Russian merchants are famous for their entrepreneurial talents, multi-million dollar deals and adventurous arrangements, when one believed the other word for word, and the handshake was considered the most faithful seal. One of such enterprising people is the Russian tea merchant Aleksey Semenovich Gubkin.
He did not just sell tea in Russia - he founded a dynasty of tea suppliers. True, he was not the only one. Historians know the names of the "tea barons" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Vysotsky, Popov, Klimushkin, Perlov, Botkin, Medvedev and others. However, the Gubkin surname in this series of sales of the most famous.
Biography
Alexey Semenovich was born in 1816 in the small town of Kungur near Perm. The Gubkin family was patriarchal, religious, Alexei and his two brothers were brought up in severity. His father was a merchant: engaged in the transport of goods between Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Siberian cities.
The brothers did not go to school - they received elementary home education.
In Kungur, most artisans were engaged in leather: shoes, mittens and other products. The Gubkin family owned a small tannery, which over time began to be jointly managed by three brothers. Things were going well with them, the work was arguing, and everything was fine until the price of leather goods fell.
Then Alexei began to think about the need to switch to tea trade - it was a rare and expensive product, and it was possible to make good profit on it. Due to the high cost of tea, it was not in wide use, but Gubkin came up with his own strategy, which later helped him a lot.
The beginning of the career of a tea merchant
It was troublesome to sell tea at that time: it was necessary to go to the border with China and change different fabrics for tea there, and then transport them to Russia. However, the difficulties did not frighten the young merchant, and he exchanged everything he had for tea and began his business, separating from his brothers.
He made real trips through Siberia, in Mongolia, rode horses to Irkutsk and Tomsk, where there were famous fairs. There he sold tea. And what was left, Gubkin drove to Nizhny Novgorod, where there was also a big fair, and there he was already trading with Nizhny Novgorod, Petersburg and Moscow merchants.
Characteristic of these fairs was that everyone bought and sold tea in large quantities. Then they crushed them into smaller ones and sent each to their customers. This greatly increased the cost of retail, and not everyone could afford tea.
For merchants, this was not advantageous in that the tea sold out for a very long time. It was necessary to wait for a major buyer, negotiate a price with him, without losing his profit and taking into account all the costs.
Then Gubkin applied his strategy: he sorted the tea by varieties, accordingly ordered the prices. This aroused confidence in him as a person who knew about tea and did not try to sell a cheap variety of tea at an overpriced price. But the most important thing is his innovation - he began to sell tea in small batches. He could weigh as much as requested, and it was convenient for small traders.
At first, merchants at the fair were indignant at this, and then they got used to it. And everyone began to use the same strategy. Indeed, in any business, everyone should benefit, and small batches of tea made it possible for middle-class merchants to also become tea traders, only on a smaller scale.
Gubkin's innovations gave him more authority among the merchants, they wanted to cooperate with him and buy only from him. The sales turnover grew very quickly, and his contribution to the Russian economy was appreciated by the government: he received the rank of full state adviser and the Order of Vladimir of the III degree.
In 1881, as a man of advanced years, Gubkin moved to Moscow, where he bought a luxurious house that aroused admiration for its bizarre architecture. This house still stands on Rozhdestvensky Boulevard. He bought this mansion from Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck, the widow of a railway businessman. Gubkin highly appreciated the fact that his house has a rich history and at one time belonged to the most famous people.
True, Aleksey Semenovich lived here for only two years - in 1983 he died. State adviser Gubkin was buried in his native Kungur.
