From a small home workshop to a model certified production facility built to international standards—this journey was made possible by the dream of making a Ukrainian product popular around the world. This is the story of the Ukrainian premium cosmetics brand Moon&Rune, whose founder became one of the 65 winners of the “CREATE!” program, receiving a grant to scale her business.
Moon&Rune, located in Dnipro, specializes in skincare, haircare, and bodycare products made with top-quality ingredients sourced from 45 countries around the world.
Thanks to the “CREATE!” grant program, Daria Tolstykh was able to purchase new production equipment, which allowed her to increase production volumes, automate manufacturing processes, and scale production by ten times.
With the grant funds, the entrepreneur acquired a reactor-homogenizer, which enabled full automation of the manufacturing process with real-time visualization during technological operations. As a result, both production speed and output significantly increased.
“My dream is to make Ukrainian cosmetics popular around the world, and thanks to the “CREATE!” grant, that dream is becoming a reality. Scaling our production will allow us to fully meet the demand from our international partners,” shares Daria Tolstykh.
In the video, the entrepreneur talks about how her business was transformed after participating in the “CREATE!” initiative, implemented by the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine, UMAEF, and the KSE Foundation, with support from OschadBusiness and the KSE Graduate Business School.