On March 30-31, the large furniture conference FURNICON is taking place in Lviv. The event was organized by the Ukrainian Association of Furniture Makers together with the Lviv City Council and the Lviv Regional Military Administration. Today, the participants of the event were congratulated by the mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadovyi.
During the conference, they discuss the possibilities of creating a Lviv furniture cluster for further cooperation and creation of joint projects, as well as cluster training.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy congratulated the participants and called on business owners to unite, cooperate with other clusters of the city and invest in Ukrainian business in general.
“Why is it important? Today, Lviv has and will have new opportunities, so cooperating together can achieve ten times more than competing.
When I want a chair or a table for my home, I first look for a craftsman who can make it here. It’s not always cheaper, but I want it done by our hands, because then I’m investing in mine. “To one’s own, to one’s own” is exactly the principle that gave Ukrainians strength even 100 years ago,” emphasized Andriy Sadovy.
The head of the department of business industries of the economy management of the Lviv City Council, Halyna Zayats, emphasized the importance of the interaction of various clusters for the development of a modern city.
“The modern city is a large ecosystem, where different environments and components make up a single organism. Lviv is an example of such an ecosystem, parts of which are professional urban environments that are united in special clusters: IT, medicine, tourism, education, and others. The city provides them with financial support through special vouchers. Everything that was clustered became successful, because clustering gives synergy, in which each element strengthens the other,” said Halyna Zayats.
As the department of business industries told, today, on the first day of the conference, about 150 representatives of the furniture business of Lviv MTG, Lviv region and Ukraine took part in the event. The participants listened to the panel discussion “Creation of the Lviv furniture cluster – prerequisites, formation, working group”, and also learned about grant opportunities for the furniture business from Olesya Zaluska, director of the USAID Program “Competitive Economy of Ukraine”. In addition, cases of furniture company transformations, networking among colleagues and like-minded people, and cluster training were practiced in the warm “furniture” atmosphere of the event.
By the way, tomorrow, during the second day of the conference, the participants will visit furniture and fittings factories for educational purposes, accompanied by Lean consultant Olga Peretyatko. In particular, we are talking about the production of author’s furniture of the relocated company Brand Roomio, the company of furniture and carpentry accessories Häfele Ukraine, and the production of furniture and carpentry products of the company Varenycia Group.