Song of the merchant Chichvarkin

Everyone swears, but few make money from it. The young man, known by the nickname Chi and who guessed to rhyme "Euroset" and "oh ... wow", managed. Eight years ago, at the age of 21, he entered the business without a penny of money. Now he has 20% of the entire mobile phone market. The recent purchase of the Techmarket chain of stores allowed Euroset to increase its annual turnover to $2.5 billion. The mobile phone seller has overtaken the Pyaterochka and Eldorado supermarkets, which sell thousands of different goods. Euroset is owned not by powerful strategic investors, but by two private individuals - Yevgeny Chichvarkin and his childhood friend Timur Artemyev. The partners are equal, but in 1997, when everything was just beginning, Artemyev, with his $5,000, was significantly richer than his partner, who had not saved anything in the jeans trade. The money was just enough to open a mobile phone salon in Elektronika on Leninsky. Normal salon, and quite expensive. Artemiev controlled financial flows, and Chichvarkin created the image of the company. Sellers of cell phones are all the same, but Chichvarkin managed to stand out. Because people usually build the image of the company as something independent and somewhat artificial, and Chi created it from himself. An impudent, aggressive, but bright personality is his main capital. She is everywhere. In silk pants with colorful butterflies. In a tiny purse knitted from pink wool, where a thick wad of thousand rubles sits next to an ancient mobile phone. In a business card with a slyly smiling face inscribed in a bright yellow sun. In the poster "Retail-mother is calling" above the desktop, on which there is neither a computer nor a telephone. In an unexpected announcement “Walk around the office quickly” and a effigy of an employee expelled for theft suspended from the ceiling. It's just that people like to come up with all sorts of different things. You can talk about the transience of the action of rude advertising, but when you talk to Chi, it is clear that the rhyme "Euroset, Euroset, prices are just about ... wow", which began the public history of the company, is not intended to shock. It's from the heart. Therefore, it went further in the same direction easily, naturally and without the help of advertising creatives. A year later, Euroset suddenly became Eroset, aka the House of Toleration on Tverskaya with a naked window and a bunch of onlookers - they are future buyers - in front of her. A new variation on the same theme - free mobile phones for those who undress in public. Someone giggled, someone spat - but they remembered both. Read the full version of the material in the Russian Newsweek magazine (August 15-21, 2005) No. 30 (60)