Diving Into the Red Ocean: How to Break the Rules of Retail and Come Out on Top

Alpina
How to Break the Rules of Retail
and Come Out on Top
Evgeny Shchepin
Diving 
Into the 
Red Ocean

Alpina
th Magistralnaya , bld. 
Offi  ce –
, Moscow, Russia
International@alpina.ru
Copyright ©  by Evgeny Shchepin
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.
Printed in Russian Federation
ISBN ----


                CONTENTS





Foreword..................................................................7

Rule 0, or An Unusual Introduction........................................8
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.
Rule 1...................................................................12
Even amid the fiercest battles for preeminence in the market, there are always moments of peace. Learn this rule — it will come in handy!
Rule 2...................................................................18
Doing and analyzing is more important than analyzing and not doing anything.
Rule 3...................................................................26
Hire people who you find interesting and feel comfortable with, especially at the beginning.
Rule 4...................................................................34
The earlier you have a conceptual crisis, the better. Izbyonka went through it for a year and a half of its existence, and this period changed the entire company for the better.
Rule 5...................................................................42
When a company is at the height of success, it is the best time to think about its future — to ensure that there is one.
Rule 6...................................................................48
We have been called “the king of naming,” but we maintain that the name of a company is not the most important thing.
Rule 7...................................................................54
Understanding how experienced you have become is simple: if you analyze what you did a year ago and realize that now you would do something a bit differently, it means you have grown.
Rule 8...................................................................62
An internal crisis taught us the invaluable lesson to base our work on common sense and not numbers. For this reason, we no longer use KPI or any other quantitative assessments to measure our employees’ efficiency. And we never will.

Rule 9.....................................................................68
A plan for saving the company should be everyone’s responsibility.
The same people who nearly destroyed VkusVill saved it from ruin.
Rule 10....................................................................80
Life never ceases to amaze us with the variety of situations it presents.
Do not try to anticipate these: just play the game and enjoy it.
Rule 11....................................................................84
Within VkusVill, we introduced a system of promises, primarily to encourage communication between divisions. We found this could resolve a considerable number of internal differences by simply facilitating communication.
Rule 12....................................................................94
Many people think that nobody gets fired at
VkusVill, but that is not true. It happens.
Rule 13....................................................................98
We rejected all the usual corporate conventions and have never looked back. The interests of actual people are far more important than any artificial office standards.
Rule 14...................................................................104
Our HR department has minimal influence on our company’s development. Therefore, all employees at VkusVill have a say in the hiring and onboarding of all new employees. It works.
Rule 15...................................................................110
In an environment of trust and understanding, people are not afraid to make mistakes and show initiative. Everyone slips up occasionally, and the most important thing is not to punish them but to help them learn from these mistakes.
Rule 16...................................................................116
VkusVill has quite a simple office. You might say that it is symbolic of our relationship to everything material.
Rule 17...................................................................122
At some point, we stopped planning and started just living.
Rule 18...................................................................124
Read. Read as many good books as you can. That will keep you on the straight and narrow.

Rule 19................................................................130
Sometimes, to solve a single problem for your customer, you must get several divisions involved. We think this is how a customer-oriented company should function.
Rule 20................................................................136
The most important person in terms of quality and improvements is undoubtedly the customer. No specialist can ever be as meticulous, objective, and impartial about a product as a final consumer.
Rule 21................................................................144
It is unnecessary to regulate communication with customers, but you must have a communication strategy.
Rule 22................................................................154
The Customer Support Index is a tool that brings about small, regular changes to make customers’ lives a little easier.
Rule 23................................................................162
Any VkusVill product — even an almost-consumed one — can be returned to the store without a receipt for a full refund.
Rule 24................................................................168
Consumer terrorism is not humanity’s most terrifying problem. But extortionists among the general population can hold entrepreneurs at bay.
Rule 25................................................................176
You will never get feedback from your customers if you are not interested in their ideas and suggestions. Apathy is hard to digitize, but is quite easy to feel.
Rule 26................................................................190
In new and successful projects, this principle comes in handy: “fire bullets, then cannonballs.” Perhaps it may be the basis for successful project management.
Rule 27................................................................200
The deeper the concept behind our work is ingrained in the company’s DNA, the more straightforwardly the component processes will be developed. Our ideology of natural and honest products helps us to get rid of many excess goods.


            Rule 28................................................................208


Everyone should do what they do best — or why
VkusVill still does not have its own factory.

            Rule 29................................................................212


Trust in people allows the company to save money.
Trust in people allows the company to save money.
Trust in people allows the company to save money.
(Read this a hundred times)
Rule 30................................................................216
Duplication of people, providers, and services is a modern entrepreneurial approach to doing business.
Rule 31................................................................220
All conflicts occur in areas where responsibilities overlap. One day, we re-examined our process of opening new stores and forged a lasting peace between our development management and retail management.
Rule 32................................................................226
The more conscious responsibility at ground level, the easier life is for the entire company. Our dream is for every store to become autonomous and self-directed.
Rule 33................................................................234
IT systems for businesses today are like smartphones for modern people. You can live without them, but your quality of life will suffer.
Rule 34................................................................240
Automation should simplify life for both employees and customers.
If the opposite occurs, that is not automation — that’s nonsense.
Rule 35................................................................248
The triumph of artificial intelligence: how automated ordering and distribution allowed us to halve the amount of product we wrote off.
Rule 36................................................................254
Apps, chat bots, and other contemporary innovations help customers manage the company more than anything else — and help the company to unobtrusively manage its customers.
Rule 37................................................................260
At some point, VkusVill will probably cease to exist. Once and for all.

100 Facts About VkusVill...............................................267
Appendix...............................................................275
Notes..................................................................277

FOREWORD
Thanks for choosing to read this book about VkusVill!
Zhenya (Evgeny) Shchepin decided to write it a long time ago. 
I was not fond of the idea then, and I cannot say I am now. After all, 
a book is like a photo: it only captures a single moment. A company, 
however, is a living organism: it is constantly changing, learning, 
and reacting to changes in its surrounding environment. Before we 
even submitted the book to the publishing house, we had already 
produced several new development strategies and ideas.
I hope this book will speak to anyone who would like to start 
a company or tackle an ambitious project that the most important thing is to focus on your customer. The customer’s interests 
should always be more important than profi t and the interests of 
your investors. After all, a company that keeps its customers truly 
satisfi ed is never weak, particularly fi nancially.
Andrey Krivenko, founder of Izbyonka and VkusVill

RULE 
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.

G
reetings! 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 , I graduated with a journalism 
degree from the Ural State University, and by  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-eff ect 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 , 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?