TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek March 1, 202118
BAKALCHUK: ELENA CHERNYSHOVA/BLOOMBERG. DISTRIBUTION CENTER: ANDREYRUDAKOV/BLOOMBERG.DATA:WILDBERRIES:WILDBERRIES.TWILIO: COMPILED BY BLOOMBERG○ How a series of
crises made its founder
the richest woman in
the countryWildberries Rules
Russian E-Commerce
as China’s Alibaba, local technology giant Yandex,
Lamoda (backed by Germany’s Rocket Internet),
and Ozon, an unprofitable would-be Amazon that
went public in New York in November and now has
a market capitalization of $13 billion. “The com-
petition has abundant financial resources, but it’ll
be hard for them to catch Wildberries,” says Boris
Ovchinnikov, co-founder of researcher Data Insight.
Unlike globe-trotting Russian elites with their
300-foot yachts, leather- swathed private jets, and
sumptuous 11- bathroom palaces, Bakalchuk flies
economy, didn’t own a car until 2019, and lives in a
rented house outside Moscow. Yet like many Russian
tycoons, she remains firmly in control: Wildberries
has no board of directors—she runs it largely on her
own—and has never sought external funding, reject-
ing several approaches from potential investors.
Wildberries started selling in Israel, Poland,
and Slovakia in 2019 and this year added France,
Germany, Italy, and Spain, putting it for the first
time into direct competition with Amazon.com
Inc., which doesn’t operate in Russia. Bakalchuk
says she was astounded two years ago when she
discovered that cosmetics house L’Oréal—one of her
top vendors—sold 400 times as much via Amazon
as it did on Wildberries. But the gap has since nar-
rowed to 70 times, which she says augurs well for
the push abroad. “I knew we operate on a different
scale, but when I saw those numbers, I understood
that we’re really just nobody,” she says. “There’s so
much to strive for.”
One advantage Wildberries has as it moves west,
she says, is close ties with small vendors dating
from the 2014 crisis. The marketplace model she
put in place then has increased the number of part-
ners from just a few thousand to almost 100,000,
with 5 million product listings. That expansion has
helped Wildberries add categories such as electron-
ics, toys, sporting goods, and books, and Bakalchuk
says her technology and approach can be easily
adapted for new markets.
Bakalchuk’s success hasn’t been without its hur-
dles: In the 2014 crisis, she ended up selling some
imported goods at a loss, and last year’s surge in
orders overwhelmed logistics, with average deliv-
ery times doubling to four days. The coronavirus
outbreak made it harder for customers to get to theWinston Churchill, it’s often said, quipped that you
should never let a good crisis go to waste. Tatyana
Bakalchuk would agree. The founder of Russian
online retailer Wildberries has weathered three eco-
nomic crises since she started the company in 2004—
and each has left her business stronger, helping
make it the country’s biggest web store. “Thank
God for crises,” Bakalchuk says. “We realized we
can operate differently.”
In the financial meltdown of 2008, she snapped
up excess inventories from global fashion brands
and sold them to the Russian women who make up
the bulk of her clientele. When the ruble plunged
in 2014, Wildberries signed up more local produc-
ers and created a marketplace where it takes a cut
of sales and charges sellers for warehousing and
distribution—vastly increasing the assortment of
goods on the site. And with shoppers turning to web
retailers in the pandemic, her sales almost doubled
in 2020, to 437 billion rubles ($5.9 billion), forcing
her to hasten a plan to outsource logistics. “Last year
gave us a big boost and pushed us in a direction we
were planning to head eventually,” Bakalchuk says.
“But we had to sprint to get there.”
That sprint has given the company 14% of Russia’s
e-commerce market, double the share of its closest
competitor. Wildberries doesn’t release results other
than sales but says it’s profitable. Bakalchuk, who
owns 99% of the company, has seen her net worth
climb to $10.9 billion, making her the 14th wealthiest
person in Russia and the country’s richest woman,
according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Along the way, she has outmaneuvered rivals such○ Bakalchuk Wildberries
distribution center
in Podolsk, Russia Wildberries sales,
year-over-year change2016 202080%400