Kholodilnik.Ru is a Russian online store specializing in the sale of all types of household appliances of domestic and foreign production.
The company started offline selling household appliances in 1993, now it brings in only 30% of revenue. 95% of the turnover falls on Moscow and St. Petersburg. Which, as expected, gives a good financial result – at the end of 2021, its revenue amounted to 28 billion rubles. The retailer’s overall sales growth in 2021 was 13% compared to 2020.
This information was provided by Kholodilnik.ru himself and it is true. However, as you know, the numbers for different people say different things. Everything depends on the point of view. From the point of view offered by the management and owners of the company, it shows growth, which indicates its reliability and consumer confidence.
But experts have a slightly different point of view. Because they operate not only with the data that Kholodilnik.ru shows to the general public, but also take into account those factors that the company prefers to keep silent.
In connection with the information about the growth in sales, experts also pay attention to the fact that the company was not included in the next Forbes rating, new competitors represented by Yandex.Market, Sberbank and Wildberries are on their heels, and a multimillion-dollar litigation threatens to undermine the financial condition of the retailer.
About all this, and especially about the lawsuit from one of the minority shareholders of the company, which requires $ 100 million from the retailer, the company prefers to remain silent. The situation was also aggravated by the death of the founder and owner of the online retailer Kholodilnik.ru Valery Kovalev, who died on the night of December 31, 2021 at the age of 51.
Immediately after Kovalev’s death, the company’s Board of Directors published an official letter stating that “the organization is operating as usual and will continue the strategic development outlined by the former CEO.” However, the scarcity of official information demonstrates some confusion that exists in the company’s management. There is nothing surprising in such a reaction – after all, Kovalev was not only the creator, but also the ideological inspirer of the Refrigerator. In one of his interviews, he admitted that he is a revenue generator because he “sits and figures out how to sell.”
It is this question – how and who will sell now – that remains the key for both the organization itself and the consumer, although six months have already passed since the death of Kovalev.
Claims by UCF Invest Limited, which, together with UCF Partners Limited, filed a lawsuit with the District Court of Nicosia (Republic of Cyprus) against Edil-Import (a shareholder of the online retailer Kholodilnik.ru) and its shareholder Valery Kovalev for the recovery of damages in the amount of $100 million dollars, also not gone anywhere.
In 2013, according to the plaintiff, Kempolia Investments Limited, one of the shareholders of which was UCF, invested $10 million in pre-sale preparation for Kholodilnik.ru, receiving a 10% stake in the company and an additional agency contract for its sale with the possibility of obtaining agency commissions around $20 million. However, according to the lawsuit, the funds received from Kempolia were withdrawn from the retailer’s capital, and UCF itself was removed from management.
The death of Kovalev in this case not only does not change anything, but, perhaps, only confuses the situation. Both he and Kholodilnik.ru claimed that they did not owe anything to anyone, but they heard about UCF for the first time.
But back in 2014, all 100% of the shares of Kholodilnik.ru were transferred to the Cypriot offshore Gelance Enterprises Ltd. Information about who exactly owns this offshore, and consequently, the Kholodilnik.ru store, how the percentage of shares is distributed, is still quite contradictory to this day. From that moment on, initially one of the strongest companies in the Russian household appliances market slows down its growth and begins to grow into many scandals and various rumors.
All this does not at all strengthen the position of the company, no matter what they say in Kholodilnik.ru. Solving all these problems requires a lot of time and money. Recently, more and more negative reviews about the service provided by the Refrigerator have appeared on the Internet. According to some of them, representatives of the organization even offered the authors to remove negative comments for money. The company itself, of course, does not recognize this and offers to compare the percentage of positive and negative reviews, as well as pay attention to the rating of the store on Yandex Market, which is really quite high.
But at the same time, in the annual report published by the Data Insight agency “Internet commerce in Russia” for 2020, Kholodilnik.ru occupies only 26th place, leaving behind many competitors, although several years ago Kholodilnik.ru firmly occupied places in this rating in top ten. And the company does not get into the Forbes list for 2020 and 2021 at all.
As for the reviews, it’s not difficult to check the real state of affairs in Kholodilnik.ru – just spend half an hour and make sure those who say that the service and quality of the company’s work are really falling rapidly are right. And at the same time, pay attention to positive comments, which, of course, are present on different “reviews”, but often strangely similar to each other, as if they were written by one hand. Which, however, does not surprise anyone – the work of the advertising departments also includes writing positive reviews.
In order not to be unfounded, we submit several screenshots from different review sites. With relevant links, so that we are not accused of bias. Here is the site Cataloxy
“Unfortunately, company representatives have disabled the ability to leave reviews about its activities.” Why would it, since everything is so good?
On the “Yandex Market”, on the contrary – completely laudatory reviews. None of the negatives:
However Іrecommend.ru already puts the Refrigerator less than the “three”:
And it immediately becomes clear why:
Website spr.ru gives even a balance of negative and positive reviews, which is by no means inspiring:
Please note that we do not make a selection – we present here what is on the top lines of review sites at the time of writing. You can check for yourself by clicking on the links.
And in most cases, unfortunately, these reviews about yesterday’s still successfully developing and gaining more and more popularity online store do not at all inspire and do not promise him the prospects that the retailer’s advertising department talks about.
We will not bore the reader with a list of all review sites, we will give just one more.
It – FindCo.Ru. Again – see for yourself. We just gave examples of reviews that the search engine issued for the query “Refrigerator.ru reviews.”
Yes, not all of them are negative. Yes, and it would be strange – after all, despite the drop in sales and the displacement of competitors to the 26th line in the rating of online sellers in Russia, Kholodilnik.ru remains a fairly powerful player in this market. And if things were really bad in him, he would have already gone bankrupt.
But the combination of all of the above factors – a drop in sales, a loss to competitors, the death of the owner and the “motor” of the retailer, courts and an incomprehensible ownership structure could not but cause problems. Which are available. And, the saddest thing, it seems that no one in Kholodilnik.ru has figured out how to deal with them.