By October 2005, Euroset, co-owned by Yevgeny Chichvarkin and Timur Artemyev, operated 2,200 outlets in Russia and the CIS and promised to capture 23% of the Russian market by year-end. According to Forbes, with a billion-dollar turnover in 2004, the company's net profit was $9 million.
Division of duties
The co-founders, according to Forbes, divided their roles: Artemyev handled finances, Chichvarkin — personnel management. "The chairman of the board, Yevgeny Chichvarkin, has his desk in the common work area. Board member Timur Artemyev, however, sits in a private office decorated with pretentious luxury, but this is an exception to local rules — Artemyev, they say, likes himself," the publication wrote.
The friends had known each other since kindergarten. In the first half of the 1990s, Chichvarkin traded at clothing markets, while Artemyev soldered phones with answering machines. By 1997, they had saved $3,000, borrowed another $2,000, and opened a mobile phone kiosk in the Elektronika store on Leninsky Prospekt.
Interest in longevity
According to Forbes, Artemyev invested funds in the search for ways to delay old age. The publication provides no other details about his research in this area.
Company plans
In an interview with Forbes, Chichvarkin spoke of the imminent end of the chain's rapid growth period: "A few hundred more salons — and that's it. Monopolism is death. The firm becomes unwieldy, and a small change in the market can bring it down."
In August 2005, the Ministry of Internal Affairs arrested about 400,000 cell phones at the border, imported through "gray" schemes. Analysts surveyed by Forbes believed that these actions played into Euroset's hands, forcing all market leaders to announce a transition to legal customs clearance of cargo. The company also began diversification: salons sold MP3 players and digital photo equipment, and traded content. Net profit for the first two quarters of 2005, according to preliminary data, was $16 million.
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