vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #161 / Business / Reading article...

Lyudmila Shurpina is an optimist. Despite high taxes, capricious utilities, and the fact that passing trolleys overhead cause seismic disturbances in her office underneath Svetlanskaya Street, she sees hope for small businesses across Primorye and Russia.

“More or less, we are successful down here,” says Shurpina, head administrator for the 15 kiosks and some 60 employees comprising the Trading Express Center. “For the time being, the economic situation [in the krai] has stabilized,and I think there will be more and more small businesses in the future.”

Since 1990, small retailers like the Trading Express Center have flourished in Primorsky krai. According to the krai branch of the federal State Statistics Committee, there were more than 38,000 registered small businesses in 1997, nearly eight times 1990 level.

Shurpina’s kiosks, located in the two underground passages at Vladivostok’s main square, hawk sundry goods: cheap Chinese perfume, American liquor, French lingerie and Scandinavian office furniture.

Alexander Volkov, general director for the center’s parent Production-Financial Company, A. Lee, says the center’s market niche was ready made when the company opened its underground windows at the beginning of 1994.

“Our consumers there are mainly pedestrians, passers-by on their way to the train station or on their way home in the evenings,” says Volkov. With many of the center’s goods priced below those of GUM or other retail outlets, he adds, “we cater primarily to the middle class.”

Like Shurpina, Volkov is bullish on business prospects for small business in Russia, particularly in the retail sector. He does, however, see more promise for small business in the manufacturing sector.

“Production and manufacturing — this is the foundation of business, of the economy,” he says. “The market here for that is still undeveloped.”

Above ground and just up the road from the underground kiosks, a trader named Svetlana, who prefers not to give her last name, stands in her black metal kiosk surrounded by shoes, toys, and women’s underwear. A pensioner, she has been in the kiosk retail business for four years. She recalls that 10 years ago, Fokina Street (commonly called Trading Street) was devoid of kiosks and small entrepreneurs.

“It works, this business does,” she says. “But the business atmosphere here [in the krai] has gotten worse recently. Things have gone downhill this past year.”

Among the Trading Street vendors, a trader named Yelena has been selling her cleaning and personal hygiene products out of the side of a Japanese mini-van for the past five years. Like other retailers, her company, Visage Ltd., which operates some 10 similar vehicles selling products around the city, experienced weaksales over the course of last year.

“The retail market [for consumer goods] is large here in Primorye,” she notes through a small side window on the van, “which can be good or bad, depending on your opinion. But business is down from the previous year.”

Mixed though the small business prognosis may be among vendors, enthusiasm for the business of selling things certainly outweighs nostalgia for the past system.

“More than anything, I just like to sell things,” says Svetlana, smiling.