"A shovel is sexy". How ten volunteers turned an ordinary infantry shovel into a brand for donors

Shovels are the main tool of infantry. There should be a lot of them on the front line. However, at the beginning of the great war it became clear that there were not enough shovels. Even those that are available are of poor quality. Ten female volunteers from the IT company Prom.ua decided to focus their volunteering on them. From an uninteresting, "unsexy" infantry shovel, they created a unique brand called Zubata Lopata. Now, the evil face painted on the blade is well known to soldiers along the entire front line. They are eager to get these shovels.

In three years, the girls have managed to set up the production of durable and convenient tools, raise more than six million hryvnias and send 50,000 shovels to the front.

LIGA.net asked Aliona Krytsuk, the initiator and founder of the Zubata Lopata project, how she and the girls managed to turn an ordinary shovel into a brand and why the military appreciate Zubata Lopata so much.

"Volunteer for a week – find us shovels"

When the front line stabilized during the ATO, there was no particular need for shovels: the positions were dug and secured. If something needed to be dug up, one shovel per unit was enough. Everything changed dramatically with the start of the full-scale invasion.

"We started our story with Troshka," recalls Aliona. "At the beginning of the great war, territorial defense fighters were the least well off and had the lowest priority in the state funding lists. I understand why this happened: The TRO had just been created, they had not yet established all the processes. They were perceived as "yesterday's civilians, what can they do".

At the beginning of the Great War, many arrivals were for warehouses. Weapons and ammunition were disguised and transported, but uniforms and shovels were not. In June 2022, a law was passed that allowed the transfer of TROs outside their territorial community.

"They were able to do what infantry can do, because very often the TrOshnyky became attached units just like infantry. So there was an urgent need for shovels," says Aliona.

There were no shovels. And it was not just a matter of insufficient stock, but of the impossibility of purchasing them. The market offered the military to buy a classic large or small shovel: they use them to dig up apple trees or transplant geraniums. A small infantry shovel is specific: small, strong, and very sharp. They were produced for the military and tourists in extremely limited quantities. Moreover, the quality offered on the market at the time left much to be desired.

"If you volunteer for a week, find us some shovels. Only good ones, made of hardened steel," the volunteers told me. "Because in the East we have rocky soil. A shovel on stones – once, twice – either breaks or crumbles. In the South, our land is clay. It is also very difficult to dig in the cold in frozen clay. What can I do? If I need it, I'll find it," Aliona recalls.

Evil faces on shovels

Alyona's task was not an easy one: to supply all the units of the TRO that applied, about 200 thousand shovels were needed by June 2022. First, she had to find a production facility. At the time, the volunteer did not know that she would have to raise money for these shovels:

"We were very angry. Our anger at the Russians was so strong, so sincere," says the volunteer. "It was this anger that gave us the energy to search. There were rejections, there was disappointment. But I found a company that agreed to produce shovels of the configuration we needed. We changed the parameters and the thickness of the steel several times. In the end, in August 22, we had the shovel that is still working at the front today."

To make shovels, you need materials. The company's employees need to be paid, and the company itself needs to pay its bills. Everything needs money. But a shovel... It's just a shovel. You don't want to donate to it.

"We got together with our fellow colleagues, with whom we volunteered in other areas and worked at the IT company Prom.ua. We sat down and started thinking: how to raise money for shovels? How to explain to people why they need these shovels and why they should buy them? None of us had fought in the war, so we can't speak about it expertly. And anyway, a shovel is not sexy. Drones, cars, armor, turnstiles and helmets are. A shovel is absolutely not sexy compared to all of that, not at all."

Then the girls, with their knowledge and experience in marketing, decided to take a completely different path: to create a shovel character. They wanted it to tell its own story without intermediaries. The volunteers didn't see any point in thinking through the brand in detail: it was a temporary story, just to support the TRU in a difficult moment.

"We came up with the idea of drawing faces on shovels. Not perfect professional drawings, but ones that you can make with a marker in a hurry. We are angry, and the shovel is angry. It has furrowed brows, a look of 'I'm going to tear you, Russians, apart'. And it has teeth that bite into our land so that the military can defend it. Few people talk about this, but the mission of a volunteer, in addition to everything else, is also to create an emotional bridge between the home front and the military. It is the emotional support we send to the front that later formed the basis of our shovel coloring workshops."

Shovel teambuilding, branded T-shirts, and a "toothy" playlist

Alyona doesn't remember which of the girls came up with the name Zubata Lopata. But all the participants liked it. The first collection for shovels with faces on them was very successful. So much so that in addition to the wards of the TRO units, other military men – the girls' friends – also received shovels.

"But we kept thinking that we would support Troshka now and that would be it, and then we would do other volunteer work," recalls Aliona. "We just had to wait until the state system of supply was more reasonable... Other soldiers started to learn about us and sent us requests to provide them with shovels as well. Time passed, and winter was coming. The military began to ask: what about crusts? That's how Zubata Lopata got a sister, Kirka. So, as they say, it went on and on."

In 2023, the Offensive Guard was formed, consisting of nine assault brigades aimed at liberating Ukrainian territories. These formations were advertised on almost every billboard. However, there was a shortage of shovels even there.

"I asked, 'How is that possible, you must have good supplies,'" says Olena, "but all I heard was: "Please, give us shovels too. We really need them." And at the same time I received a strange letter in the mail, where a person wrote: "Why are you collecting money for shovels? They are not on the checklist of necessary items to take to the front!" In other words, people still didn't understand. And this is despite the fact that I still hear from the military that one shovel lasts one assault. Because it is clear that no one takes shovels when retreating. There are more important and expensive things."

The girls created a website for fundraising and reporting. There you can sign up for a subscription and become, for example, a steel digger: you need to make a contribution of UAH 943 per month. The donor receives nice bonuses, such as a "toothy" playlist for more energetic digging through daily tasks." If you can donate 3140 UAH per month, you will become a thunderous soil crusher. This proud title comes with a branded T-shirt and the opportunity to join Zubata Lopata's team parties every two months. Currently, there are 64 regular donors.

"We organized the first such party in 2022 during the blackout," recalls Aliona. "Usually, the shovels were sent directly to the front, but that time a batch of a thousand pieces came to our office. We thought: what if we offered our colleagues to paint together? Our colleagues were delighted: they saw what they had donated for, touched them with their hands, and sent emotional support to the military with these faces. And the military accepted this message with joy. Later, we often held such master classes. There was a time when, for a donation, we could be invited to the office for an unusual shovel team building. Of course, the volumes are large, and we don't have time to paint all the shovels. But when the military receive painted shovels, they want to take pictures with them themselves: here I am with a shovel near the art installation, here I am with it on the Bradley.

Pink shovel for the hospitaller

Not only classic evil faces come out from under the brushes: you can paint anything. That's why Alyona's collection includes photos of shovels with Petrykivka painting, the dog Patron, and a Russian military ship from the stamp of the same name. Someone paints Monet-style paintings on the shovels, someone paints a headless Putin, and someone just writes. "Take care of yourself," "Come back alive," "Greetings from Melitopol," "This shovel is charged to protect life." After the first digging, the paint wears off on the ground. However, the short-lived nature of the drawing does not stop the volunteers.

"We moved from corporate coloring books to festivals," says Aliona. "In '24, we were invited for the first time to FANCON, a Ukrainian festival of contemporary pop culture held in Kyiv. This year we were at FANCON and Atlas. Everyone could come up and join the coloring. We are known all along the front line, and now more and more civilians are learning about our activities."

Sometimes there are touchy moments in coloring: "We had this in EVO. A boy of about ten came up. He said, 'I want to color one shovel for my dad...' Another time, a hospital worker asked for a completely pink shovel. She didn't have to ask us for a long time. This shovel lives in her car: she doesn't dig trenches with it, she just digs the car out of mud or snow. That's why the pink color hasn't faded."

The military also touches us. Alyona recalls how a soldier came up to her at one of the events and asked, "Is that you? Look, I'll show you a quick picture. This is us near Soledar with your shovels. We dug up everything. We left the shovels for those who would come to the positions after us."

In addition to master classes, Alyona and the girls come up with various activities. For example, auctions. For the raffles, they manage to get lots such as books signed by the third president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, and Olympic champion and athlete Yaroslava Maguchikh. Blogger Serhiy Sternenko and former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Valeriy Zaluzhny signed shovels instead of books. They also raffled them off. Funds are raised through poker tournaments organized by our colleagues from Prom.ua. One such tournament can bring in about 200 thousand hryvnias.

"Shovels are no longer as urgently needed as they were a few years ago. Production, financing, our own purchases of teams and logistics have improved," says Aliona. "I recently looked at the requests and exhaled: there are no urgent ones. Now our task is to urgently support those who have been "hit". We need to replace broken, lost or abandoned shovels. We keep records in a handy program that shows who needs shovels, how many and when – the military themselves enter this data. Every month we order 1,000 shovels from the company, which have been in good condition for three years. The batch costs 157 thousand hryvnias, and one shovel costs only 157 hryvnias. Not only did we manage to set up production of high-quality shovels, but we also negotiated a very affordable price. This is the temporary support of Trushka... Yeah."