Our budgeted $180 million year ended in the red after the Ukraine war. Here’s how we survived

I’d founded NGLM Group in 2016, acquired a small store in Stockholm called Nordiska Galleriet, that was later re-named to NOGA (no-ga.com) outside of Sweden, and launched an e-commerce platform for it. By 2021 we’d decided to make our largest investment yet, merging all our acquired companies into one single entity. 

Then Putin invaded Ukraine. 

I remember I was skiing in the Swiss Alps when I looked at my phone and saw a 30% drop in sales. At first I thought we had a data problem, but when I called the office they confirmed it. We had just doubled the size of our warehouse, invested in a massive IT platform that was being built and planned to expand in several markets.

Overnight NOGA went from making six million euros in profit – while maintaining almost 80% organic growth — to losing the same amount.

Our problem was that Ukraine and Russia are Europe’s key market for oak, and suddenly there were six to 12 months of delays. We were forced to cancel hundreds of customer orders. 

It wasn’t just the raw materials. Furniture — and luxury furniture in particular — became an unnecessary luxury during the subsequent economic downturn that hit the continent. It wasn’t just us, either: fashion giant LVMH reported declining turnover and the furniture sector experienced its worst year since the Second World War. 

The effects of that economic crisis continue to be felt in Europe: In Sweden’s premium furniture segment alone, more than half of our competitors have closed down or filed for bankruptcy in the past four years. Between 2022 and 2024, inflation in Sweden rose more than 20%. We were at the heart of what was a perfect storm. 

I stood to lose it all — and I won’t lie, it was a humbling experience. I was 33and I had honestly felt that I was invincible. I had learned that I wasn’t. 

I realised that in order to survive we had to do something significantly different and fast. NOGA that relied on external brands that were now heavily discounted weren’t going to be profitable for years and were running out of money fast. 

The obvious solution to cut costs and re-structure was not going to be enough, luxury e-commerce was not going to be profitable for years, I had to look outside the core business. I had to build an entirely new company to save a company. 

I decided to go head on into the B2B side of the business and think about how we could revolutionize commercial interiors, such as offices and hotels. Building a company on the profitable B2B side became the only rational solution to an impossible situation. Whilst cost cutting and saving NOGA I was forced into another entrepreneurial endeavour, to start Yllw in 2022 — running multiple companies at the same time.

Our strategy was to build a vertically integrated and full service model for hotels, restaurants and offices to move, project manage, buy or rent furniture. To manage all this we built a technology for highly skilled sales teams to operate significantly more efficiently compared to the large hierarchical structures present in the market.

This was a sector that was largely untouched by consumer sentiment — it was B2B — and protected from heavy retail discounting. The company grew fast and this year, four years after starting the company, we are on budget to have a total turnover of 110 million EUR with 10 million EUR profitability. 

Yllw was profitable already in the first year of operating 2022, and profits have in large part funded the survival of NOGA.

It’s really hard to be a good CEO in good times – everything is going well so you don’t know if you could be doing things better- and a lot of inefficiency is covered by success. 

The humbling experiences of having the world change and everything you thought you’d built fall apart over night taught me many lessons as an entrepreneur. 

Today I apply certain principles to all my companies. I used to optimize for profit but I now find a balance between profit and risk.

Firstly, with decentralized entrepreneurship, we have made our people part owners of the company, and they receive dividends depending on our results. 

Secondly, concentrating on profitability before driving change: make money in the world we live in today, then change tomorrow — not the other way around.

Thirdly, we build modular business models that are easy to scale up and down. I would rather pay for a flexible structure and cost base rather than optimise profit in a fixed cost structure. 

When a business goes through a seismic market shift, it forces you to examine every part of it for inefficiencies. If you learn from those mistakes your greatest reward is a set of principles that you can apply to your future endeavours. In 2026 we are back on 180 million in turnover and growing faster than ever, with much lower risk.

Should the same event take place today, we would easily scale down to profitability.

What I have learned above all else is that when things go wrong, people who never took the risk in the first place often emerge to tell you, “I told you so.” Don’t listen. 

Don’t give up. Don’t give in. If you truly believe in your vision, pursue it relentlessly and see it through for as long as you breathe. There is always a solution. Building businesses is all about a ‘whatever it takes’ mentality. 

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.