Hi, my name is Anastasiia Arhunova, I am from Ukraine, born and raised in Luhansk. In 2014 because of the war I went to Kharkiv and I lived there until February 2022.  When the war started, I moved to France for one month, but realized quickly that I wanted to be in Ukraine. I moved to Lviv and I now am running our business from there.

After loosing a feeling of home in 2014, I established my own brand of home textile and clothes made of natural linen, named “Gnizdo”. It means “nest”  in Ukrainian,  the place where you always feel comfortable and free.  I associate myself with a migratory bird, which always returns to its nest - its country.

GNIZDO is a sustainable brand of home textile and clothes made of natural linen. We support the idea of slow fashion and create timeless things that are beyond fashion, definitely not available in the mass market.  We are inspired by folk traditional elements, local places, and people. It started with linen handmade home textile, adding lounge and daily clothes. We are a local manufacturer, using only natural materials. All linen has OEKO-TEX Standart 100 quality certificates. We have eco-packaging from recycled fabric and paper.

Before the war started we had our biggest part of orders in Ukraine and a small part in the global market. During the war, we had a pause of production and didn’t know what to do but after one months we started to sell out items for saving the team of the brand and to keep small business going in Ukraine.
Now, due to war we should redirect to sell all over the world more, we need to save working places and to show Ukrainian brands to the world! We are proud of being part of this brave companies!
We have iconic and natural products, very suitable for the Dutch market and we want to sell in more show rooms and corners offline and at local online platforms. We would be happy to have contact of home goods shops and retailers, as well as clothing and fashion segment and to participate in fashion weeks, etc.

The profit we will make with with this project will be used to analyze the market for export. In the future, we need to set up advertising in these markets and sell our products there. Also we want to create a new collection inspired by folk textile in modern style and to show part of our culture to the world.