with my friends and sometimes the candies were my payment. It was my first entrepreneurial experience! In school, it was very clear that besides being creative I’m also very intellectual at the same time. I finished high school with a gold medal for being excellent in all disciplines, you need to show top results all semesters during 3 years of high school.
Also, I became a student of National Aviation University (computer engineering) with a scholarship before I even finished school. Very quickly I understood it’s not what I want to do in my life, but learning high math, physics, and theory of probability is still helping me a lot. I was missing creativity and connecting with people, I was missing fashion so much! Cosmopolitan Harper’s Bazaar magazines became my next destination for 8 years. I worked closely with brands like Dior, Givenchy, Burberry, Bottega Veneta, Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, Loro Piana, Graff, Harry Winston, Chopard, and many others.
They taught me a lot. Before I moved to NYC my last few years were dedicated to working as a co-publisher of CASAVIVA Italian design magazine. The biggest surprise for me was that Italian design week is a few times bigger than fashion week, and design trends are more advanced than fashion. It took me some time before I was able to realize my dream. When I moved to the US, I wanted to represent Ukrainian brands and show the whole world how our culture is beautiful. But my professors strongly suggested that I create something of my own, I guess they saw a lot of talent and passion in me. I decided “now or never”. I felt like a kid in Disneyland. I learned how to work in a very sophisticated way with color, visual representation, proportion, styling, production cycles. In terms of knitting techniques and working with the yarns I felt like I’m the one who can teach the students. This is how my 1st knitted designs saw a life!
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
Ability to learn new things and in general evolve as a human being. Life is not about fairness; it is about evolution. It’s a non-stop process. Don’t even dream of having a break. Just look how the world is changing quickly.
“My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that” – Alice in Wonderland
Be honest with yourself. Our strength is our weakness. There is no person who knows or can do everything. To build a good team you need to work with people who have complementary skills you don’t have. There are a lot of people who can do many things in this life better than you. Just accept and appreciate it!
Work on your communication/negotiation skills. Your business will be about 2 things: a product/service and having a dialog with other people. If you don’t know how to express yourself, communicate about a brand, negotiate a deal, it will be hard to be successful.
I know many smart but not necessarily productive entrepreneurs. They don’t know how to have relationships with other people, it’s all about themselves as individuals, but not about “us”. People feel everything. Very often people will be willing to work with you because the communication is very comfortable.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
Helping people and staying connected with my cultural heritage, quality is my vision. I believe in slow fashion, we used to live with such a consumption mindset without even realizing what we wear, why we make those decisions. It should be changed. With our choices, we set the direction. People are much more powerful than they think. By choosing the brands with the values, they change the world. I call it the power of small steps. Actually, the consumers set the trends and fashion companies just respond to that through veer vision, not the other way around as we used to think.
I see clearly how it is hard for emerging designers and startups to survive even if they have brilliant ideas and nice products. The rate of failure in fashion is about 96%. I went through a lot of stuff and am still going, but I already see how many things can be done in a more efficient way. Many brands are approaching me to help them, and I deeply would love to do it. It needs to be teamwork. When you see all that passion, commitment, and willingness to give to the world a beautiful and sustainable product, your heart melts. I know what it takes.
Working in the fashion media industry I met with many talented, experienced, and influential people around the world, I want to create a team that will help other sustainable brands with unicorn products to be successful and not to be a part of 96%. Only by working together and supporting each other can we make it work.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
Nataliya Nova creations are different because we provide a combination of quality, craftsmanship, aesthetics, and helping other people. Our designs as well will give you a lot of comforts. Beautiful clothes should be comfortable.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
- I dint know how big a team I need; I also didn’t clearly know what is my personal capacity. It was my shift from working in corporation to become an entrepreneur and I used to have all business structures: financial, distribution, marketing department, secretary, driver, etc. When you are on your own it’s a very different story. Don’t overestimate how many hours per day you can work and be productive. Don’t fool yourself that you can learn something new easily. You will go anyway though a path when you need to overcome obstacles 24/7, don’t make it even more complicated. Find people who can work part-time or companies you can delegate to as much as possible.
- Whatever you plan for your business will always take more time, more money, and more efforts. Be ready for that.
- Human factor. This aspect is huge. You rely on people, and they don’t do every time what they promise. Even if they say “yes we have/yes we can” it’s not necessarily will be true. Go into details, ask when, how they will execute, check their midterm results. You should always be ready to replace something or someone in very short period of time. If 1st-time job was done great, it doesn’t mean 2nd time will be same. Success in the past doesn’t guarantee success in the future with the same person or company.
- The other part of human’s factor is everyone will try to give you advice (even your dentist), at the early stage you are very vulnerable, make sure you ask opinions from people who know your business or potential customers. All this advice can take you out of your direction, you need to learn how to filter what is a valuable recommendation and what is just noise! Stay solid!
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
Nothing can replace the concept of design/idea + quality of the product. You can have an amazing marketing campaign or mission, it’s all extra layers. When I started sale my hats in Vail (Colorado), in a luxury concept store my designs were next to very famous brands and you know what….my hats were sold out 1st, my name didn’t say a lot and I didn’t have any marketing activity. Your product should be your marketing!
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
At different stages, you face different challenges. I accepted it as a part of my journey. That’s the only way to learn and grow. Your starting point is your imagination and the final one is a happy client who is proudly wearing your creation. I promise you; it will take a lot to go through this.
Establishing an international production was a big achievement especially with our attention to detail. The majority of our winter hats are hand-knitted, you can only imagine how carefully we need to go through a quality control of each product. The same situation with resort hats, they are hand-waved from very fine tequila straw in Ecuador. The art of weaving the traditional Ecuadorian toquilla hat was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.
You can find a lot of silk scarves in our collection based on my actual painting. It requires from me the skills to work with canvas and silk. Each line on a piece of silk is measured under a magnifying glass. Proportions, color story, defining the dominant colors, color relativity, and many other words are involved in this process. We need to go through 5-6 samples before we reach the final product.
We recently added hand-stitched silk bands to our collection to show the beauty of texture.
What was your first business idea and what did you do with it?
You never end up with what you started. I wanted to create cashmere home accessories, then I realize it’s too boring for me. Then I explored making nice sweaters and cardigans and I saw how dealing with a sizing chart can blow up the budget and quality control was another challenge. Different productions see it differently.
If you started your business again, what things would you do differently?
I would start working right away with accessories group, if you touch sizing chart it will take a lot from you from any perspective. Just to give you an idea, for the clothes the % of returns in e-commerce is about 40-50%. You will be managing all these returns, stock, production, etc. And don’t forget fashion, it’s a seasonal business.
Also, I would hire a certain amount of part-time contractors or companies and would minimize the level of my own involvement. Very often small things take a lot of time. There are so many things that life will throw in you, you need to respond and come up with a very quick decision.
What are you learning now? Why is that important?
I’m learning now about e-commerce a lot. We actively working on establishing presents in UK and Germany. It’s another world of data science, artificial intelligence, and distribution. The future of fashion is eCommerce. After the pandemic, we saw how retail is fragile.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
- Legal zoom was and still very helpful, legal, trademark and accounting services are covered by them. Having a year membership for the same price as a few hours with a lawyer is not a bad deal at all.
- Task Rabbit when you need quickly help with a different spectrum of tasks: administrative, packing orders etc. you can hire contractors in different states/cities. It’s a great site to find people when a job can’t be done remotely.
- Upwork is also very helpful for us to find the talents. You can choose by type of project, budget. You can set the deadlines. This platform will provide you with a legal agreement.
What is your favorite quote?
I have 2.
“Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face”
Mike Tyson
“What is the difference between a medicine and poison? Dose!”
How can readers get in touch with you?
People can get in touch with me by visiting our website nataliyanova.com and our social media channels https://www.instagram.com/nova_nataliya/.
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