Diving Into the Red Ocean: How to Break the Rules of Retail

How do you build a major organic grocery chain of 1,500 stores with an annual turnover of more than $2 billion from a small dairy stand without taking out a single loan? How do you find a new niche in the competitive market of food retail and double your turnover every year? How do you maintain a start-up mentality for ten years? How do you run a company with over 12,000 employees without strict orders and regulations, prescribed key performance indicators (KPIS), or a planned annual budget? And how do you manage the team so that no one wants to quit? The VkusVill grocery chain is one of the best-known and most popular stores in Russia. The company broke into the healthy food market and revolutionized Russian retail by fusing the best international practices. At its outset, VkusVill was inspired by retail chains such as Tesco, Mercadona, Walmart, Trader Joe's, and Ali, and it formed its corporate culture by studying companies such as Zappos, Google, Airbnb, Netflix, Starbucks, IKEA, Toyota, and many others. This book by Evgeny Shchepin, one of VkusVill's key employees, is a candid account of the company's successes and failures, plans and expectations, and relationships with its employees and customers-the people who made VkusVill the success it is today.