July 22, 2010 at 22:30This is my way to China (part 1)
Like many other business creation stories - my story also began when my patience for accepting the "rules of the game" from not-so-distant executives and officials ran out of my mind and blindly go through life, towards fate.
So, in the yard - November 2005. The beginning of the era of "hydrocarbon fever." I have left behind many years of work in the structure of the commercial departments of alcohol companies and distilleries. And dozens of exhibitions and business trips to the cities of our country - helped to accumulate experience, which in the future - turned out to be invaluable to me!
On the alcohol market, the time has come for yet another redrawing of spheres of influence and the introduction of “new rules” for regulating the turnover of alcoholic beverages. And just then I decided that the time had come when you need to start your own business and try to depend as little as possible on the decisions of officials! But where to start? For the organization of the alcohol business, which was thoroughly studied by me, I did not have sufficient starting capital. And the future business was to start giving returns in a short time, because I didn’t have time for the “take-off”!
I had a positive example of some close friends who had their own business, but it was mainly a shuttle business and the subsequent sale of goods through wholesale clothing markets. I didn’t want to go into this segment, but the import topic was of great interest to me, because - it is with this business scheme that you can get high profit, at the very beginning of the way! And here EMU (His Majesty Chance) helped. One of my distant relatives, who came to conquer the capital from sunny Uzbekistan, had already begun, at that time, to work in the field of consumables for various printing equipment. It should be clear that in addition to Jamshut and Ravshan, there are still people in the Central Asian republics who use their heads, not only to eat pilaf and drink tea, but also for other purposes. But my relative’s business was not going very well, because he lacked experience and specific knowledge in organizing and developing a business, and I just had this “good”. We sat down, talked - and agreed on cooperation, already as partners. And then they began to build our business.
Soon our company has already opened its own online store, through which we positioned ourselves in the business sector of the Internet, and through it the main sale of our goods took place. This was a completely new direction for me, here I discovered new opportunities. In the alcohol industry at that time, they did not attach any importance to the Internet, and moreover, no company had its own store in the network. This, of course, is primarily associated with the rules of the alcohol trade, but to a greater extent - with the retardation of the managing staff and unwillingness to think about business development.
The main type of our activity was the purchase of "consumables" from wholesale companies in large quantities and large containers (packaging), and then we repackaged it in small containers and sold it under a brand that belonged only to us. Thus, we became interesting to those consumers who needed these materials, but they were able to purchase them only from us, because at that time, no one else offered them in Russia in such an assortment and packaging. It was amazing, but true!
After some time, after about 5-6 months, we decided that it was time for us to go directly to the manufacturers of these consumables, because - it was at the stage of procurement and further delivery of materials to Russia - that the main profit “popped up”. We sent letters of offer of cooperation to many Korean, European and American companies. But we started work with only two of them. It was a consumables manufacturer from South Korea and an American company from Los Angeles.
But one thing - a letter and an oral agreement on cooperation, and another thing entirely - is to actually bring the goods to Russia, then to clear them, process them, and then sell them in the right marketable condition and quality! It should be understood that our company is only 4 people, each of whom combined several professions at the same time. And we had to work a lot, because on weekdays - we dealt with current problems, and on weekends we dealt with infrastructure development, i.e. they themselves assembled shelves, rebuilt rooms, serviced filling equipment, tested new types of containers, closures, and so on. I can only say that in the first year of the establishment of the business, we did not have days off. It was the golden time for our business, because none of the large companies saw great potential in this segment of the market for developing a new direction, and small companies were busy with their pressing problems and also did not stick their nose into this segment. And at this time we caught "our" firebird by the tail.
From the business that was done at the beginning of the journey in the literal sense of the word “on your knees”, we have grown to become a distributor of world famous brands in the consumables market.
But life makes its own adjustments. Read about them in the next post .
So, in the yard - November 2005. The beginning of the era of "hydrocarbon fever." I have left behind many years of work in the structure of the commercial departments of alcohol companies and distilleries. And dozens of exhibitions and business trips to the cities of our country - helped to accumulate experience, which in the future - turned out to be invaluable to me!
On the alcohol market, the time has come for yet another redrawing of spheres of influence and the introduction of “new rules” for regulating the turnover of alcoholic beverages. And just then I decided that the time had come when you need to start your own business and try to depend as little as possible on the decisions of officials! But where to start? For the organization of the alcohol business, which was thoroughly studied by me, I did not have sufficient starting capital. And the future business was to start giving returns in a short time, because I didn’t have time for the “take-off”!
I had a positive example of some close friends who had their own business, but it was mainly a shuttle business and the subsequent sale of goods through wholesale clothing markets. I didn’t want to go into this segment, but the import topic was of great interest to me, because - it is with this business scheme that you can get high profit, at the very beginning of the way! And here EMU (His Majesty Chance) helped. One of my distant relatives, who came to conquer the capital from sunny Uzbekistan, had already begun, at that time, to work in the field of consumables for various printing equipment. It should be clear that in addition to Jamshut and Ravshan, there are still people in the Central Asian republics who use their heads, not only to eat pilaf and drink tea, but also for other purposes. But my relative’s business was not going very well, because he lacked experience and specific knowledge in organizing and developing a business, and I just had this “good”. We sat down, talked - and agreed on cooperation, already as partners. And then they began to build our business.
Soon our company has already opened its own online store, through which we positioned ourselves in the business sector of the Internet, and through it the main sale of our goods took place. This was a completely new direction for me, here I discovered new opportunities. In the alcohol industry at that time, they did not attach any importance to the Internet, and moreover, no company had its own store in the network. This, of course, is primarily associated with the rules of the alcohol trade, but to a greater extent - with the retardation of the managing staff and unwillingness to think about business development.
The main type of our activity was the purchase of "consumables" from wholesale companies in large quantities and large containers (packaging), and then we repackaged it in small containers and sold it under a brand that belonged only to us. Thus, we became interesting to those consumers who needed these materials, but they were able to purchase them only from us, because at that time, no one else offered them in Russia in such an assortment and packaging. It was amazing, but true!
After some time, after about 5-6 months, we decided that it was time for us to go directly to the manufacturers of these consumables, because - it was at the stage of procurement and further delivery of materials to Russia - that the main profit “popped up”. We sent letters of offer of cooperation to many Korean, European and American companies. But we started work with only two of them. It was a consumables manufacturer from South Korea and an American company from Los Angeles.
But one thing - a letter and an oral agreement on cooperation, and another thing entirely - is to actually bring the goods to Russia, then to clear them, process them, and then sell them in the right marketable condition and quality! It should be understood that our company is only 4 people, each of whom combined several professions at the same time. And we had to work a lot, because on weekdays - we dealt with current problems, and on weekends we dealt with infrastructure development, i.e. they themselves assembled shelves, rebuilt rooms, serviced filling equipment, tested new types of containers, closures, and so on. I can only say that in the first year of the establishment of the business, we did not have days off. It was the golden time for our business, because none of the large companies saw great potential in this segment of the market for developing a new direction, and small companies were busy with their pressing problems and also did not stick their nose into this segment. And at this time we caught "our" firebird by the tail.
From the business that was done at the beginning of the journey in the literal sense of the word “on your knees”, we have grown to become a distributor of world famous brands in the consumables market.
But life makes its own adjustments. Read about them in the next post .