For a manufacturer operating in Ukraine near the Polish border, stopping production two or three times a week is a given—not just for quality issues, or troubleshooting a bottleneck, but for your people to get to safety during air-raid alarms. You build in time for power outages, planned or unplanned. Some of your best people may have to leave abruptly when they are called to serve on the front, so you constantly try to recruit other skilled workers who are looking to relocate because your city is farther from the fighting.

That’s the reality for ZeWood, a small manufacturer in the river city of Lutsk, that manufactures playful, multidimensional wooden clocks and wall maps of fantasy worlds inspired by books, video games and films.