Where and how to look for an idea to create a successful business

I made the decision to start my own business very spontaneously. At that time, I had already held a position in a large telecom company for almost eleven years: I was the director of work with key clients in the B2B sector, and received good money. This company raised me, it was my alma mater, but at some point I felt that if I wanted to implement my own ideas, I needed to leave the corporation.

Once an old acquaintance of mine called me. At that time he lived in Tyumen, where he helped his father with the management of a large confectionery plant, and sometimes visited Moscow on business. In general, he called me and offered to open a business with him - a tailor shop for individual tailoring of suits! At that time I didn’t understand anything in suits, but I weighed everything and almost immediately agreed.

My advantage was that I already had a wealth of experience working with corporate clients. My partner knew that I had a certain vision, and that is why he invited me to cooperate.

Although I had never been involved in tailoring suits before, I liked this idea - not only as a promising business opportunity, but also as an area as far as possible from telecom. I saw this as a way out of my comfort zone and a chance to realize my personal ambitions. After eleven years in telecom, this was exactly the shake-up that I needed!

I worked for a jewelry company for three years, developing someone else's online store, before I realized that I wanted to open something of my own. I liked jewelry - I love meeting craftsmen, looking for original pieces, digging into antiques. I decided to open my own online jewelry store.

At that time, I was already a fairly large specialist in my business - I knew how to create online stores from scratch, develop, promote, but I had no management experience, and I didn't have much money either. So I found two more partner investors who helped me understand the business side of the business. One of them is my brother, the other is my colleague from a previous job. Together we opened our online store!

I graduated from the Moscow Institute of International Business Turo, and then worked for several years as a manager of a brewing malt company. It so happened that two of my best friends were in the restaurant business, so when I finally got tired of the raw materials for brewing, I easily found a project in the restaurant sector: one of my friends offered me to buy an unprofitable cafe from him and set up there order! It sounded very reckless and I agreed to give it a try.

When I moved to Moscow, for several years I was in a relationship with a successful entrepreneur who was ready to fully provide for me. He took me to expensive restaurants, bought jewelry, took me to rest. But I always had personal ambitions, and I continued to work as a translator in a small agency - not for the sake of money, but for the sake of self-realization. Once, due to an urgent deadline, I could not fly on vacation with my boyfriend.

He was upset - in general, he always thought that my work was some kind of stupidity. Well, a month later it turned out that instead of me another woman flew to the sea... whom I'm used to, you won't even have enough money for gasoline! " Oh, you bastard, yes, I have enough, I thought, and after that I gave myself my word: never again depend financially on any man! I decided that I would start my own business, and began to think which one. I understood that it would be difficult, but I was ready for it.

Going through different hobbies in my memory, I remembered that as a child I always liked to participate in school performances and holidays: decorate the classroom, invent skits, give out roles in performances. So I came up with the idea of ​​my own event agency!

I was always very sociable, knew how to build connections with people, plus I was attracted by the design of such work - there is no routine, every time there is something new. As a result, we opened an agency together with a friend who already had experience of this kind of work!

When we decided to open an atelier, I immediately realized that I wanted to create a more democratic men's brand than those that I had seen on the market. Private tailoring is an elite, expensive, but usually rather impersonal service. I wanted our atelier to be more like a men's club, where people come not only for business, but also for the atmosphere!

I formulated the following rule for myself: communication with the client is always on an equal footing, the employee is as valuable as the client. A truly trusting contact must be established between them, which means that it is important to find an individual approach to each. The client from the street is not always right, but our client will always be right!

Since childhood, I dreamed of being an archaeologist. Every summer I went on archaeological expeditions, and during school hours I spent all weekends in museums and libraries! But in the eleventh grade, a new physics teacher came to our school, and... in general, I decided to enroll in an engineer.

However, my love for all sorts of antiquities has not passed, therefore, when the idea occurred to me own jewelry online store, I decided that it would specialize in ethnic symbolism!

I realized that I was not interested in just selling stamped trinkets from China to people. I'm interested in looking for something unusual, niche. I wanted to bring something beautiful and original to a world where everything is built according to the same patterns. Maybe not many people are interested in ethnic motives, but by the standards of the country I have a rather large audience!

I wanted to create not just a business, but an ecosystem in which clients would be pleasant and comfortable to be. This philosophy formed the basis of our approach. Many times I sewed custom-made suits for myself while I was working in telecom, and I knew that such an atelier, as we conceived, did not exist yet.

But, of course, to please not only yourself, but also your potential clients, before you open company, I asked in detail all my acquaintances and former colleagues where they sew their suits and why!

In addition to the event agency, I had another idea: a vintage clothing store. I managed to travel quite a lot and loved to look for all sorts of rare things, clothes, jewelry on trips.

Nevertheless, I gave up on this idea: it is very difficult to scale such a business. There are, of course, successful examples - the Vintage Voyage and Humana chain of stores. But I understood that building such a business would take too much time and effort: after all, vintage is a piece story.