- Company
- Sens (Ukrainian for “meaning”), a chain of bookshop-cafés in Kyiv (Pechersk district and Khreshchatyk Street) and Ivano-Frankivsk
- Scale
- Opened in December 2021; more than 100 employees; twentyfold growth
- Protagonist
- Oleksii Yerinchak, founder
- Decision point
- 2025: plans to open in Odesa and other cities
- Key concepts
- Value proposition; value creation and value capture; hybrid organisation; social entrepreneurship; effectuation
1. The business model at launch
- Idea: a space for the neighbourhood in Pechersk - a place for meetings and conversations. There was no business plan: “everything happened through coincidences that came together at one point”.
- Format: bookshop + café + cultural space. The name Sens was chosen over the alternative “Zakladka” (Bookmark).
- Founder: ran another business at the time; has no formal business education and no MBA.
- Opening: December 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. The shock: 2022
- Even before the invasion, Pechersk began to empty: wealthy residents and tenants were leaving.
- Most of the team left the city; the founder stayed in Kyiv.
- In the first weeks, Sens served as a volunteer hub for the neighbourhood, providing coffee, delivering medicines and helping elderly people, volunteers and soldiers.
- Summer 2022: the founder handed over the volunteer activities to others and returned to the business. Gradually, the entire pre-war team returned.
“It was not a strategy. It was a human decision: to be there. To be together. And to give others a place to act.”
3. How the business model adapted
| Business model component | Launch (2021) | After 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| Value proposition | A space for the neighbourhood | A community space and “place of strength”: experience and meaning rather than a transaction; a Ukraine-centred identity |
| Customer segments | Local residents | A community of people “for whom thinking matters”, across several cities |
| Customer relationships | Personal contact | Trust built during volunteering; loyalty through events |
| Channels | Physical space | Events, recommendations, TikTok, influencers; no discounts or promotions |
| Key resources | Premises, the founder | Community trust; a team that returned in full |
| Key partners | Publishers | Publishers are simultaneously suppliers and competitors (with their own online shops) |
| Revenue streams | Sales of books and coffee | The same, plus events; a non-governmental organisation (NGO) is planned to attract grants and partnerships |
| Management and organisation | Start-up: “everyone is responsible for everything” | Roles, areas of responsibility, a coach for the management team |
4. Four strategic responses to crisis
| Response | Decisions at Sens |
|---|---|
| Retrenchment | Temporary shift from commercial to volunteer activity |
| Persevering | The format was not changed: “we changed nothing in the format, we only increased volumes” |
| Innovating | The bookshop as a hub and a “place of strength”; growth into a chain; the idea of splitting into a business and an NGO |
| Exit | The founder stepped back from volunteer activities to focus on the business |
5. Key challenges of the model
| Area | Challenge |
|---|---|
| Finance | Lack of capital: the Khreshchatyk store opened only partially; loans and investors are unavailable |
| Grants | As a social business, Sens fits neither government programmes nor donor criteria |
| Market | Price dumping: publishers do not control their partners’ prices; in the first year, books could be bought only for cash |
| Logistics | Delays in reprinting popular titles, resulting in lost demand |
| Management | Balancing social and commercial goals; moving from a start-up to a systematic organisation |
6. The founder’s voice
“If we had calculated by the textbook, this project would not exist. But we do not work from a textbook. We work with faith.”
“The easiest part was communicating with people. The hardest was keeping the balance between the social and the commercial.”
7. The 2025 dilemma
The founder dreams of opening Sens in Odesa, and later in Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Lviv - “not as business scaling, but as an expansion of a cultural mission”. Yet capital is already scarce. He is considering three options:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| A. Expand | Open Sens in Odesa now, while there is public demand and the team has the energy |
| B. Consolidate | First complete the launch of the Khreshchatyk store and build systematic management; open in new cities later |
| C. Split the model | Establish an NGO for the educational mission to attract grants and partners, and develop the commercial part separately |
8. Discussion questions
- What is the value proposition of Sens? How does it differ from the value proposition of an ordinary bookshop?
- How did the volunteer activity of 2022 change the business model? Can community trust be regarded as a key resource in Canvas terms?
- Analyse the gap between value creation and value capture (Teece, 2010). How does this gap constrain adaptation and growth?
- What are the advantages and risks of splitting the company into a business and an NGO?
- Which option (A, B or C) would you recommend to the founder? Use the logic of effectuation and the affordable loss principle (Sarasvathy, 2001).
Sources: in-depth interview with O. Yerinchak; Kyryliuk, M. V. Data are reported as stated by the respondent as of 2025.