™ by Me: Our Charity Drops Are Really Charitable

™ by Me: Our Charity Drops Are Really Charitable

The byMe clothing brand has been making people fall in love with Ukrainian clothing for 8 years. They started with a single seamstress and now have a team of 30 people at their production facility in Vyshhorod, a showroom on Khreshchatyk, and their own charity fund to help the Armed Forces and IDPs. The amount of assistance provided by the brand over the past two years exceeds UAH 20,000,000. People wearing the same byMe clothes hug each other on the streets of Ukraine and abroad, and they do not look away. How did they do it? We talk about it with the brand’s co-founders, Alina and Dmytro Serdyuk.

According to our observations, the ™ by Me brand has recently undergone a transformation. On the one hand, this impression is due to cultural projects, and on the other, charity projects. Why did you change your strategy or adapt it?

Indeed, we hear many people commenting on the feeling of these changes, but from the inside, to be honest, these are natural steps on the path we have been walking since our creation. Even before the full-scale invasion, we set out to make people fall in love with Ukrainian culture, back when it was not as widespread as it is now. We also began collaborating with foundations before the invasion, but in my opinion, we didn’t do it systematically enough. Therefore, the specific area of assistance has now become stronger: we support both the military and civilians in various ways.

How has your cooperation with charitable foundations developed?

Nowadays, charity drops are not something new. But we developed our approach to creating them even before the invasion. Back then, we made a capsule of socks with the “Everyone Can” foundation, and all the funds were transferred to them. We believe that a charitable initiative should be truly charitable, so there can be no “percentage of profits” or “percentage of income” that goes to help. For our part, as a brand, we invest our resources in a charitable cause. Our customers create added value when they buy this item. This way, both we and our clients equally invest in charity, rather than trying to cover the cost of the item. As a result, all our charity drops are 100% charitable.

At the time of the invasion, we were preparing the second capsule for Everyone Can, and we finished it. Then we thought: why not create our own foundation? We found out that charitable foundations can keep up to 20% of their funds for operational activities, but we have never used it. Everything we receive, we give away.

Who is in charge of the foundation? Do you have a single person or a team?

In 2023, the foundation’s team consisted of 5 people: us, a couple of our friends, Daryna and Oleksii, and another friend, volunteer and ATO veteran, Yaroslav. Since we wanted to ensure the proper distribution of aid — so that the cars and bulletproof vests would be on the balance sheet — there was a lot of paperwork, which Daryna took on. Oleksii and Yaroslav used their experience and skills to find and deliver the necessary items to the military. Dmytro and I make financial decisions about which items or collections will be used to fill the fund. We also give the sales and marketing teams a vision of how to communicate about it. Previously, this was done manually, but now we have developed a strategy for promoting ideas, collections, and involving other companies.

And how does your team perceive such “extra tasks”? Does it engage them?

At the end of last year, we presented our business strategy. To implement it, we need empathetic, caring people who share our values and find it natural to help whenever they can. The people working with us now meet these criteria. What’s most interesting is that they attract like-minded people to new vacancies. In other words, it’s more effective to post about a vacancy on our social media than to publish it on some job aggregator. We pay for work on a charitable collection the same way we would for a non-charitable one, but specialists can additionally feel that they belong to a good cause. They talk about this opportunity themselves and repost our collections without a reminder or any bonuses. When we organized an action with letters from displaced children to St. Nicholas, each team member took one or more of these letters to ensure the children received gifts. Afterwards, everyone said they were proud to work with a socially responsible brand. So, our strategy already takes the team’s contribution into account. Next, we are thinking about how to involve a wider range of people.

What business indicators are affected by your corporate social responsibility? What have you noticed?

We always tell our team that it is important to make money for the business, but the business must also be useful. It should bring something important to society. So the first indicator is the team’s involvement and belief in what we do. The second, and perhaps the most important, is our clients who keep coming back, who want to fall in love with Ukrainian culture. We get feedback that people choose our items because they share the same values, and the tag unites people. It’s like when you see someone wearing the same thing as you, you feel happy. That’s why our goal is to unite these conscious Ukrainians around us, because this is the foundation of a conscious society. There’s one more thing that’s hard to quantify with any single metric: the willingness to share our social mission. When production stopped in February 2022, we went to our customers and asked for support through certificates. It worked. Additionally, we see more customers and growing interest in charity collections.

And please tell us, how did you come to integrate Ukrainian cultural motifs into the collection?

We have always worked with Ukrainian motifs in some way. In 2019, our designer was looking for an idea for a floral print, which is a fairly traditional story for a spring collection. Then, her grandmother came to the table and suggested looking at the Red Book for inspiration. It was an instant decision to depict Ukraine’s rare plants, as they are native, beautiful, and in need of protection. In 2020, during the pandemic, we used the image of Hoverla to cheer up those who couldn’t travel. It’s the highest mountain in Ukraine, a symbol of freedom, inspiration — these were our associations at the time. Along with the Hoverla collection, we released a drop about the Tendra lighthouse, because what are mountains without the sea and vice versa. All of this was an experiment, so we were watching to see if people would respond to this approach of small collections. It turned out that people really liked it, and this became our special way. Now we plan our collections six months in advance. Moreover, when we first started creating the collections, most of the items were basic, and only a few were bright and recognizable. Several years have passed, and now there are no items in any By Me™ collection that lack meaning. We, Ukrainians, are used to being interested in other cultures, but it’s very important for us as a brand to inspire people to appreciate and protect what we have.

The Red Book is understandable, but how do you work with more complex topics, like the Berezil Theater, for example?

Today, anyone can find information about anything. But the question is, how do you distinguish the truth from stereotypes, myths, and fakes? This is where our responsibility begins, because for the sake of collections based on Kosiv ceramics, Petrykivka painting, or something similar, we conduct special research. It might involve studying books on the topic, going on an expedition, or consulting with museum researchers or other specialists. The fact that we make high-quality things that people want to wear is just the tip of the iceberg. We are also a bridge between researchers who have been developing their work in a closed academic world and the general public. We help people discover their own heritage.

Have you ever faced hate? Why were you criticized?

We had a collection dedicated to the most basic Ukrainian ornaments. To choose which ones to use, we relied on Olena Pchilka’s book and added her story about the symbolism of ornaments. In the comments, we received criticism from folklore students claiming that the symbolism is not scientifically proven. Also, there are two apocryphal stories about Les Kurbas: that he and Mykola Kulish were shot with the same bullet, and that he took a Ukrainian poplar sapling with him into exile. These are very emotional stories that touch us, conveying the spirit of the era of the Executed Renaissance. However, if we look at the dry facts, there were no diaries in the camps, no surveillance cameras. All we have are testimonies, legends, and stories from those who were also in the camp. So, we always have to balance facts with interpretation, and how people see them. We want our collections to spark public discussions, because we believe it can help people find their roots, love their traditions, and overcome the inferiority they’ve learned. Ukrainian culture is amazing. In the future, Ukraine will be one of the best, strongest, and in some aspects, the most developed countries. But for this to happen, we need to start building it now.

What steps, perhaps not so public, are you taking to achieve this?

Last year, we held a team training session to improve our Ukrainian language skills and learn the new spelling rules. At first, we thought it was so awkward to say “project” instead of “project.” But how differently you can view this change when you understand the historical background, when you realize what the Soviet regime did to the Ukrainian language. We have to re-establish these connections with the past in order to move forward — personally, as a company, and as a country.