Kristine Aleksandrovica’s Furniture Company Stulitito Takes Sustainability from Accent to Statement Piece

Like many babies, Kristine Aleksandrovica’s first word was “mama.” Her second word, though, wasn’t “dada,” “yes,” or “no.”

It was “IKEA.” 

Indeed, the modular Scandinavian furniture retailer made such a formative impression on a young Aleksandrovica that it shaped not just her linguistic sensibilities—but her entire career path, as well. 

“My idea is to revolutionize IKEA [in] the way IKEA revolutionized other furniture stores,” says Aleksandrovica, who graduated from Northeastern University in 2023 with bachelor’s degrees in business and economics. “I want to make my own furniture house that will become the go-to store for Gen Z shoppers who care about environmental and social causes.”   

Thus was born Stulitito, a concept furniture manufacturing and retail line that gives consumers insight into how their goods were made—with what, and by whom—from start to finish. For her innovative work, Aleksandrovica was recognized with one of the 2023 Women Who Empower Innovator Awards.

This year, organizers behind Women Who Empower recognized 28 innovators with financial and entrepreneurial support. The winners received a portion of the organization’s largest total prize ever—$500,000—as well as companionship with a global network of women who are creating, running, and iterating on ventures across myriad disciplines and business sectors. To date, Women Who Empower has recognized 69 entrepreneurs with Innovator Awards over the course of three years, and has dispersed more than $820,000 to three cohorts of incisive, creative entrepreneurs.

Aleksandrovica says the award will help power her vision, enabling her to bring Stulitito to life.

The name is a portmanteau between the German “stuhl,” or “chair,” and the Spanish suffix “-ito,” meaning “small”—a nod to Aleksandrovica’s global vision and background. She grew up in Moscow, Russia, in what she describes as an “entrepreneurial family.” Aleksandrovica’s father was always building on ideas, spinning out ventures that involved “lots of people from super diverse backgrounds,” she says. 

“It was so empowering,” Aleksandrovica explains. “To grow up in that environment, surrounded by people who were energetic about their goals and ideas—I absorbed the idea that really everything is possible. It was inspiring.” 

As a child, Aleksandrovica and her brother would build tiny couches and chairs out of anything they could find, including cigarette butts, bananas, and more

“We were just having fun, but that idea has always stuck with me,” she says.

At Northeastern, Aleksandrovica took on challenge after challenge with this same zeal. From 2019 to 2021, she served as a global student mentor, sharing hard-earned wisdom about navigating life in the U.S. as an international student. During that time, Aleksandrovica also found herself looking for a student group with whom she could share her love of painting and fine arts in a more casual setting than a classroom. Finding none, she created one herself. Aleksandrovica founded Art Blanche, a fine arts club on campus, in 2019.

But the vision she and her brother toyed with as children—creating furniture out of recycled and unconventional materials—simmered in the back of her mind. During the latter half of Aleksandrovica’s career at Northeastern, she took a deep dive into supply chains, signing up for course after course and engaging in her own research about labor conditions within the furniture industry. 

“From a business perspective, Kristine carries with her an ethical obligation to make things better,” says Shawn Bhimani, assistant professor of supply chain and information management in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, who taught Aleksandrovica in two of his courses. “That, combined with her creative side, allows her to come up with novel and innovative ideas.” 

Case in point: beautifully designed furniture, made with mushroom leather and stuffed with recycled material from cigarette butts, all sold in a fully transparent system that allows consumers full access to every part of the process. 

“In our current commercial infrastructure, we buy things based on how they look and feel, but what’s missing is all the touch points along the way; the makers who made these products, the way the materials were sourced,” says Bhimani, who is currently working on a short book with Aleksandrovica about forced labor in global supply chains.

And while Stulitito is still in its infancy, Aleksandrovica has big plans for the company. 

“So many houses around the world have IKEA pieces,” she says. “You can walk into any home and immediately recognize them. That’s what I hope for Stulitito, as well. Beautiful, recognizable, environmentally safe furniture.”