Evgeny ShchepinDiving Into the Red Ocean. How to Break the Rules of Retail and Come Out on Top
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, Netfl ix, 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.
An internal crisis taught us the invaluable lesson to base our work on common sense and not numbers. For this reason, we no longer use KPI or any other quantitative assessments to measure our employees' efficiency. And we never will.
We knew from our experience with Izbyonka that sample tastings were the best way to sell unfamiliar products to customers, so we relied heavily on well-stocked sample tables throughout the stores. Salesclerks kept up a brisk pace, steaming, frying, boiling, and cutting something or other, and the customers ate and ate and ate.