You're reading: Made in Ukraine: Bookmarks rack up online sales abroad

Those who tend to get lost in a book can now find their feet – literally.

A Ukrainian entrepreneur found success producing quirky bookmarks that look like legs sticking out of a book.

Olena Mysnyk has sold online 12,000 bookmarks worth $150,000 in 2016 alone. Her bookmarks featuring human legs or animal paws and tails are now sticking from books all over the world.

While her handmade bookmarks are of high demand in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Japan, Australia and South America, where they are sold for $20-$30, they are not quite as popular in Ukraine, even though they are cheaper here, being sold for $15.

Artem Novitsky, a barista at a Kyiv bookstore My Book Shelf, where the bookmarks are sold, says that their price makes for bad sales.

“Most customers like the bookmarks. They look at them, but put them back right after seeing how much they cost,” he told the Kyiv Post.

Apart from My Book Shelf, in Ukraine the bookmarks can be purchased in online shops Yakaboo and Chicardi. They are available internationally on Etsy, Amazon and Fancy.

Etsy, a platform for selling handmade items, is the biggest source of customers for Mysnyk’s bookmarks.

Mysnyk says that selling items on Etsy is easy – it takes 10 minutes to register a shop and five minutes to post a product for sale. The outlet charges sellers a 3.5-percent fee per transaction.

“You need to sort out the platform, speak English, write good descriptions and take good pictures,” she says.

Artistic soul

Mysnyk, 32, says that it wasn’t a surprise for anyone in her circle when some six years ago she came up with the idea for the unusual bookmarks. She’s always been creative and loved to make things.

“I always built houses on trees and created jewelry out of wire found in my dad’s garage,” she told the Kyiv Post.

Mysnyk holds a degree in architecture from the Kyiv National University of Civil Engineering and Architecture. She says that the college contributed to her creative skills.

The idea for the leggy bookmarks came to her in a very visual way.

“I was at my friend’s home when in the middle of the mess in the kids’ room I saw a doll lying in a book with its legs sticking out of it,” Mysnyk said.

Instead of asking anyone their opinion about this concept, the entrepreneur decided to check whether they would buy it or not. She believes that this is the only effective way to see if the product will bring money as “simply talking about it is all theoretical”.

By the time she made her first bookmark, she has already had a shop on Etsy, where she had been selling handmade jewelry, which she eventually stopped doing as it was more time-consuming yet less popular than the bookmark project.

Olena Mysnyk displays one of the bookmarks produced by her company MyBOOKmark. (Oleg Petrasiuk)

Olena Mysnyk displays one of the bookmarks produced by her company MyBOOKmark. (Oleg Petrasiuk)

Production

Having started with a couple of designs, today the company, called MyBOOKmark, sells more than 150 variations of handmade bookmarks and employs 14 people.

Their traditional designs are the ones with people’s legs – men’s and women’s in different shoes, socks, and positions. They also produce bookmarks with animals and fictional creatures like mermaids, unicorns, and dragons. Apart from that, the company makes themed or seasonal collections, including a Christmas collection with bookmarks featuring Santa Claus, a gingerbread man, and a snowman.

Mysnyk is still the one coming up with the designs, but now she has a team of employees to make bookmark prototypes, replicate them, and do marketing.

The businesswoman says that the company did a research recently that showed that despite the original purpose of a bookmark, their customers don’t read much and mostly buy the products as presents.

Orientation abroad

Mysnyk’s MyBOOKmark was launched as an export-oriented company. Mysnyk says she is glad that they focused on the foreign audience right away as “otherwise the company might have not existed now.”

She says that back in the days when she participated in fairs and exhibitions with her jewelry in Ukraine, she started showing her first bookmarks to customers but they didn’t share Mysnyk’s excitement about the product, saying it was too expensive for a bookmark.

Mysnyk says that today they see some sales in Ukraine but only in those places that manage to present them as “those legendary bookmarks that conquered the world.”

“Our people need prestige,” she says.

Nevertheless, the Ukrainian sales make for only a couple percent of the company’s yearly income.

Mysnyk says that unlike Ukrainians foreigners understand that it is a spectacular present, and appreciate that it’s handcrafted.

The company plans to expand the product range with magnets, brooches and more.

About MyBOOKmark:

Outside Ukraine, the MyBOOKmark sells on: www.mybookmark-shop.com, www.etsy.com, www.amazon.com.

In Ukraine, the bookmarks are sold at: My Book Shelf (7 Pushkinska St.) 9 a.m. – 9 p.m., Chikardi (86P Kazymyra Malevycha St.) Mon-Sat 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., or online at www.yakaboo.ua.