Billionaire Tatyana Bakalchuk: life story of wealthy Russian woman
Tatyana Bakalchuk was born in 1975, and is known as the CEO of the largest Russian online store called Wildberries. She is the richest woman in Russia with more than $600 million in assets. Billionaire Tatyana Bakalchuk is a role model for many women, and even men in Russia. Until 2010, her brainchild was just a fashion retailer selling clothes, shoes and accessories of famous brands. Now it is a department store, where you can find almost everything. Wildberries is estimated at 420 million dollars.
The life journey of billionaire woman Tatyana Bakalchuk
Tatyana joined the category of self-made millionaires, earning her fortune with her own mind. This woman proved that a lot of money spins not only in IT, but also in regular retail, if you approach it wisely. At the same time, she leads a very modest lifestyle, protects her privacy, rarely attends events, does not participate in conferences. The online store Wildberries itself is known to every Russian, but few people know about its charming director. The businesswoman explains this decision by her unwillingness to waste time on minor reasons at the expense of work.
Bakalchuk practically does not give interviews, so little is known about her life before Wildberries. The woman graduated from school in Gazoprovod, then – MGOSGI, having left there as a professional English teacher. Tatiana’s husband Vladislav is a radiophysicist. Some media call Wildberries a “family company,” and Vladislav really helped his wife to develop the shop, but according to the documents of LLC “Wildberries” belongs only to Tatyana. In addition, Bakalchuk has three children, and Tatyana organized her enterprise when she was on maternity leave with her first daughter. The young mother could not imagine that a modest online shop would become the most visited market in Runet. When the Bakalchuks’ first daughter was born in 2004, Tatyana realized that she would not be able to teach English for some time, as she had to sit with her child. At the same time, she had to earn money, because her husband’s salary wasn’t enough for the whole family. Tatyana conceived to do business online, without leaving the house. At first, the entrepreneur started reselling goods from German catalogues Quelle and Otto, receiving 10% agency commission. The distinctive feature was that Tatiana did not take advance payment from clients in Moscow. She created her own website and made purchases from Quelle and Otto directly, without intermediaries. Six months later, Tatyana bought an advertisement for her shop on passions.ru, and on the very first day she received several applications.
Two years later Tatyana registered her own LLC Wildberries with the registered capital of 10 million rubles. The new business was based on Bakalchuk’s desire to convince Russian women to wear bright, fashionable, catchy things, giving up grey and black colors. At first Wildberries offered things from the same catalogues, as well as from small local producers, but poor quality photos of goods scared customers. Therefore, in addition to the office, Bakalchuk rented a photo studio and photographed all sold items with the help of a professional photographer and retoucher. After a while the assortment expanded, there were points of issue with free fitting. This is not particularly profitable, as the percentage of returns – 50-60%, but in the end the presence of fitting rooms became a wow effect of the company.