'People need a new start': Ukrainian businessman gives work to former prisoners in San Francisco

How and why a Ukrainian designer who moved to the United States from Odessa is hiring former prisoners, the newspaper said. with the BBC.

Photo: Shutterstock

A small startup of furniture designer Sasha Plotitsa, originally from Odessa, has attracted the attention of the leading US media.

The company Formr makes furniture from waste wood and employs former prisoners, writes The Washington Post. Hence the name, which is similar to the English word “former” - former.

The startup is based in a former service station in San Francisco.

Moving to America

“Sasha’s story began in Ukraine. He was seven years old when he and his parents left Odessa and moved to the USA,” the publication writes.

Sasha Plotitsa combined a love of creativity and a desire to be useful to society.

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“Perhaps it’s a midlife crisis—call it what you want. But I wanted to find a way to do what I have a passion for, which is design, and combine it with a social mission. I wanted to create opportunities for people who leave prison and start a new life,” says the designer.

Plotitsa was born in Odessa. At the age of 7, he moved with his family to the United States and subsequently settled in San Francisco.

The guy grew up in a creative family: his mother is an artist and plays the piano.

And his father has a construction company, in which Plotitsa worked for some time. There he was very struck by the amount of production waste that ends up in the garbage.

Work for prisoners

The future businessman graduated from the University of California at San Jose with a degree in industrial design.

From 2008 to 2018, he worked as a designer in a pharmacy that sells cannabis (medical use of marijuana was legalized in California in 1996, recreational use in 2016).

There he met former prisoners who had been imprisoned for cannabis.

“It opened my eyes to the fact that people all over the country are coming out of prison and starting new lives with many obstacles that make it difficult for them to find work,” Plotica says.

“It made me realize that these people need a fresh start,” he adds.

So the idea arose to hire former prisoners.

Even before that, the designer was not indifferent to social problems, the newspaper writes. In particular, he helped emigrants learn English and gave food to the homeless and people with HIV.

His family also sponsored families from Odessa looking for a new life and provided jobs for friends and family.

In the process of recruiting candidates, Plotitsa is not interested in reason for imprisonment.

“It’s not my place to judge their past. They have served their time and want to start a new life. I want to help them,” he says.

He currently has three part-time workers. One of them, Chris Wolf, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for murdering a man.

Carpenter says she strives not only to be the boss for the workers, but also to support them in life. It is recognized that this is not always easy.

The pandemic has also made launching a startup more difficult—not the best time to start a new business. The company officially started operating on March 11, 2020.

Several days after that, the authorities ordered people not to go to work, except for representatives of critical infrastructure.

“Three weeks after the launch, I thought about closing the company,” admits the designer.

But then things got better.

It also helped that the rise of online work has increased demand for home furniture. Plotitsa specializes in small furniture that adds comfort - shelves, tables. Chooses non-standard colors - pink, chartreuse (a shade of yellow-green), mint.

In addition, many people liked the mission of the company, says Plotitsa.

The designer is married and has two children. He says that it is the wife who is now feeding the family.

“It hasn't been easy because of COVID-19. It’s not cheap to have a business and pay fair wages in San Francisco,” Plotitsa admitted.

You may be interested in: top New York news, stories of our immigrants and helpful tips about life in the Big Apple - read it all on ForumDaily New York.

However, his company is already being noticed. Renowned furniture company West Elm has added it to its list of 150 small regional businesses.

“We really liked Sasha’s business sense and ability to tell stories. The way it takes different components and puts them together in such a clever way,” says West Elm Program Director, Larisa Polyanskaya-Hayes.

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