Our Story
Fifteen years. Four startups. A tennis court, a dorm printer, a grandmother's surname. The story of a brand told as a constellation of the people who, without planning to, built it.
Scroll the story — the graph follows. Tap a node — the story scrolls to it.
Tap any node to see its connections
2006
Nikita watches Roma Andrukhov play at a tournament. Roma trains with a guy named Zhivitsky — who plays brilliantly. A face remembered, a name not yet known. Nothing happens. The thread is cast.
2011
Medical university. Nikita buys a secondhand printer-scanner from a dorm neighbor. It collects dust for 8 years. In 2019 it scans Alina's first paintings and starts the brand.
2012
Nikita meets Alina at a cardiology conference in Minsk. She becomes his wife. Her illustrations become the brand's entire product line.
2013
Alina's grandmother: a repressed ethnic German woman. Surname: Gräfenstein. Filed away in memory. It will matter.
2014
First startup: Liber — a reading app with text-to-speech and curated reading plans. Julia Arhipova believes in the idea and makes the first investment. The project runs out of money and momentum. But Julia's belief is the first proof that strangers can see something real here.
2015
Second startup: AIQ — Artificial Intelligence Questioner. The idea: after reading any text, AI generates comprehension questions. Good idea, wrong moment. No investment follows.
Early 2016
Third startup: GeoMeetry — show meeting participants on a map 30 minutes before arrival. A surgeon from Grodno recommends a young designer he once attended art school with: Alexandra Novitskaya. She joins. The project dies. But Alexandra is now in the network.
Early 2017
A hackathon at Skolkovo, organized by MTS and Oracle. Nikita takes an overnight bus, arrives in Moscow, washes his hair at a gas station, walks in fresh. He builds a new MVP for AIQ in 48 hours with a team he meets on the spot. First place. In the crowd: Julia Capkova, Skolkovo HR. Returns home. No investment follows. Another failure. But Julia is now in the network.
Late 2017
On a hospital night shift, Nikita notices a patient wearing a t-shirt that says "Shikardos" — a brand called Benya & Zubrik. Something clicks about printing art on fabric.
2018
Nikita and Alina visit Olga Sorokina's atelier — Sorokina Fashion Lab. They see what real garment-making looks like, how fabric becomes something with a soul. Prices are high. The idea of building a real brand — not just prints on blanks — is planted.
Late 2018
Nikita wants a tattoo: "Alina." Research reveals the name derives from the German Adelheida. He remembers the grandmother's surname: Gräfenstein. Two threads becoming one.
November 2019
The 20 BYN printer from 2011 finally earns its price: Nikita uses it to scan Alina's paintings for the first time. The results are beautiful. Something is now possible.
Early 2020
Alina's first painting goes up on the wall at home. Her art is becoming a body of work.
February 2020
Adelheida Gräfenstein. A repressed grandmother's surname. The German etymology of a wife's name. A family history becomes a brand identity.
Late 2020
A production contact leads to first direct prints on t-shirts. A website goes up. Instagram. Targeted ads. First sale happens. But something feels off — it's printing on blanks, not a brand. White ink on black fabric looks flat. The heat press leaves a glossy mark. The product works, the brand feeling doesn't.
May 15, 2021
Nikita messages Julia Capkova — the Skolkovo HR from 2017 — asking her to be his mentor. She replies with a photo: Zhivitsky, wearing new Skolkovo merch. "He says hi." Nikita checks her Instagram. The tennis player he watched in 2006 — Roma Andrukhov's training partner — is now the founder of a company doing full-cycle merch production for IT companies. One photo. Fifteen years. Four degrees of separation.
May 16, 2021
Nikita contacts Roma Andrukhov — his old tennis acquaintance from 2006 — and asks for an intro to Zhivitsky. The intro is made within 24 hours.
May 28, 2021
Nikita meets Zhivitsky. Decision made: they will work together. The brand finally has a production partner who can do it properly.
June 8–10, 2021
Alexandra Novitskaya — who designed for GeoMeetry in 2016 — rejoins. Two t-shirt designs with Alina's illustrations. Packaging. Something still feels missing. A second designer is brought in for brand and marketing design. Two final shirts emerge.
Summer 2021
Photo shoot. Packaging. The brand is real. Products ship.
Late 2021
Meta and Instagram paid ads. The unit economics don't work. Customer acquisition cost is too high to be sustainable. The brand pauses. Not a failure. A proof of concept missing its distribution channel.
2024
A tennis court. Nikita meets Andreas Aurhammer — Managing Director of Nitro Snowboards Entwicklungs-GmbH. A conversation about art. About surfaces. About snowboards. About what Alina's illustrations might look like on a board flying down a mountain. The next chapter is being written.
“Every person in this story was met by accident. None of it was planned. All of it was connected.”
The full constellation