“It’s a miracle that the products reach Russia”: the main thing from an interview with DNS co-founder Dmitry Alekseev

About import problems

According to Alekseev, in 2022-2023, when many foreign brands left Russia, DNS “more or less calmly” bought products on the world market. However, everything changed in 2024, when “the banking system in terms of international payments and international finance completely stopped functioning.” For this reason, now “the products reach Russia only by miracle,” said the businessman.

He also expressed concern about how imports will fare in the future. “What will happen next year? <...> So far it seems that everything is evolving, every day they prepare new surprises for us,” said Alekseev.

About the conflict in Wildberries

The DNS co-owner noted that the conflict between Wildberries founders Tatyana Kim and Vladislav Bakalchuk “has a negative effect on the institutional environment, on ideas about how business is normally done.” “At the end of the day, this is not some kind of sales position, but rather a large company,” he stressed.

According to Alekseev, the situation on the market “creates practices on how to resolve conflicts.” “It turns out that it is necessary for the office to look like an impregnable fortress, for a large number of riflemen to be stationed and for it to have anti-tank guns. “This is an abnormal practice and companies suffer for it,” said the businessman.

He suggested that the cause of the conflict was that the development of corporate governance in the company lagged far behind the development of the business.

About the consumption boom

Now DNS is seeing a “pretty big” consumer boom in Russia, Alekseev said, emphasizing that “those people who didn’t have it before have money, and those who had money now have even more money.” “Surprisingly” from the point of view of consumption in the country, everything is more or less fine, said the businessman.

At the same time, he stated that entrepreneurs do not have a “picture of the future” and long-term strategies are based on the principle of “we will appear somehow” or are not built at all. “Thinking about long-term plans, trends and prospects usually leads to depression more than good ideas,” said the DNS co-founder.

About investments in Vladivostok

Alekseev lives in Vladivostok and invests in his urban projects, Forbes writes. Now the businessman is investing in the improvement of Patroclus beach in the eastern Bosphorus Bay. According to preliminary estimates, investments in this project will exceed one billion rubles without taking into account the cost of the land.

“The project with Patroclus beach is large and long: it consists of several stages and now we are implementing the initial one near the lake, which is located next to the sea. We have already launched the first phase; There is a walking area, benches and terraces. The park area around the lake should be practically inaugurated in 2025,” the businessman shared about his plans.

• DNS is one of the largest electronics store chains in Russia. According to Rusprofile, in 2023 the company’s revenue amounted to 727 billion rubles and net profit – 42 billion rubles.