Female, Immigrant Founder of Shopperations is Changing Marketing

After more than 15 years in the Consumer-Packaged Goods industry, –is now a successful software entrepreneur.

Advancements in digital technology have profoundly impacted the way we live. Some obvious examples may come to mind—ease of communication, access to information and more. What you may not realize, though, is the impact on marketing. The media landscape is vast and spread out. With so many new avenues competing for consumers’ attention, the in-store experience has never mattered more. That’s why Shopperations in Cincinnati designs tools to help people marketing to shoppers make more informed decisions.

“I worked in the Consumer-Packaged Goods (CPG) industry for years, and we had so many spreadsheets, PowerPoints, constant email requests for internal reports and status update meetings. Even after scrubbing my budgets for hours, I still didn’t feel like I knew my numbers,” said Olga Yurovski, Founder & CEO of Shopperations. “That’s when I realized a real-time system where people could collaborate, standardize documents, streamline reporting—basically eliminate the headaches—would be welcomed.”

Shopper marketing deals with all the ways consumers can be influenced in the process of making purchasing decisions, i.e. through packaging design, displays, promotions and more. Shopperations is a web-based solution built to organize the data that retailers, advertisers, and brands use to plan their efforts towards converting shoppers into buyers. With collaborative discussions, notifications, visual calendars and automated budget reports, these seemingly spread out teams can work together to achieve the best result—increased sales.

“We took all the spreadsheets and PowerPoints these teams were working with separately and put them under one roof, connected to the cloud,” said Yurovski. “It saves them time, improves their workflow and helps them keep track of where their budgets are being spent. Ultimately, we hope marketers can become smarter, more productive and more agile in their efforts.”

Yurovski is originally from Dnipro, Ukraine. She came to the U.S. for the first time at age 18 as a foreign exchange student, fell in love with the country and vowed to come back. In her 20s, she left a job at P&G Ukraine and returned to the U.S. for school. Following undergraduate and graduate education in North Carolina and Arizona, Yurovski wound up in southwest Ohio, a center for CPG companies. It’s the place she’d build her career, and later—her dynamic shopper marketers’ solution.

To learn the ins and outs of startups, Olga became a member of Cintrifuse, an Ohio Third Frontier partner focused on helping early-stage companies in Cincinnati. Simply through getting out there and networking with the right people—including a group of six technical female founders she meets with every two weeks—Olga began to navigate the challenging path of building a business. After securing support from another Third Frontier partner, CincyTech, and completing the UpTech accelerator, Olga turned her idea into Shopperations—which now works with big-name clients like Conagra Brands and Heineken USA.

Olga says she’s faced many obstacles as a female, immigrant founder, but she’s battled to make Shopperations a success.

“I think there are challenges to being a female founder. There is an emotional burden I carry to handle the expectations of being the best mother and entrepreneur I can be. But people also remember me more because of my accent, and that’s an asset,” said Yurovski. “I have a drive, a hustle, that motivates me to be a success. I think when you’re in that position, you need to let the adversity fuel you, not get you down.”