Diving 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, Netflix, 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, relationships with its employees and customers — the people who made VkusVill the success it is today.VkusVill is a retail food chain dedicated to offering fresh and healthy food at affordable prices. Founded in Moscow in 2012, they now have 1,200 stores in Russia, 2 in Amsterdam, 14,000 employees, and $1,7 bn in annual sales. They are Russia’s fastest-growing grocery chain, single-handedly reinventing the retail world. But VkusVill never had the aim to compete with anyone. They just started playing by their own rules. The result? A break with traditions of the retail and management worlds.