Alpina
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Managing Editor: Marina Krasavina
Project Editor: Natalia Pepelina
Translator: Andrew Freeburg
Copyeditor: Jennifer Eremeeva
Proofreaders: Beth Dymond, Anna Brown
Cover design: Yuri Buga
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
Copyright © 2021 by Evgeny Shchepin
© Electronic edition. Alpina, 2022
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RULE 0
OR AN UNUSUAL INTRODUCTION
This book could have come out two years ago; or it could have never come out at all. And this is VkusVill in a nutshell.
Greetings! My name is Evgeny Shchepin, and I am the author of this book. As a reader, I do not really like introductions. More often than not, they are far too pompous or academic. By the end of the first paragraph, I want to yawn, if not put the book down entirely. So, I face a challenging task: to tell you why we authored this book, while also not veering into excessive nerdiness or business theories that will send you off to sleep.
My initial dream was that Andrey Krivenko, founder of Izbyonka and VkusVill, would write it. After all, who understands all the nuances and subtleties of his business better than Andrey? However, you need to know Andrey personally to imagine the look on his face when I mentioned that idea. He even asked again, just in case, to make sure he did not mishear me: "Me? Write a book?" Then he raised his eyebrows as high as they would go.
Andrey has a phenomenal character: hundreds of entrepreneurs from all over the country dream of meeting him, believing that half an hour of face-to-face conversation with him might, at least, unlock some new knowledge; at most, lead to total enlightenment and a feeling of eternal harmony.
In fact, neither of these will happen. Andrey's response to questions such as "What was it like?" is that he no longer remembers. And at questions such as "What will happen?" he shrugs, explaining that nobody can know the future, so making any plans is pointless.
But do not get him wrong! Andrey is not in the least snobbish: he is cheerful, clever, creative, and has good manners. You can talk with Andrey for hours about anything. He just honestly does not understand what is so special about his business achievements, and why people are prepared to fly seven hours from the other side of the country for a thirty-minute meeting with him. After all, when a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology does not understand something, he does not make excuses for himself.
That is more or less how I became the author of this book about VkusVill and Izbyonka. I took matters into my own hands and introduced the world to the processes behind the inception, launch, and stable growth of the company we know today. I was born and grew up in the tiny city of Glazov, where I fell in love with creating text at a local teen newspaper, Avos-KA – which translates roughly as "Tote Bag." In 2010, I graduated with a journalism degree from the Ural State University, and by 2011 fate brought me to Izbyonka, which was just getting going and desperately in need of engagement with the outside world. Instantly, I became a member of the family in what was still a small company, where we burned with a similar passion for what we were doing.
Even then, I think I knew I would author this book. There is no other explanation for why I jotted down so many things over the course of eight years. I kept vivid memories in mind, observed and analyzed, and tried to regard the day-to-day life of our company through the lens of history and the search for cause-effect relationships.
The success of our company excites people. How do you start from a tiny dairy stand and build a major grocery chain with a thousand stores? How can you not take out a single loan in the process and develop a business using only your own money? How do you manage a company with over 12,000 employees without strict orders, regulations, KPI, or a budget? And most importantly, how do you grow twice every year but not lose the passion of a start-up? This book will answer all the questions above and reveal the secrets behind VkusVill's success.
