A Russian businessman's road from Siberia to success

Andrei V Trubnikov is one of Russia's most successful businessmen

He was rejected by the KGB. He couldn’t sell vodka to Russians. He went broke.

Then Andrei V Trubnikov bet on a dish-soap factory and started making shampoo. He is one of Russia’s most successful businessmen, at the helm of a global cosmetics brand.

A strapping man who adorns himself in ethnic jewellery and indigenous talismans and decorates his office with wooden masks and fish tanks, Trubnikov serves herbal tea to guests, speaks in a gravely, reverent voice about traditional Siberian shamanism and eschews any hint of business attire.

In short, he stands out, a distinctive look he has sought to extend to his company, Natura Siberica. The brand’s colourfully named products, like Wild Thistle and Siberian Juniper shampoo and Strength of the Bear shaving cream, are sold in dozens of countries, from Argentina to Australia, at supermarkets like the Monoprix chain in France, as well as upmarket department stores like Harrods in London.

The company is a rare bright spot for a Russian economy that has been languishing in recent years.

Though the country emerged from recession late last year, growth has been anaemic, weighed down by low oil prices and sanctions stemming from expensive foreign adventures in Ukraine and Syria. Outside of the energy and military industries, which Russian leaders view as of strategic importance, few companies have seen sustained profits.

“It’s very hard,” Trubnikov, 58, said of succeeding in business in Russia.

As a college student, Trubnikov aspired to join the KGB, studying Spanish and Serbo-Croatian to help his chances. He was abruptly turned away and, like other spurned applicants, was never told why.

Dejected and in search of work, he opened a vodka distillery in the late 1990s, but his timing was terrible. Russia was hit by a financial crisis in 1998, and the country defaulted on its debt, sending the economy into a tailspin. The price of vodka nose-dived. Trubnikov couldn’t cover his debts and the distillery soon went under.

The next year, in desperation, he sold his car, a Soviet-era Volga sedan, for about $5,000, and used the proceeds to buy a defunct dish-soap factory outside Moscow, setting out to make shampoo.

He initially sold products under the brand the Recipes of Grandmother Agafia, named after a Siberian healer, Agafia Lykova. Sales of the products — based on herbs found in Siberia — remain brisk inside Russia. But abroad, Trubnikov said, they were hampered by a lack of recognition by consumers who also found the name a mouthful.

Still, he wanted to infuse the company with the good characteristics of Siberia. Despite being from Moscow, he was convinced consumers would associate the remote region with snow, isolation and cleanliness, and not the dark clouds hanging over political leaders in the Russian capital.

He eventually settled on the brand name, Natura Siberica, in 2008.

The company has now moved from its original dish-soap factory to a larger facility outside Moscow and runs six organically certified herb farms as well as a herd of yak in Siberia. It also has a factory in Estonia and presses to extract herbal essences in Scotland and Romania.

© 2017 The New York Times News Service