Oleg Kondrashov

— When I came back from the army in 1988, I entered the second year of the polytechnic institute. I was ashamed to ask my parents for money, so I decided to earn it myself. And then an opportunity turned up. We went on a trip to Brest and bought up souvenirs and gifts, which we managed to sell in Nizhny Novgorod and so earned our first money. The next time we took big bags. We sold the goods mainly in student dormitories.

Then we bought our first kiosk on Pokrovka — "Kristina", which grew into a chain of kiosks and then into the "Kristina" trading house.

"Kristina" was the first in the city to open a round-the-clock kiosk, the first to bring in Polish soft drinks and German canned beer, the first to set up branded "Marlboro" stalls and to organise the first "supermarket" in the Detsky Mir on Gorky Street.

— My friends, Muscovites who by that time had already become established businessmen, said to me: "If you are such a fine fellow and your business in Nizhny is so well run, then come to the capital and put our assets in order".

— It all began with a passion for Italy and Italian fashion. In the very early 1990s I brought designer items back from business trips not only for myself but also for my friends and partners. And in 1993 we opened the first "Tsezar" in the Radisson Slavyanskaya. There were times when a queue formed at our shop before it opened. By 2000 the "Tsezar" corporation already numbered 24 boutiques in Moscow, St Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod. It was a very successful and a very beautiful business. We had big plans, but by those years the Moscow market had already become saturated, and expanding the chain required far greater funds.

We needed to move up to the level of multi-brand shopping centres. And since we were developing the sports and the fashion lines at the same time, we simply did not have enough time to attract additional financial resources and build a new structure. That is why in 2002 it was decided to cut back the chain. By 2005 only five shops remained (two in Moscow, one in St Petersburg, two in Nizhny Novgorod).

— Wasn't that a bitter blow?

— That's putting it mildly; for me it was stress. After such fame I was forced to close the chain. At that time my Nizhny Novgorod partners in the "PIR" group of companies helped keep me in shape. That was exactly when our restaurant projects began to develop, and they demanded time, energy and new ideas from me.

— Do you have restaurants in Moscow?

— Now I am grateful to fate that at the time I did not put all my eggs in one basket, as my Moscow partners advised me to. "Why bother with kopecks in Nizhny Novgorod when the same effort in Moscow brings entirely different money," they said. But I decided not to give up the Nizhny Novgorod projects. After all, it cannot be that everything is good in Moscow and everything is bad in Nizhny. In the late 1990s Moscow was like an overfed pig lying on its side and grunting. And in Nizhny the restaurant market was only just beginning to develop. We bet on Nizhny Novgorod and we won.

— Your business is spread across different cities (Moscow, St Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod), and on top of that you are running several projects of different kinds at once (retail, Soviet Catering, manufacturing). Are you sorry to let them go? Or is this deliberate diversification?

— I cannot abandon the business projects I started out with. All entrepreneurs of the old school treat their businesses like children. They have raised them, and it is hard to part with them. In my view that is understandable, but wrong. An entrepreneur should aim to build a business that can later be sold at a profit, otherwise there will be no development.

— Who are the main founders of "PIR"? What is the structure of the company?

— In practice each restaurant is a separate company. The main shareholders of all the companies making up "PIR" are myself and my two partners: Yuri Tarastsov and Viktor Kosov, with whom I have worked since 1989. In all our projects we hold controlling stakes, and sometimes we cooperate with other entrepreneurs. For instance, we built the "Angliyskoye Posolstvo" pub together with Sergey Ivanushkin, head of the investment company AVK.

We consider 2002 the founding year of the "PIR" group — that was when the chain's third restaurant, "Papasha Billi", was opened.

— Which establishments belong to "PIR"? Are you going to open new ones?

— The "PIR" group of companies owns five restaurants in Nizhny Novgorod (the "Sport-Bar", the "Pirushka u Gansa" beer hall, the "Papasha Billi" café, the "Tyubeteika" teahouse, the "Angliyskoye Posolstvo" pub) and two establishments opened under a franchise with the company "Rosinter" ("Rostik's" and "Moka-Loko"). This year the "Plakuchaya Iva" restaurant, the "Kasablanka" coffee-house chain and an "Italian Restaurant" are being prepared for opening. We do not write long-term budget plans, trying instead to develop flexibly, as the situation dictates.

— Since 2003 "PIR" has held the franchise for "Rosinter's" restaurants IL-Patio and "Planeta Sushi". They still have not opened. Why?

— Developing franchise projects turned out to be harder than we thought. The franchisor's main requirement is keeping Moscow price levels. In our own establishments we do exactly the same — the same service, the same products, the same equipment, but the prices are lower. The consumer does not always understand yet that he is also paying for the brand. And the seller of the franchise demands strict compliance with the contract.

Our other headache is the absence in the city of premises that meet the franchisor's requirements. Both IL-Patio and "Planeta Sushi" must be located on the ground floor of buildings, in high-traffic places, next to an equipped car park and so on. The opening of IL-Patio and "Planeta Sushi" is a matter of time, and it will be settled this very year.

— You held talks about buying the "Sbarro" and "Stardog's" franchises. Why did the negotiations fail?

— The terms of our contract with "Rosinter" for IL-Patio do not allow us to develop the "Sbarro" chain, since these brands are direct competitors.

The situation with the company "Markon", which develops the "Stardog's" chain, is entirely different. Negotiations are continuing, but so far we have not been able to agree on a matter of principle — the exclusivity of the franchise. We do not think the "Stardog's" brand is well known enough for several entrepreneurs to develop it successfully in parallel in Nizhny Novgorod.

— But "Markon" has already announced that it has found a partner in Nizhny?

— That is a question for the company "Markon", not for us.

— Recently Grillmaster was closed in the city, and last year "Kroshka-Kartoshka" — both of them franchises. What is the reason for this?

— Those brands ran into different problems. Grillmaster had problems with managing the establishment. The franchisee should have understood that Nizhny Novgorod is not Moscow. Opening a Grillmaster in the centre of Sormovo (disambiguation) was, in my view, risky. And under the harsh terms of a franchise, without experience in managing a restaurant business, without marketing and advertising investment, a risky project becomes loss-making. As a result Grillmaster closed, and most of its potential customers never even had time to visit it. I personally, for example, heard nothing about that establishment's operation.

According to the plan, it will be Indians, Chinese and other Asians who rush to lift up our economy first of all. It is precisely they, and by no means Russians, whom the authors of the document see as the “mainstay of the authorities' modernisation hopes”.

We do not intend to rely on just anyone, Borisov stresses. “What will be needed is not a man with a shovel and a broom (he will apparently come anyway. — “MK”), but the so-called creative class, over which a real fight will break out,” the “leader” of the businessmen explains. Borisov has in mind highly qualified personnel, entrepreneurs, investors, and also workers without high qualifications but with a speciality in demand on the labour market.