We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Valeriia Illiashenko. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Valeriia below.
Valeriia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.
The story of my business is directly related to my family because it is thanks to my grandmother Tamara and mother Tatiana that I have been creative since I was young. I draw, knit cross-stitch. I remember even making toys for myself from improvised materials, from cardboard and scraps of fabric, which I found in my grandmother’s closet. The 90s were not the easiest years for my family and for Russia in general, it was very difficult to find something and even more difficult to find funds for it. I still remember how my mother sewed mini bedding for me as a gift for a do-it-yourself doll bed and I used to put my cat to sleep there. Now we live in different times and, fortunately, we have the opportunity to buy certain things for decor or for home in general, but despite this, I still try to buy simple like blank canvases and then turn them into something beautiful, unique, worthy of admiration. It’s the same with my business, it’s not just selling dreamcatchers or brooches, it’s something more. In Turkish there is a beautiful expression “Ellerine sağlık” (health to your hands), it is just very suitable for us, for creative people. After all, with these hands we bring beauty into the world, we create objects of art that not only delight people for many years, but give them aesthetic satisfaction, and sometimes mental.
Now my business has grown a little, for the last 2 years, in addition to dreamcatchers, I have been creating unique brooches for clothes and bags, and recently I created a unique men’s bracelet with an emerald. My husband influenced the development of my business, he created a website for me (https://valamur.com/). This is not just a site, it is a corner where anyone can not only buy something but also visit my blog, where I tell mysterious legends about dreamcatchers, give the opportunity to learn a little about my cozy hometown of Khabarovsk and generally get acquainted with the elements of Russian culture, for example with our symbol Cheburashka.
Now we are thinking about expanding my business, my husband wants to create a line of designer t-shirts and souvenirs that reflect the culture of Colombia. And I also have a dream that someday I will have the opportunity to teach my daughter all the crafts that my family has taught me.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I come from the small city of Khabarovsk, which is located in the Far East of Russia. It’s just an hour away by ferry, and you’re already in China. I lived there for 21 years, after which I had the opportunity to get a scholarship to study in Turkey, where I met my husband from Colombia. I have been living here in Colombia for two years now, but we still speak neither Spanish nor Russian; we speak Turkish. All our friends are surprised by this fact.
After moving to Colombia, I began to look for a way to get ahead because I had no friends, family, or work here. Creativity helped me cope with my new life. I continued to make dreamcatchers for my husband’s relatives and friends, and slowly, orders from new customers began to arrive. Some of them are now my regular customers. I have expanded the variety of my products; now on my website, you can see not only dreamcatchers but also brooches, accessories for glasses, bracelets, Christmas decorations, and, of course, Russian sweets. I think this is just the beginning.
The distinctive aspect of my brand is the focus on the client. I don’t sell standard products; always, together with the client, we think over the design, discuss colors, and consider material options. Let me give you some examples. Recently, I had a client who wanted a dream catcher for herself, reflecting mother nature, the forest, greenery, and birds, and I made just such a dreamcatcher for her using only natural materials and colors. On another occasion, I received an order for a brooch in the shape of a seahorse in the same colors as the client’s dress. Probably the most striking example would be my personalized brooches in the form of pets; I embroider them from photographs. My first such work was of my cat, Savannah. Later, I embroidered the cat Garfield for one of my friends; he liked it so much that he wears it, not his wife. I also received an order from Mexico to embroider two of my client’s cats and her two dogs. Such brooches not only become an everyday decoration of your image but also hold the memory of our family members.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I think the pandemic has made adjustments in the lives of all of us. Without exaggeration, it was a terrible period of my life. When it started, I was living in Turkey, and at that time, I was renting an apartment alone. My fiancé had returned to his homeland in Colombia six months before to find a job and a place to rent. For the first time, my mother had come to Turkey, and we traveled together. She went back to Russia, and later, I quit my job, sold all the furniture, and was ready to return the apartment to the owner. But just two days before my flight to Colombia, they closed the borders and canceled my flight. When it happened, I did not want to talk to my fiancé and parents for a week. I had to sleep on a blanket and use sheets instead of curtains since I had sold all our furniture, and my suitcases were already packed. In addition, we were planning to get married upon my arrival in Colombia. I already had the wedding date engraved on the rings and a trip to Peru paid for our honeymoon. I was broken. But thank God, I have very good friends. A friend came to Istanbul for me and helped me move all my suitcases to another city where my friends lived. I lived with them until the very reopening of the borders, and even during that time, I continued to create. I knitted a dress and a swimsuit, made some dreamcatchers, and drew. My hobbies saved me during that period. I always tried to occupy myself with something to think less and not worry about everything that was going on in the world. And so, after a year of separation, I flew to Colombia with five suitcases, half of which were filled with my materials for creativity.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
You can find my works in almost all corners of the world, including Russia, Europe, Turkey, the countries of the Middle East and Africa, and now clients from Latin America and the USA have become their owners. I always try to trust people and see only the best in them, so most often I accept payment after the work is completed. Sometimes, only if the client himself wants, he pays for the order immediately or makes an advance payment. In more than 10 years of experience in this field, I have not encountered a situation where a client did not get in touch or refused to pay for an order, even considering that I have clients from all over the world, belonging to different cultures and speaking different languages. They all equally take into account the fact that money is invested in each item, but most importantly, they respect the time spent on making dreamcatchers or brooches. My husband does not support me in this approach to business, and he always scolds me if I do not take an advance payment and later go to buy materials and start making a dreamcatcher or brooch. And once in all these years, I unfortunately stumbled upon such a client. It was a non-standard dreamcatcher, requiring a lot of time and not a few financial costs. She simply stopped responding to my messages. Yes, it was very disappointing, but despite this unpleasant situation, I continue to believe in people and will continue to trust my intuition, believing that this amazing and wonderful dreamcatcher, in which I have invested so much work and soul, will find its owner and will bring daily joy to them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://valamur.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valamur_co/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valamur.co