Tinkoff's Western Adaptation

A story about how Oleg Tinkoff built multiple successful businesses in Russia by observing and importing Western trends.

"He grew up in a mining family with humble beginnings. He gets into cycling and goes abroad for a bike race where he sees someone wearing blue jeans. This is in the eighties when the Soviet Union is about to crumble. He starts bringing home these blue jeans and selling them. He realizes people in Russia really want Western fashion, so he opens up a chain of stores selling blue jeans, then everything else - perfume, VCRs, electronics. This is right in '89-'90 when the Soviet Union's crashing. He kills it and sells that business in his early twenties for $7 million.

Then he starts a ravioli business. He goes to America every 5 years to learn what's popular and brings that to Russia. He buys this huge ad with a woman's bare ass that says 'raviolis not made by your grandmother.' The business takes off and he sells it for $21 million.

Next, he's in California and meets with Dan Gordon from Gordon Biersch. He sees this trend of microbreweries being popular in the '90s, so he opens Tinkoff Breweries in Russia. He charges 4-5 times the price of normal beer and makes it very Americanized. Started in 1997, by 2003 it's doing $35 million in sales, two years later it's doing $200 million, and he sells it for $200 million.

Then he meets Richard Branson at Necker Island and tells him how amazed he was at how easy it was to get a credit card in America. Richard tells him he should start it, so six months after selling his beer company, he starts Tinkoff Bank with $70 million of his own money. It becomes the second largest issuer of credit cards in Russia and the largest digital bank in the world."