Our Story | Lapa.shop

The History of the Lapa.shop Project — Who Founded It and Why?

Hi! My name is Kate Yugosh. I am a felinologist (a cat specialist) and co-founder of the Lapa.shop website for selling pedigree pets.

I became passionate about felinology in 2016. It all started when my husband and I got a cat that won our hearts with her beauty and difficult character. At that time, I started a blog about cats, which over a few years grew into a large cat website Murkotiki, where articles are written by felinologists and veterinarians.

Of course, I couldn’t lag behind, so I completed felinology courses within the WCF (World Cat Federation) system. This allowed me to write articles using academic knowledge rather than relying solely on personal experience, which is known to be quite one-sided. During the courses, I was particularly captivated by the topics of cat nutrition and animal psychology. After the courses, I began to study these subjects in depth.

In parallel, my husband and I came up with the idea of creating a website for selling pedigree kittens and puppies from legal breeders, completely excluding any fraud on the part of the sellers. But at that time, in 2019, the project seemed too great a responsibility for me. After all, we would have to select breeders, provide certain guarantees to buyers, and deal with money transfers through the website.

But after 2 years, we found ourselves morally prepared. By that time, we had acquired a cat and a dog. And as parents of three living beings, we recognized that the idea of the project was not as daunting as it seemed. But in vain. Because it turned out to be extremely difficult!

First and foremost, we need to properly select breeders and not allow puppy/kitten mills masquerading as certified breeders onto the website. Yes, there are such people even among officially registered breeders. But at the same time, we need to attract many breeders so that buyers have a wide choice of kittens and puppies. But are there that many good breeders in Ukraine? And how do we get them to join a website that has no buyers?

But until there are kittens and puppies on the website, there won’t be any visitors either. In general, we faced a typical problem for marketplaces: what came first, the chicken or the egg? And we’re not unique in this.

The year 2020

The start of the Lapa.shop project can be considered 2021, although in reality, it fell at the end of 2020. I initiated the project, while my husband Ruslan was in a state of professional burnout from another internet project, where he had become bored, having worked without a vacation for 5 years. But after the first month of work, I experienced burnout, as it turned out that the project had many technical difficulties, and breeders were not flocking to us en masse to post their kittens.

When you’re a newcomer in the market and no one knows you, few are willing to cooperate with you. The story of Airbnb immediately comes to mind, where the creators initially went door-to-door themselves, persuading homeowners to list their properties on the short-term rental website. Thanks to the first twenty breeders who believed in us. Some didn’t even know us personally, but simply liked our idea.

The technical component of the project also proved to be difficult. For people without experience in e-commerce, it’s extremely difficult to create even a simple online store, let alone a multi-vendor marketplace. As a result, we made mistakes throughout the first year. Sometimes even on the advice of programmers who should have understood the subject better, but in fact, it turned out not to be the case.

In the second year, we corrected the gross technical errors and started working on improving the website, which we continue to do to this day. And today I can say that creating a well-designed marketplace is very resource-intensive. In general, after I struggled for 2 months, my husband took over the management. And, surprisingly, he recovered from the burnout he had experienced in the previous project. It turned out that the challenges on Lapa.shop were on such a scale that it became interesting for him.

The year 2021

At the beginning of the year, we ran an ad and waited for sales. I remember our first sale as if it were yesterday. It was January 10th. I remember the date so well because on that day my father passed away. We forgot to turn off the ad — and we received a call from some very wealthy people who bought the most expensive kitten, a Canadian Sphynx.

In those days, I understood the key idea for Lapa.shop. I thought to myself: here you are, your father has just died, and you’re selling cats — it all seemed so insignificant, so inconsequential, so petty, so meaningless. And the answer to this existential question arose by itself: I’m not just selling cats, I’m helping other people become happy, and for some, to cope with grief and overcome depression.

And we know how to earn money very well without this project, enough to feel good. But Lapa.shop has a high mission that is equally important whether everything is prosaic or the world around us is falling apart. The following year proved the correctness of this thought.

The year 2022

Just as the project started to improve its results and it was working out (classically, it takes 3-5 years to get a marketplace off the ground), the war began. With the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, business came to a halt. By the end of February, sales had stopped, and all bookings were cancelled without exception. Some buyers had left the country, while for others, the issue of a pet simply became a non-priority — the main thing was to stay alive. Instead of selling animals, we found ourselves receiving calls from breeders all over the country who were trying to evacuate and needed somewhere to stay or to temporarily house their kittens and puppies. We also received calls from ordinary people seeking advice on evacuating their pets. We found the phone numbers of volunteers involved in this effort and shared them.

We ourselves had no plans to evacuate since we live in a relatively safe city in western Ukraine. At the beginning of the war, when the fate of Kyiv was hanging by a thread, we even thought that if it fell, the capital would move to our city, and we would all somehow defend ourselves together. But thankfully, Kyiv held.

In March, April, and May, there were no sales at all. However, the website remained operational, and technical maintenance was carried out. All the people involved in the project continued working and receiving modest compensation from our other projects. In the summer, our faith paid off — occasional sales resumed. And in the fall, it became even livelier.

Having recovered a bit from the initial stress of the war, I went to marketing courses. And what can I say? I fell in love with marketing. It’s not just the science of the market. It’s an entire philosophy that teaches you how to set goals properly and not just achieve them, but achieve them in the most optimal way. For me, as a strategic thinker in life, this is very captivating.

But of course, the summer and fall sales did not cover the losses from the months of downtime. We ended the first year of the war with losses exceeding 100,000 hryvnias. We entered 2023 with these numbers. But it greatly strengthened our spirit. And it brought us much closer to our partners: through correspondence, many of us supported each other while sheltering from shelling.

The year 2023

At the beginning of 2023, the market picked up, but not within Ukraine, rather abroad. It was the gradual expansion into Western markets that allowed the project to stay afloat. A record for us was set on October 24, 2023: on that day, 15 cats were flown from us to the USA with various couriers, different airlines, to different airports.

In 2023, we sold pets to 20 countries around the world: Europe, America and Asia. Among countries by number of sales, Ukraine is still the leader (almost half, 46%). Among foreign countries, the undisputed leader is the USA (41% of all our sales). Next come Canada, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Switzerland with equal results. Single sales also occurred in 13 other countries around the world.

By the end of 2023, we:

fully covered our losses and started operating in the black;
began testing new directions — the sale of dogs and pet supplies;
brought another content manager onto the team;
met new couriers with whom we began successful cooperation;
strengthened the rules regarding veterinary control of kittens before traveling abroad.

The year 2024

We began 2024 in a much better mood than the previous two years. It was impossible to predict what would come next. Life, as it turned out, is completely unpredictable. By the end of 2024, we had our first customer consultant — my colleague, felinologist Olga. She enthusiastically took on the job and was a great help to us, especially in autumn when there were many customers.

At the end of 2024, we registered a company in England to make it easier to work with international clients. There were technical reasons why doing this through a Ukrainian firm was inconvenient. Besides, clients tend to trust reputable jurisdictions more, and England stands out with its unique charm and prestige.

The year 2025

I don’t like to share plans, so I’ll keep the details secret for now. But soon you’ll find out everything, once the plans come true and we’re summing up the results of the year!