vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #153 / Business / Reading article...

A Primorye man has found a secret to starting business in the krai’s unhealthy economic atmosphere — buy local, retain the product’s high quality, and hire the disabled.

Alexander Timkin’s Jump Company produces 3,000 bags of potato chips daily on the third floor of the Ignat building, on Komsomolskaya Street. The chips are sometimes still hot in the stores, having made it from whole potato, through an enormous vat of oil, and into the bag in less than ten minutes. Their shelf life is no more than a week.

Timkin is a Primorian by birth, and he started the company after reminiscing about the tasty potato chips of his youth, he says.

“I know the ingredients used for preparing chips in Korea, and local kids have had enough of them,” he said.

“We want to increase our manufacturing volume so that the city will be overcrowded with our chips, like in America.”

Though he hasn’t quite achieved that goal, business is going well, Timkin said. He plans to find more manufacturing space than the single, small room in Ignat where machines cut and peel the potatoes, but employees measure quantities in plastic cups and hand-pack individual bags.

He buys potatoes from the Pogranichny area, though he wouldn’t say where specifically, and signed agreements with farmers to make sure the potatoes remain chemical free. Though he uses some secret ingredients, Timkin said that there are no artificial flavors or colors in the mix.

Timkin’s biggest wild card are his employees — mentally disabled people hired through the Primorye Regional Fund for Invalids. They come to work on time, are dedicated to the job, and make “honest, reliable employees,” he said.

Timkin did not disclose how much he pays his workers. “But I promise you — wages will be going up every three months,” he said.

And though one’s initial instinct is to cry out against the potential abuses of hiring mentally disabled people at what could be very low wages, employees in the production room work in safe, comfortable conditions and seem to enjoy themselves.

“Invalids now in Primorye have it hard,” said Stanislav Shabunya, representative of the Leninsky District division of the Regional Fund. “I think that the work there isn’t too tiresome, and the wages are a good incentive for them.”

Alexander Azovskikh, who manages the other five employees at Jump and works 12-hour shifts, finds the work gratifying.

“I was without work, an invalid,” he said. “But now I don’t just sit around at home watching TV. I’m busy, I’m feeding people, and I’m doing something that’s useful for society.”