Most importers don’t lose on quality, but on the shelf, in the marketplace listing, and in the customer’s memory. That was the starting point for the closed meetup series launched by Done (LLC Dann, Ukraine) in partnership with Forbes Ukraine for importers, distributors, e-commerce and retail owners, procurement heads, and CFOs. These are people who make operational decisions every day and rarely have time to talk about brand, sales channels, or customer experience.
Meetup 1: From Noname to Lovemark
The first meetup, held in March 2026, was built around one question: how can an importer create demand for a product and sell it faster? A product can match its competitors in quality and still lose on the shelf or in a marketplace listing because the customer does not recognize the brand and chooses the familiar option. The discussion was about the shift from a faceless product to a brand that people trust and choose deliberately – lovemark. For an importer, that makes brand a commercial lever rather than a marketing extra: it decides who wins when the customer has no time to compare.
Andriy Fedoriv, founder and CEO of Fedoriv Group, approached the topic from the owner’s seat. As a company grows, marketing moves to the team, but the owner must still know what the brand tells the market. He addressed how to set the right tasks for the team, keep the brand’s character, and manage its development while turnover grows.
Yulia Pinteskul, Deputy Chair of the Management Board of the Epicentr K group, was interviewed on how an importer can enter a marketplace. She described the support Epicentr gives importers and producers through this channel, the team needed to grow there, and how consumer behaviour has changed during the war. Dmitrii Rivkin, founder of Done (LLC Dann), joined the conversation on scaling and financial tools.
Meetup 2: From Demand to a Sales System
The second meetup, “Sales for Importers”, picked up where the first left off: once demand exists, how does a company turn it into a repeatable sales system? Read together, the two sessions follow the importer’s path. First, the product becomes recognizable, then the sales model becomes scalable, and margin is the thread through both.
Volodymyr Orlov, Regional Innovation Manager at Cisco and lecturer on the kmbs “Sales Strategies” programme, compared marketplaces, wholesale and direct sales. He walked through four sales models, explained why one-off deals do not scale, and covered how to manage margins. His underlying point was to build the work so that the customer consciously chooses the company and comes back.
Liliia Ovchynnikova, B2B PR Director and spokesperson at Prom.ua, moved the conversation to online trade. She covered the potential of Ukrainian e-commerce, popular product categories, how to organise sales on a marketplace, unit economics, and the typical mistakes importers make in this channel.
The third meetup will be held in 2027 with a strong focus on long-term customer relationships through loyalty programs, service, and experience. Anton Skorobogatov, former owner of LLC Dann (Ukraine) and Member of the Board of Done Turkiye, who knows importers’ challenges from both the Ukrainian and Turkish sides of the supply chain noted: “The value of these meetings lies in solutions an entrepreneur can apply the next day: rethink the brand, test a new channel, and see where margin leaks. Together with Forbes Ukraine, we choose the topics and invite practitioners whose experience helps importers work through exactly these questions”.