At the beginning of 2014, Ukrainian designer Denis Okhrimenko decided to deliver products in wooden designer boxes. To raise money for a business project, Okhrimenko first started selling just construction sets - without food inside. In 2014, he showed the food project to potential investors several times, but they were not inspired by the idea of food delivery. But I liked the creation project. Moreover, Denis was already able to show a living example - a prototype of a wooden box.
When the first investor was found, Okhrimenko had money to rent two wood cutting machines. Now there are about 50 people in the Ukrainian Gears team, but then Denis collected sheets of parts into a kit in the kitchen and packed it himself while the courier was waiting outside the door. Four to five orders a month were considered an incredible success.
Apparently, the aspiring entrepreneur understood that ordinary wooden puzzles, which at that time were already known on the market, would not attract a buyer. Then he came up with the idea of creating not just construction sets, but a wooden semblance of steampunk fantasies. Denis was interested in the complex mechanisms of skeleton watches (those in which the gears are visible), and such an unusual embodiment was ideal for mechanical designers.
If you look at it, the steampunk spirit and the semblance of a skeleton watch mechanism are really present. The constructors work using mechanics, and all internal mechanisms are visible. Some buyers even demand that the models be made more realistic, but Okhrimenko is not going to do this yet.
After all, we, as expressionist artists, do not work in realism. It is important for us that the case is transparent so that the mechanism is visible; for us it is an important part of the design.
Denis Okhrimenko, founder of UGEARS
Wooden mechanical constructors have nothing in common with the entertainment we are used to today. You truly fall in love with a construction set when it falls into your hands. This is most likely why the startup did not have big sales until the puzzles were presented at exhibitions.
In the spring of 2014, Denis tried to sell construction sets on his own on Andreevsky Spusk. He went around to local sellers, showed them prototypes, but everyone refused to take the construction kits for sale, although usually the models aroused only delight in people.
After several unsuccessful attempts, Okhrimenko decided to try to sell the puzzles himself. Located in the same place, on Andreevsky. Foreigners and families with children began to arrive, and the entire consignment that the entrepreneur showed to the sellers flew away on the first day.
To save money, Okhrimenko did not immediately want to assemble parts from wood. At first, cardboard was to be the main material. But it quickly wore out. Denis tried plastic and acrylic, but they didn’t work either. desired result. It was experimentally found that the material is better than wood plywood, for these purposes can not be found.
Depending on the model, the number of parts in each set varies. In, for example, there are 443 parts, in - 179, and in small ones - only 25. And when creating each part, accuracy comes first. Nowadays, parts as thin as a human hair are cut out by laser from a single sheet of plywood according to drawings. There are 16 of these in the UGEARS workshop.
At the end of 2015, in order to establish fast and cost-effective production, Denis launched a Kickstarter campaign. It brought unexpected success: people learned about the puzzles in Japan, Taiwan, China, and orders and proposals for implementation came from there. The Japanese really like that the construction sets are completely mechanical: they come to life solely thanks to wooden fasteners and rubber bands. As wooden fastenings use regular toothpicks, and rubber bands serve as triggers.
In some ways, this is truly a unique product on the market. Okhrimenko is categorically against UGEARS being compared to LEGO construction sets. At the same time, he does not hide that he wants to achieve the same world fame for wooden 3D puzzles.
Construction sets are designed for people aged 25–40; they have long been known on the Internet under the code name “toys for adults.” At first glance, it seems that UGEARS construction sets are a pleasure only for men. But women are also interested in modeling. To prove this, the company released a model late last year
In just over two years, UGEARS has become a construction set with a history that in a few years will be known no worse than the stories about the advent of McDonald’s fast food or Ford cars.
History can be bought and put on a shelf. Use the promo code hackspring and get a 20% discount on all models from the UGEARS catalog in Russia.
You can endlessly observe three things: how the program is compiled, how it collects views of cat videos on YouTube, and how the gears turn in the fancy moving wooden mechanisms made by the Ukrainian team Ugears. Many people make self-propelled toys, many assemble realistic models of rare cars or trams. But a construction set, where the mechanism is part of the design, where you can see how every gear rotates and every lever moves, is something new on the market.
Technical designer Denis Okhrimenko, the ideologist and founder of the project, is offended when Ugears models are compared to children's toys, preferring to call them steampunk fantasies. The bulk of puzzle buyers are adults 25-35 years old who are passionate about construction.
There were quite a lot of them in Ukraine and abroad: in a couple of years the company grew from one enthusiast who packed puzzles on his knee to a team of 50 people. We went to visit Ugears, asked about how puzzles are created and sold, and also took a peek at how the production workshop works.
Now Denis remembers with a smile the times when sales of 4-5 models were pleasing, and he packed the puzzles himself, sitting in the kitchen with construction hairdryer, while the online store courier was waiting at the door. The hairdryer often burned through the polyolefin wrapper and I had to repack the puzzle with all the small parts several times (this hairdryer still stands by my desk).
Denis had a lot of ideas for business projects and puzzles were not the focus. The entrepreneur planned to raise money from puzzles for the main project - a construction box with products.
Denis showed this project several times on Startup.ua, but investors were not interested. But I liked the idea of moving puzzles, especially since I already had one prototype of the box in my hands.
Until the puzzles got to exhibitions, there were no big sales. In the spring of 2014, Denis even tried to trade them on Andreevsky Spusk.
“I went to dozens of sellers, showed samples, but no one took it for sale. It was a shock for me, because no matter what I showed it to anyone before, it always had a wow effect. I walked through the haul, upset, and decided to get up and try to sell it myself. Some foreigners, families with children, immediately came up. I sold everything and realized that there was demand,” he says.
At the Startup.ua conference, Denis met future investor Gennady Shestak, director of the Egmont Ukraine publishing house. In the summer of 2014, an LLC was created and the co-founders began purchasing equipment (previously they had to work on borrowed equipment). Now Gennady is developing the Ugears business.
Sales began to grow after the autumn Made In Ukraine. The partners launched an online store and were happy when they saw 20 sales a day. When they decided to launch a small campaign on Facebook, sales increased from 1,600 to 3,000 per month.
“Gena likes to say that we work in a blue ocean. I believe that our entire ocean is blue, and if there is a red one, it is “near the shore”, in those areas where there is a lot of competition and there is no room for innovation,” the project founder explains the sudden breakthrough of Ugears.
Over the past year, the project has grown from 3,000 to 8,000 models sold per month.
Over the entire short period of its existence, the project had only one unprofitable month (-20,000 UAH), and even then - due to the relocation of production. And so the project’s profit is at least 100,000 UAH per month, but everything is reinvested in development.
Ugears lives in an apparently unremarkable three-story brick building. But already on the approach to the workshop you can notice parts on the asphalt and the specific smell of heated plywood. A year ago, the Ugears workshop had three machines, a lone tennis table and wall bars- There was an echo in the room. Now there are 16 machines working simultaneously here. Work is in full swing, like in Santa's village before Christmas week.
The hum of the machines is neutralized by the deafening dubtronics - the assembly and quality assessment team works under it.
“We were worried that the guys were working in a noisy environment, but they turn up the music at probably 90 decibels,” jokes Denis.
Ugears plans to grow very quickly.
In mid-February, 2 more machines will be delivered here, and 8 more in March. They plan to maintain this pace until the end of the year, says production manager Viktor Shevchuk. But while increasing production, the team will have to solve many problems: where to get more energy, how to provide ventilation, etc. Already operating at full capacity, the workshop consumes 45 kW with the permitted limit of 50 kW.
On a day, the machines can cut approximately 66 products according to the most complex drawing; one model, depending on the complexity, takes from 20 minutes to an hour. The workshop can make up to 15,000 models per month when fully loaded.
The puzzle material, plywood, also causes many technological problems. Initially, Denis was going to make puzzles by stamping from cardboard, and tried to create models using someone else’s equipment. But cardboard wears out. I tried the slats ( wooden planks), but it turned out that approximately 40% of them were rejected; foam board, polystyrene foam, and acrylic were tested. We settled on plywood, the parts are cut out on the sheet with a laser cutter.
Plywood is a rather capricious material, says the Ugears team. If you buy imported goods, you will have to raise prices. And the one produced in the CIS is not of very high quality. The sheets may vary in thickness; in three-layer plywood, the middle layer may be poorly glued, knots and voids may occur. Sometimes there are even “tractor” boot prints on the sheets.
All this is critical for puzzles with very small parts.
“It’s important for us: the sheet thickness is 3.5 mm or 3.7 mm. Some 0.2 mm - and we already have problems. The model is no longer assembled that way,” says Denis.
If there is emptiness in the sheet, the laser will become unfocused.
Not everything is always smooth with the equipment either. It happened that the edge of the product burned during cutting - this was solved by supplying air under pressure to remove combustion products that formed carbon deposits on the model. And somehow in warm water a whole colony of algae has settled in the cooling pipes of the machine.
The problems were resolved. Now the mode is on a plate as thick as a hair, which allows you to create incredible openwork designs.
The main clients of Ugears are people aged 25-45 years. Therefore, some rigor is observed in the design.
Denis is sure that if designers add at least a little flowers or patterns to their models, sales will drop significantly. Now the team is thinking about “more feminine” puzzles. One of the latest developments is an openwork lily with opening petals.
The main problem of Ugears now is that the business is growing quickly, and the team simply does not have time to complete many things: customer service, marketing, website.
“For a long time we were like that car at the market: we pulled in, opened the side and let’s unload the bags, and there was a crowd around us, the goods were in great demand, we already needed a second car. Now is the period when we can breathe out a little and work on the quality of the business,” says Denis.
The founder of the project himself advises customers over the phone who have difficulties with assembling models, and maintains the company’s Facebook page.
“We recently consulted a 75-year-old grandfather; his granddaughter gave him a model. He scolded me, saying that the tram lacks realism... But we, as expressionist artists, do not work in realism. It is important for us that the case is transparent so that the mechanism is visible; it is an important part of the design for us,” says Denis.
According to him, models are an intellectual product that takes months to develop.
“We write music on plywood,” says Denis.
One of the latest models - a safe - took about 8 months to develop. But a significant part of the value in the product is brought by the user himself, because it is he who puts together the puzzle and sees how the model “comes to life.”
Ugears puzzles are now sold abroad: in Poland, Germany, Serbia, the Czech Republic, and recently several pallets with mechanisms went to English stores. During a very successful Kickstarter campaign, puzzles became known in Japan, Taiwan, China, and orders and proposals for implementation came from there.
“The Japanese, for example, really like that our puzzles are completely mechanical, not robotic, without servomotors,” says Denis.
The company is also gaining large clients: for example, Mercedes is interested in a corporate order of 50,000 wooden cars.
Denis came up with the idea for puzzles while he was studying the process of creating ornate, complex skeleton watches (a device where the entire clock mechanism is visible). The team now has a list of about a hundred ideas for what else could be cut out of wood, stuffed with gears and levers, and made to move. Every connection, every detail has to be reinvented, because you can’t put an ordinary bearing in a wooden car.
Among potential models- dozens of devices: from gramophones with wooden records to a half-meter telephone directory with 20 numbers.
“We plan to take over the world. So that the world knows that Ukraine is not only sunflower and metal, so that Ukrainian brands and products are recognized in the mass market. I don’t really like comparisons with Lego, but I would like to become famous like them,” says Denis.
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A Ukrainian startup for the production of wooden mechanical models, created by Kiev residents Denis Okhrimenko and Gennady Shestak, has raised more than $237 thousand on Kickstarter
The term “startup,” which recently came into use, refers to a young company that builds a business based on innovative ideas. Beginning businessmen, as a rule, do not have large investments or their own funds. Therefore, they are all looking for money to realize their plans. accessible ways. One of them is Kickstarter. On this site, innovators present their product, and those who are interested in it buy it and thus invest money in the company. This is exactly the path taken by the young Ukrainian company Ugears, which produces existing teams. wooden models: tractors, trams, chronometers, boxes, steam locomotives... By presenting samples of their products on Kickstarter, businessmen planned to raise 20 thousand dollars, but in just a few days they managed to collect almost ten times more.
*Parts of mechanical models are held together... with ordinary toothpicks
The ideological inspirer and co-owner of the Ugears project, Kiev resident Denis Okhrimenko, told FACTS that the first mechanical models for self-assembly the company began producing from high-quality plywood in the summer of 2014. And the “founding father” of the company himself has been interested in various mechanisms since his early youth.
“I remember I was constantly coming up with some kind of devices. At the age of 16 you could see me on a skateboard with a huge plywood tail, with its help I tried to steer, recalls Denis Okhrimenko. — Then there was a chair that rolled not on wheels, but on balls. Further more. Somewhere in 2003, I developed a business plan to create a delivery service that would very quickly deliver parcels and letters across the country by car. Then they asked me: why do you need this, after all, there is “Ukrposhta”?! And literally four years later... “Novaya Poshta” appeared. Then I realized one thing: if the project is not obvious, this does not mean that it is not good, perhaps the idea was simply ahead of its time.
- What is your occupation? Surely it has something to do with mechanics...
— Graduated from the Ukrainian Academy of Banking in Sumy with a degree in economics and finance, worked as an economic journalist. This seemed not enough, and I decided to become a designer to make it easier to visualize some projects. One of them is production ceramic products. I wrinkled my brow over it for a very long time, as they say, thinking through each model down to the smallest detail. One well-known Ukrainian tea company became interested in the idea. But... I couldn’t find a company that would produce 20 thousand unique ceramic cups! During the search, I got the impression that it is much more pleasant for people to refuse than to at least try to do something. My hands even gave up...
— How did you come up with the idea of making models from plywood?
— After all the “bummers,” I came to the conclusion that we need a project that can be implemented in the conditions of Ukraine from the materials available here and for little money, and best of all, for our own money. At first the idea arose to make unusual postcards. For a person to take some components out of an envelope and assemble an interesting thing. Then I thought: why a postcard? It's better to assemble a clock from cardboard! Moreover, stamping parts is not a very expensive and fairly fast process.
I started thinking in this direction and tried to make something at home. Due to my character, I started with the most difficult. I tried to make a full-fledged clock out of cardboard, but at that time nothing came of it, so I took on simpler things. As a result, the first one was a mechanical box made of wood. I made about fifty of them using someone else’s equipment. I sold some of it, and with the rest I went to Andreevsky Descent. As I remember now, it was after the Maidan. The sellers greeted me without much enthusiasm and did not want to take anything for sale. I was upset, and then I decided to stop on a free spot and sold four boxes in half an hour. One of the buyers, a foreigner, was persuaded to buy the box by his children. But the main thing I realized is that people like my work.
Then I presented the project several times at various conferences and looked for an investor. And we were not talking about a multimillion-dollar sum, the price of the issue was only 20 thousand dollars: half for the purchase of the machine, the other for the initial development. So I got a partner with great experience in the trade of similar products - Gennady Shestak. We bought a machine, and at first I did everything myself: cutting, packaging, and choosing materials. That is, it closed the entire cycle. Then there was successful exhibition in Odessa, where everything was sold, including demonstration samples. Now our products sell 300 retail outlets. And even on the sly they export it abroad and charge good European prices. I have seen our products on websites under completely different names. Now we are officially sending our products for export.
— Are you fighting pirates?
— Yes, we got serious about certification and patenting. By the way, one of the methods we invented for connecting inside gears received an international patent - this invention has no analogues in the world. We are currently registering in a number of foreign countries. People often ask if they can copy us. Technically it is possible, but for this you need to go the same way as we did, since there are many nuances in this work that you won’t notice at first glance. I like to say that we write music on plywood. And for the product to play and sound, you must work within an accuracy of tenths of a millimeter! And at the end of the day, this thing should look not just beautiful, but well-made, because we are positioning it as a souvenir for adults, and not a cheap trinket.
- What, children can’t handle them?
- The average age of our customers is 25 - 50 years. One day a girl bought a model for her... grandfather. The fact is that our products are certified for ages 14 and up, since we use ordinary toothpicks as axes in them. When we figure out what to replace them with, we will probably be able to produce products for children from eight years old. Although then the models themselves will have to change, but rather it will be a separate line. But children are interested in our products: once at an exhibition a little boy got on a tractor made of plywood and... drove away. Then we found only a broken model.
— They often say that grown men are the same as little boys, but their toys are more expensive. It turns out that your hobby has become your job. What do you enjoy in your free time?
— I can’t say that it was a hobby, although my idea was based on some hobbies. Hobbies, in my opinion, rarely bring money; few people manage to replicate them properly. It must be included in the project immediately commercial basis, provide the possibility industrial production and expansion of the range. IN Lately In my spare time I get carried away... with work - I dream. We constantly come up with something new, meet with interesting people. As for adult boys, we create cheaper toys for them. Our models really appeal to adults, and in principle they are made specifically for them. I initially came up with everything so that I would want to assemble it myself and put it in my home.
— Your models are quite labor-intensive, and their creation probably required a lot of perseverance. Are you a workaholic or just a goal-oriented person?
“If I’m interested in something, I can push myself to the point of exhaustion.” In life, sometimes I just find myself a problem and solve it. But these are not crossword puzzles - I don’t like wasting time. I prefer to come up with something new. This is a problem for anyone with an inventor's mind. After all, people usually prefer not to think. They sit down and ask themselves: “To do this?..” They look at the ceiling for a couple of minutes and conclude that nothing interesting comes to mind. But in fact, intense thinking about a problem for at least twenty minutes is quite difficult for the mind. But when your brain begins to “warm up,” you feel that this is how you can find interesting solutions.
— How does your family feel about your work?
- Let's just say they didn't interfere. They understood that I was busy with business, but they had no idea whether it would be of any use. Yes, I myself, to be honest, had no idea then. A couple of times I quit “forever” because nothing worked out. It took quite a lot to implement the idea family budget and strength, because I was working at the same time. That's why First stage and lasted for a couple of years. In general, if some serious (not like me) inventors in Ukraine were given financial support, then in a year or two we would see really cool projects. In developed countries they understand this and help creative people. I have friends who exist on the edge of survival, and their brilliant projects gather dust unfinished on the shelves.
— What advice do you give to a person who has come up with a worthwhile idea, but does not have the means to implement it?
— Ideas are also means. The main thing is to try to implement them at least ten percent. It's easy to carry seeds in your pocket, but you need to at least grow seedlings. It’s also important to talk about this and show these very “sprouts”. For some reason, people think that coming up with an idea is very difficult, but listening to it and quickly implementing it is easy. In fact, often an idea arises instantly, but implementation is a difficult process, and if you are too lazy to do it, then others may not need it at all.
— Denis, what did you spend your first fee on?
— We are still developing. We are growing quickly, we are already recognized in Ukraine, and it seems that we are very big. But for the company to grow, profits must be reinvested, that is, invested in production. I still work for a regular salary. By the new year I will receive small dividends. It’s not possible to take money out of a growing business, although, judging by the news, I’m already a millionaire. Even a small queue of people wishing to receive these millions has already formed. I try to mentally separate myself both from money and from the successes and mistakes of the company. It's easier that way. Otherwise you will rejoice at all your victories as if they were your own, and blame yourself for all your failures.
As for work, I always wanted Ukraine to be recognized in the world. That’s why the company was named Ukrainian gears - “Ukrainian gears”, but for trademark chose the official abbreviated name of the company - Ugears. Now we are trying to enter the US market through Kickstarter. We want no one to overtake us and that Ukraine will be recognized by such rather unique products.
There is also a plan to turn our production into an amusement park. For example, conduct excursions, at the end of which we can collect something together. By the way, we have received requests for large models. I remember there was one funny incident: for a corporate party, they ordered a large model of a working tractor for one of the clients. I visualized this tractor and the person next to it, showed it to the customers on the monitor screen... But then I realized that at a corporate party they would drink, sit on the tractor, chew a couple of people in the gears and spit them out on the other side! That is, large models must be safe. There is also an idea to place a model of a perpetuum mobile - a perpetual motion machine - on the facade of a building. Bring levers down to the level of human growth, so that people passing by would pull them, and the mechanism would constantly wind up and work.
Header photo from family archive
Have you ever forgotten which side of your car's gas cap is on? For example, you just bought a car, rented it from a friend or rented it, and in general, when you drive up to a gas station for the first time driving this car, in order to see which side the fuel tank opens on, you usually need to stop and get out, and sometimes and walk around the car to make sure.
What if you have several cars? You must always clearly remember and keep in mind which car from which side to approach the pump at a gas station. I know from myself how unnerving it is every time.
It turns out that smart automakers have long figured out how to determine which side of the car the gas tank cap is on without getting out of the car. You just need to look at the arrow, which is located next to the painted gas pump on the instrument panel.
Voila, that's it!
Now, no matter what car you drive, you always know which way to approach the fuel pump at the gas station, so as not to...
In Ukraine, the dollar rose from 8 to 14 hryvnia.
In Russia, the dollar rose from 31 to 46 rubles.
And in Kazakhstan, the dollar rose from 152 to 181 tenge, that is, only by 19%, although in Russia and Ukraine - by 50% and 75%.
It is not necessary to have a higher economic education to understand that the Kazakh economy will not be able to withstand this gap for long. The dollar will creep up very soon, in the coming weeks, or even days.
In February, the tenge exchange rate fell by 20% in one beautiful night, so you shouldn’t count on anyone in the government to warn you in advance. A warning - here it is.
Very soon there will be a shortage of dollars in Kazakhstan and a black currency market will appear (as in the Russian Federation, Ukraine or, for example, in Uzbekistan). In general, buy dollars and euros. Now.
The bizarre moving 3D mechanisms of the Ukrainian team Ugears, where every gear is visible inside, fascinated Kickstarter users at the end of 2015, seven times more than the required amount. Over the course of several years, the project grew from one ideologist who packed Ugears in the kitchen with a hair dryer, to a company with its own production workshop and foreign clients. Ukrainian 3D puzzles have become fashionable; they are copied and bought by famous brands.
Designer Denis Okhrimenko, who came up with Ugears, left the project last fall due to disagreements with the investor. Denis is currently working on two new projects at once: metal puzzles Time 4 Machine and children's blocks Pagl. Among the investors in the first project is Nick Belogorsky. The second project was supported by the management of the Zhytomyr Cardboard Mill. The editors asked Denis why he left his first project and what he is doing now.
A startup called Ukrainian Gears launched back in June 2014. Initially, Denis had a lot of ideas for business projects, and wooden puzzles were not even among the main ones (more full story the project can be read in ours). At Startup.ua he presented a construction box with products, but investors did not like the idea, but they liked the auxiliary project - 3D puzzles. Ukrainian Gears received its first investments from Gennady Shestak, director of the Egmont Ukraine publishing house, who was one of the co-founders of the project.
Photo by Olya Zakrevskaya
Why did the startuper and the investor diverge in the future? There are two versions of the answer to this question.
According to Denis, problems in communicating with investors began immediately after the successful launch on Kickstarter. But they lay not on a legal, but on a moral plane. “Two days before the end of the campaign, I started receiving strange letters and attacks from the investor. We resolved that situation, but then things went wrong more money, customers, and the attitude towards me worsened,” he says. According to him, the investor made all decisions, including financial ones.
“I realized that I couldn’t even influence the issue of future models. The investor did not want to invest in some things that I considered useful for the business, for example, a plywood sizing machine. - says Denis. — If an investor decides that he is a startup and he runs a company, that’s OK, it happens. But I will not invest time and ideas in a startup where the attitude towards weaker partners changes “depending on the weather.” It has warmed up in terms of money and the attitude has worsened.”
Denis has not been involved in the company’s affairs since last summer, although he continues to be a co-owner. According to him, his share in the project brought him very little money, comparable to bonuses for hired employees, and he starts new projects from scratch and with new investors. Saying goodbye to Ugears, according to Denis, was hard, but now he is not interested in the company’s affairs. “The Ugears project has been implemented, and that’s good... I myself don’t want to get a penny from this project anymore,” he says.
The investor's version is different. According to Gennady Shestak, for him this investment was smart money and Ugears was not a one-man project: a team of three co-founders developed the project practically from scratch (the name of the co-founder is not disclosed), all decisions were made collectively, no one put pressure on Denis. Gennady himself was in charge of operational activities, the third partner was in charge of finances, Denis was responsible for the design department and the company’s image in the media, becoming the “face of Ugears.”
Investor and co-founder of the project Gennady Shestak
According to the investor, there was no conflict as such. “When in one of his interviews he started talking about how investors had “squeezed his business away,” everyone was very surprised. There were no prerequisites for this, no one infringed on his rights,” says the investor. According to him, after the interview the co-founders decided that they could no longer work together, Denis wrote a letter of resignation, receiving the required compensation.
“Now he is working on the same Ugears, only in metal. By the way, we at Ugears discussed this idea back in the spring, but we won’t make any complaints against him, we don’t see any point in it, there’s enough room on the market for everyone,” says Shestak.
The transition from Ugears to new projects was not easy for Denis: “There were moments when you were sitting at home, in a Khrushchev building, designing a mechanism, it didn’t work out, and you thought: “I’m a loser.” And you convince yourself that you are creating an international company. You just need to go through a moment of despair and disbelief in order for things to start working out.”
In six months, Denis managed to come up with and launch two new startups at once - Time 4 Machine and Pagl. Both were presented at the recent Spielwarenmesse toy fair in Nuremberg.
As Denis says, the idea to make mechanisms from metal came to him in a dream. “I had a dream about a golden loaf: a sliced loaf with slices made of different metals. And in the morning, while I was making coffee, it dawned on me: after all, 3D puzzles can be made from metal,” he says. This is how the Time 4 Machine project was born. Regarding the similarity of the mechanisms with Ugears puzzles, Denis says that it is difficult for him to move away from his own design style.
The project already has investors - Alexander Tulko from USPCapital and Nick Belogorsky. Denis says that he wanted to attract Nick as an investor after his website. Nick came to Kharkov for the day, with a very strict schedule, and Denis had exactly half an hour to “sell the project.” Now investors have given the project a small seed round, but, according to the founder, Time 4 Machine needs at least another $200,000 investment to purchase equipment. Therefore, it is planned to launch on Kickstarter in the spring.
Denis' son Zakhar tests the first Time 4 Machine models
Pagl blocks are toys made from paper pulp (virgin cellulose) that can be used as construction sets. The investors of this project are Igor Liski, Effective Investments and Sergei Rudkovsky, deputy head of the Zhytomyr Cardboard Mill (ZhKK is part of the Effective Investments group of companies).
These cubes can be nested one inside the other and stored in packs of 126 pieces. They are easy to dispose of, and there are plans to collect them for recycling in the future. Denis calls this project revolutionary in the sense that it is a new model for using toys: cheap blocks that you can play with for a couple of weeks, and when you get tired of them, you can recycle them.
Both projects developed at an almost panicky pace: the team wanted to be in time before the January exhibition. Denis evaluates the results of the exhibition in Nuremberg very positively. “Many representatives of large retail came up, there was a feeling that in our alley of new companies our stand was the only one operating. True, I thought everyone would say about the cubes “they look like Lego LEGO,” but they were compared to egg trays", the entrepreneur laughs.
They also want to launch this project on Kickstarter; in order to develop, it needs from $200,000 to $400,000. Denis plans to launch the first sales before the fall of this year. Metal puzzles will sell for approximately $20-30 per model, a set of 160 cubes will cost $30. The main markets for toys are the USA and Europe.
