![]() ![]() He drives a relentlessly hard bargain, with suppliers as well as his 100,000-plus employees. Roughly 400 are basic foodstuffs like coffee, milk and sausages, with the rest a hodgepodge of cigarettes and whatever Studennikov can get a good deal on, be it barbecue grills or toys. “It’s offering a wider range of beer, wine and spirits at lower prices and even taking on the grocery chains on their own turf by selling food.”Ī typical Krasnoe & Beloe store offers 800 types of alcohol, including imports such as Corona beer, Jack Daniel’s whiskey and Barton & Guestier wine-when the bulk price is right. “Alcohol has been the most profitable category for the largest food retailers, but Krasnoe & Beloe is disrupting the market,” Fedyakov said. It’s upending the whole supermarket industry, Infoline chief Ivan Fedyakov said. It’s a model that isn’t just making Studennikov rich. The mix may vary, but the number of products is held at about 1,300, almost two-thirds of which contain alcohol. An obsession with margins means shelf space is allocated to whichever supplier offers the cheapest price. Studennikov’s no-frills business is based on tacking a small array of food items onto a larger assortment of beverages rather than the other way around. Market leaders X5 and Magnit, which have spent years studying each other’s strategies, now have a self-proclaimed negotiating whiz to contend with. The breakneck expansion puts Krasnoe & Beloe, or Red & White, on pace to overtake Dixy and Auchan and challenge Lenta for third place among Russian chains by 2021, according to Infoline, a St. “We’re opening an average of six new stores every day,” the media-averse tycoon said in an interview in the lobby of a hotel in the Russian capital, where he spends so much time discussing often contradictory regulations with officials that he’s moving his headquarters here next year. And with funding from state-run banks including Sberbank and VTB, Studennikov, who got a taste of profit selling illegal vodka amid an anti-alcohol campaign in the 1980s, said he has no intention of slowing down. Today, his Krasnoe & Beloe chain is the fastest-growing major retailer in the country, with 6,700 outlets in 57 of 85 regions, a rollout that intensified during the longest economic slump of Putin’s rule.Ī sales jump of about 50 percent to 215 billion rubles ($3.3 billion) last year and another 40 percent this year has turned the former wholesaler into Russia’s newest billionaire, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Sergei Studennikov opened his first discount liquor store near the gritty industrial hub of Chelyabinsk on the Asian side of the Ural Mountains a dozen years ago. They’ve also cleared the field for a Soviet-era bootlegger with a knack for navigating complex rules to make a fortune selling cheap booze. Russia’s very sober president, Vladimir Putin, has spent 18 years erecting barriers to selling alcohol to a population that’s still recovering from the decade-long bender that followed communism’s collapse.Ĭrackdowns on kiosks and ads, electronic inventory tracking and higher taxes have all succeeded in suppressing consumption. ![]()
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