Yulia Romantsova: You can't work on a project unless you're completely in love with it

In early 2026, Yulia Romantsova was named one of the "Top 10 Female Executives in Ukrainian Business" by Dilova Stolytsya. Her company was founded during the full-scale Russian invasion and already holds the second-largest share of the tea market in Ukraine — accounting for approximately 9% of sales.

In a conversation with DS, Romantsova spoke about restarting production at the onset of the full-scale war, her responsibility to her team and partners, effective leadership, and entering new, sometimes unexpected markets.

— You have been in the tea business for many years. Which achievements are you most proud of? How did you find the courage to restart production and launch new brands during a full-scale war? What were the main challenges you had to overcome? And what is your personal management principle — the one you cannot imagine a working day without?

— What I am most proud of is that we did not stop when everything around us seemed to have stopped. At the start of the full-scale invasion, we made a decisive choice to discontinue our existing brands and rebuild the company from the ground up. At the same time, we had to hold the team together and keep the company running, because it is part of Ukrainian business, and business must keep going.

That is when the work of building a company, brands, and products from scratch began. Production started on the 1st of March 2022, running one shift. By April 1st we were already running 24/7. I remember very clearly my conversations with the leadership of Obukhiv city administration in early March and they helped us fuel our trucks so we could deliver to our partners. Very often, one vehicle would carry products to a retail client, to the Territorial Defence Forces, and as humanitarian aid to Okhmatdyt children's hospital all at once.

There was a time when we could not plan far ahead. It was day-by-day, and you were grateful if you could plan the night too. But it was also a time when every member of the team simply took their part and did it as well as they possibly could. Creating new brands became the thing that kept our minds going. It is no surprise that the first brand born in that period was Trypillya Sun.

Later, we would joke as a team that you could learn the history of the Trypillian civilisation from our first packaging, because we put everything into that brand: the design, the story of the mother-protector, the sun, and the idea of shielding people from threat, warming them, creating a safe and comforting moment for them.

Then came Sherlock Secrets and Tea Moments. These were already about our ambitions, about what the team could and wanted to create for a discerning consumer. That is how we rebuilt ourselves. We buried the old business, and we had the courage to do so. And then we believed that our team could build something from nothing and create products that would make people happy.

We restarted the business, built new brands, restored trust with our partners, and kept our team together. For me, this is not just a business result, but proof that a Ukrainian team can achieve something strong even in the hardest conditions.

The courage came from a simple sense of responsibility to our people, partners and country. We understood that we had no right to wait for "better times." We had no right to do nothing.

The main challenges were that while launching new brands, we also had to ensure our partners could close out sales of the brands we were discontinuing. We fought in court over frozen equipment and bank accounts, and over repaying loans that had been taken out for working capital, all while having to pay our suppliers on time, because we understood that everyone was struggling. We were operating with staff shortages, power outages, and broken supply chains.

But the hardest thing was keeping the team's inner belief alive every single day.

My management principle is simple: always believe in your own strength and in the strength of your team. Believe that we can do great things and ambitious projects. The energy of people who believe in the result can make the impossible happen.

— What do you see as the future of tea culture in Ukraine? And the future of Trypillya Sun? In 2025 you recorded your first net profit since the start of the full-scale invasion. What drove that growth, and what keeps motivating you to develop the business?

— I believe tea culture in Ukraine will become deeper, more conscious, and more emotional. Ukrainian consumers stopped seeing tea as just a basic commodity a long time ago. People are looking for taste, emotion, quality, and authenticity. I think there is a real future for Ukrainian producers not in copying approaches from elsewhere, but creating our own modern tea culture.

For Trypillya Sun, I see the future in strengthening our position in Ukraine and actively expanding into international markets. We have already proven that we can build brands that resonate with consumers. Now our task is to scale that result.

When it comes to growth drivers, it is definitely not one factor. It is a combination of many things, including how we communicate with consumers. One of the best examples from recent projects is the national campaign for Sherlock Secrets, run in partnership with Breakfast with 1+1, Ukraine’s most popular morning show, where the brand became the title sponsor.

The core idea of that campaign was that every consumer of our product has their own tea story, a moment our product helped create. We asked people to share those stories. Every voice matters, and every story that comes in is read by two teams: the Breakfast with 1+1 team and ours.

Choosing the best stories each week is the hardest part, because they are all so different. Stories about people who lost their homes and are finding themselves in new cities. Stories about the anxiety felt by families of soldiers. Stories about tea moments at the front line. So many real, emotion-filled stories.

Each week, the teams choose those they want to support. The main prize at the end of the campaign is that the winner will create a new Sherlock Secrets product with us and present it live on Breakfast with 1+1. Yes, there is a cash prize too, but I believe the act of creating your own product is the most valuable part.

All the stories shared with us will be collected into a book, published in a limited edition, where you can hear the voices, thoughts, and moments of Sherlock Secrets drinkers. After the campaign closes, we are planning the next one to be about magical and beautiful moments. We will have a very strong partner joining us to complement the happy times of Tea Moments with special gifts. I will not reveal the secret yet, but I am confident our Tea Moments drinkers will be delighted.

Other drivers are no less important: new product lines working across the pleasure, healthy lifestyle, and bright emotions segments. We believe that right now, warm and happy feelings are exactly what Ukrainians need.

International growth is another powerful driver. 2025 was the year we made our first significant leap in exports, a growth of nearly 640% compared to the previous year. Our products are now visible on shelves in Moldova, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, and Romania.

The big challenge this year is opening new markets, including the UK. Most people smile when I say a Ukrainian tea producer plans to supply one of the most significant and established tea markets in the world. But I believe our products will find a place in the hearts of British consumers.

The first step was research, and it shows we can surprise people and carve out our own space even in such a mature market. We are now preparing for our first exhibition in the UK: the Food & Drink Expo in Birmingham. The exhibition organisers selected our Tea Moments brand to take part in the opening panel, called Taste of Future.

I believe this is just the first step, and we will soon be able to share new results from the Ukrainian tea company in the UK market without the smiles of disbelief.

Operational efficiency, digital technology, and production modernisation are also key drivers. In 2025, we invested over 25 million UAH in production equipment. In 2026, we are launching a project to fully equip the production facility with solar panels and transition to green energy.

We continue to work on corporate governance, which gives the company a more systematic approach to development. I must also mention a milestone from the start of this year: the beginning of our partnership with the bank FUIB, which believed in us and in our future. It started with the FUIB team visiting our production facility. After the tour and tasting, I heard the words that are always a ray of sunshine for any leader: "We believe in you and are ready to grow together with you." Accessing a credit portfolio on very competitive terms will allow us to develop not only the Ukrainian market faster and more significantly, but also to scale more confidently in export markets.

And finally, I want to say a few words about the most important driver of all: our team. And I mean not only our internal team, but also our partners. They are the ones who give us the opportunity to get better every day and to best serve our consumers. Partners are usually placed in the external environment, but I think of us as one team doing difficult work together every day. And that is what gives us great inspiration.

— Ukrainian big business has long been seen as a "boys club." Have you experienced this yourself? What qualities of women's leadership do you think are most undervalued in business today? Does a company's culture change when it is led by a woman?

— You might be surprised, but I have not experienced that. I have always been surrounded by interesting people. I genuinely love conversation. There is one small pattern though: our meeting or conversation might start on any topic, but it almost always ends with the person falling in love with our products.

You cannot work on a project if you are not completely in love with it and do not believe that this is truly your place. When that is the case, gender makes no difference, people always feel it.

Professionalism matters just as much. You have to be an expert in your field, there is no way around it. Systematic thinking, analytical skills, and a mathematical mindset help enormously.

I have always been lucky: the people around me include some I have known for over ten years. But every new encounter brings something fresh and interesting. Sometimes it is a real battle — but it always ends with a good cup of tea.

You are running a long-distance marathon. Without quality decisions, composure, and belief in the result, you will not make it.

I do not want to separate women's leadership from men's leadership. For me, gender does not matter. There are leaders and there are managers. A leader is someone who inspires and walks alongside the team. A real leader listens, feels, and supports. But they also know how to be firm in their decisions. Hard decisions are always there and they are necessary. You make them based on the values of the company and your own. Yes, you are protecting the company, but the decision must be balanced and must not violate those values.

When a company is led by a leader, the culture can genuinely change. It is about attentiveness to people, about the quality of communication, about meaning within the company. But it never means lowering standards or avoiding accountability. It is about respect for people, for goals, and for results.

But I will share my secret: only happy people create happy products. So sometimes I start a conversation with a strange question: "Are you happy today?" In wartime, at home, that is sometimes a hard question. But war has taught me to value every moment and to live it fully, giving one hundred percent of myself.

— How do you manage to combine the intense work of being a CEO with your personal life and recovery? Do you have rituals or habits that help you maintain balance and avoid burnout? Who or what supports you most during difficult times? If you were to describe your career as a cup of tea, what would it taste like?

— Honestly, the word "balance" does not mean perfect equilibrium every day for me. It is more like a constant returning to yourself, understanding where you are right now, how much resource you have, and what you need so as not to lose your inner grounding.

Simple things help me enormously: time in silence, tea as a moment of pause, conversations with people close to me, sometimes reading, sometimes just the chance to be without decisions and without noise. It is important for me to step out of the operational flow, even briefly, so I can see the bigger picture again.

In difficult times, what supports me most is people. My team, my family, those who are there not just in moments of success. And I am also sustained by a sense of meaning. When you understand what all of this is for, it becomes much easier to hold on.

If I were to describe my career as a cup of tea, it would be a complex, full-bodied taste. A strong base, with bitter notes of experience, but always with warmth and a long finish. Not a simple tea, but a real one.

— What advice would you give to young women who dream of leading major companies? And what does success mean to you personally today?

— My advice is: do not wait for permission to be strong, and do not be afraid to dream. Do not wait for someone to decide you are ready. Learn, work, take responsibility, do not shy away from hard decisions, and do not try to be "convenient" at the cost of your own ambitions.

It is important to raise the bar for yourself every day, to set new goals, to celebrate and appreciate the results you achieve and the people you achieve them with. Share your experience, be present with people, give energy, and stay open to receiving it in return.

One more thing: do not build a career on endurance alone. Yes, strength is necessary. But you also need thinking, a system, inner grounding, and self-understanding. A big role is not just about status — it is about the scale of responsibility.

Today, success for me is not only about numbers, though results do matter. Success is when you are building something real. When your team grows alongside the business. When your decisions carry meaning, and when you can respect yourself for the path you are walking.