Beginning at Elite
I joined the company in 2000 as a Brand Manager. At that time, Elite was represented by three people in the Ukraine. It was the beginning of our business operation in the Ukraine and we had a single brand called Elite Fort, which only had two catalog numbers. The local market wasn’t as developed as it is today, so the growth potential was high. The work was very interesting for two years. It’s not easy building a business when the market is young and developing, so we added some more brands and categories and enhanced our product line.
We became a strong business unit, one of the leading local businesses in our category and launched our instant coffee in the Ukraine with great success.
The Move to Other Companies - The Return to Strauss-Elite
Two years later, in 2002, I left the company and continued to pursue my career in cheese, as well as coffee and tea.
I worked in other companies for four years and gained a wide variety of experience on a personal-managerial level and also got familiar with the markets. In 2006, I received an offer from Strauss to come back to work as a Marketing Manager in the former Soviet Union.
The decision to return was not trivial for me since they say “you cannot jump into the same river twice”. But it quickly became apparent that the old team was still intact so it was actually great to come back and work with them again. It felt like coming home.
Growth Satisfaction
It was a very challenging task, that held great promise for many years to come. Just to give you an idea – we worked on an area covering 9000 kilometers from East to West and that says it all! It meant working in 11 different time zones, all at the same time! When the Sales Manager in Moscow starts his day, another Manager in Siberia is reporting a successful day’s work. The distance between our workers in Russia and Ukraine is 6000 kilometers! That’s 10 hours of driving by car without stopping, eight hours by truck, or three and a half by train… so managing logistics became sort of an art form for us.
The big challenge was developing a strategy for the former Soviet Union which took over a year and ended up generating rapid growth. We went on an acquisitions expedition to expand our product line and acquired the local coffee brands Charnaya Karta, Kaffa, and Roberto Totti.
As the business thrived and flourished, we took a leading role in the local coffee market as the strongest and most important player. All of this, gave me immense satisfaction from my job and the way I personally developed while doing it.
It’s interesting to see the development of our company over those years, both at the local and international level.
The challenge of handling such a large-scale operation ,with tough competition, required a strategy of remaining as large as possible and conveying that power to consumers and competitors.
Knowing your market is important. 70% of the t area we operate in, drink instant coffee with milk, each making its coffee in an entirely different manner. It was a challenge for us to crack the market and manage to reach the widest common denominator while keeping each and every one of our customers satisfied.
Even if it’s an exaggeration to use Neil Armstrong’s words who said, “One giant leap for mankind”, Strauss underwent tremendous change and made a huge leap of international proportions, and today it is a completely different company than it was 10 years ago. To me, Strauss is like a young boxer making his way from the local events all the way to the heavyweight world championship and I am proud to be part of its success.
