Three roads, three ways
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2025 4:45 am
Well, what should Russian medium-sized businesses do with all this good stuff? As in a good Russian fairy tale, three real alternatives open up before the good fellow.
The first is to surrender. You can surrender beautifully. To do this, you need to take a noticeable position in your market, better yet - a strong one in your segment, and even better - a dominant one in a new, fairly capacious and rapidly growing niche. Debug business processes, train personnel, achieve high sales dynamics indicators and ... - sell kenya cell phone number list yourself at a high price to a large foreign company. And not beautifully - by ripping up controlled assets and buying a mini-hotel in Prague or Cyprus with the money you have squeezed out, moving there with your family for permanent residence. Unfortunately, this has been a very common phenomenon in the medium-sized business environment for the past three years. Take, for example, the growth in the number of Russians who own modest real estate and small businesses in the same Prague, Bulgaria, and the Baltics.
The second way is to “retrain as house managers”, exchanging direct control over property for managerial (management) or bureaucratic (government) control. And this way was chosen in 2009-2011 by thousands, if not tens of thousands of owners of medium or small businesses.
The third way is to continue fighting for your market, your niche, your consumer. Increase efficiency, increase value faster than cost, reduce costs while maintaining quality. This is, of course, the most difficult. But, as often happens, the very thing that creates the problem can also help solve it. Again, we will talk about differentiation of consumer demand.
Neither Russian nor any other manufacturer can compete with Coca-Cola in the field of sweet brown sodas, which are sold around the world every day in quantities of 1.5 billion bottles. The Russians also have little chance against the Chinese manufacturers of pants at $5 in bulk; Taiwanese chip makers; Swiss pharmaceutical giants.
But a national energy drink like “energizing kvass”, a fast food product like “buckwheat with liver in mushroom sauce”, “a training suit for injured athletes”, etc. niche products are exactly where neither the Chinese conveyor belt nor the transnational giant have any particular advantages.
The first is to surrender. You can surrender beautifully. To do this, you need to take a noticeable position in your market, better yet - a strong one in your segment, and even better - a dominant one in a new, fairly capacious and rapidly growing niche. Debug business processes, train personnel, achieve high sales dynamics indicators and ... - sell kenya cell phone number list yourself at a high price to a large foreign company. And not beautifully - by ripping up controlled assets and buying a mini-hotel in Prague or Cyprus with the money you have squeezed out, moving there with your family for permanent residence. Unfortunately, this has been a very common phenomenon in the medium-sized business environment for the past three years. Take, for example, the growth in the number of Russians who own modest real estate and small businesses in the same Prague, Bulgaria, and the Baltics.
The second way is to “retrain as house managers”, exchanging direct control over property for managerial (management) or bureaucratic (government) control. And this way was chosen in 2009-2011 by thousands, if not tens of thousands of owners of medium or small businesses.
The third way is to continue fighting for your market, your niche, your consumer. Increase efficiency, increase value faster than cost, reduce costs while maintaining quality. This is, of course, the most difficult. But, as often happens, the very thing that creates the problem can also help solve it. Again, we will talk about differentiation of consumer demand.
Neither Russian nor any other manufacturer can compete with Coca-Cola in the field of sweet brown sodas, which are sold around the world every day in quantities of 1.5 billion bottles. The Russians also have little chance against the Chinese manufacturers of pants at $5 in bulk; Taiwanese chip makers; Swiss pharmaceutical giants.
But a national energy drink like “energizing kvass”, a fast food product like “buckwheat with liver in mushroom sauce”, “a training suit for injured athletes”, etc. niche products are exactly where neither the Chinese conveyor belt nor the transnational giant have any particular advantages.