It seems that Tatyana Bakalchuk's Wildberries are ready to ruin their own suppliers in pursuit of super profits. Who benefits from this?
Photo: Anatoly Zhdanov/Kommersant
The Moscow Post regularly receives requests from counterparties-suppliers of Russia's largest online retailer, Wildberries (Wildberry), owned by Russia's richest woman, Tatyana Bakalchuk.
In the appeal, people are asked to convey information to the public that, allegedly at the beginning of December, instead of the due weekly payments, many entrepreneurs working with the marketplace received unregulated fines, which put a number of enterprises almost on the brink of survival.
The Moscow correspondent understood the situation Post.
Wildberries have had conflicts with their own suppliers in the past, but this time it could be some kind of terminal stage. The authors of the letter claim that various suppliers received fines ranging from 10,000 to 13 million rubles, as a result of which many cannot pay their loans, some cannot pay salaries to employees, and some can even buy food for their families.</p
Earlier, Fontanka wrote about the same situation, and the root of the problem pointed out by Bakalchuk's side and quoted by the publication was that the sellers accidentally or deliberately underestimated the dimensions of their goods in order to get lower logistics rates.
The problem is that they “accidentally or intentionally undersized their goods to get lower logistics rates.” Of course, the company assures that they will definitely look into each situation – but judging by the growing noise in social networks, it is not going very well yet.
Usually, suppliers express such dissatisfaction in profile chats, where the company's operators are in touch. We don't have access to them. But, according to the authors of the Mash Telegram channel, they allegedly managed to look there. In the screenshot of the correspondence, which is provided by the telegram channel, people claim that they indicated all the dimensions of their goods correctly, but still received fines.
Photo: Telegram channel Mash https://t.me/breakingmash/40415?single
There is also an alleged appeal to the Prosecutor General's Office from counterparties of the structure, where they ask to pay attention to the situation.
Photo: Telegram channel Mash https://t.me/breakingmash/40415?single
At the same time, it is a sin for Bakalchuk's business to complain. If in the “covid” year 2020, the head structure of the group, which Tatyana Bakalchuk personally manages, managed to make a modest profit of 2.1 billion rubles, then by the end of 2021, the profit amounted to 14 billion rubles. It grew by 565%!
However, conflicts between Wildberries and their counterparties are nothing new. Marketplace has long been trying to attribute the desire to get rich at the expense of everything that is possible. Including their own suppliers, who may be subject to unexpected rules, fines and restrictions of dubious validity.
Back in 2020, Wildberries suppliers complained about forced discounts on their goods. At the same time, instead of removing products without discounts from the sale, the marketplace forcibly set them a 25% discount. It turned out that such a possibility is spelled out in the offer contract.
Photo: https://retailer.ru/postavshhiki-wildberries-pozhalovalis-na-prinuditelno-ustanovlennye-skidki-na-tovary/</p
Logistics has become a separate topic of people's dissatisfaction. Many entrepreneurs, sending goods to the marketplace by quite decent transport companies, then could not find them, and received only replies and excuses from Wildberry.
This conclusion can be drawn from the statement posted by the YS SYSTEM user on the VC platform. RU. According to the author, his product was simply lost, and he did not receive any support from the marketplace – only answers from bots in the profile chats of the structure. The author writes that he went to court.
Photo: VC.RU https://vc.en/ u/797691-ys–system/438284-wildberries–kidaet–postavshchikov–podaem– v–sud–na-valberis
Again, this is nothing new. According to the authors of The Bell website (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation), the conflict with suppliers allegedly erupted back in 2017, when the owner of the Prime Jeans brand was desperate to receive 6 million rubles of debt – and filed a bankruptcy lawsuit against Wildberries.
The same authors claim that there were lawsuits from the United Fashion Group (UFG), from which Wildberry allegedly demanded 80 million rubles in a trade bonus for promotion, and from The Department, which allegedly failed to issue a return for unsold goods.
Wildberries won those court cases, but because of the closed nature of the company, rumors about financial problems in the structure spread around the market.
“Berry” counterfeit
Another problem is counterfeit products, which were found on the marketplace at different times. In October of this year, one of the western counterparties of the structure, the Russian division of the American Duracell Duracell Russia, filed a complaint against the Wildberries and Avito marketplaces in connection with the large number of counterfeit products sold under the company's brand on these sites. Vedomosti wrote about this.
The hype rose steadily. As a result, Wildberries even had to make excuses in the press: “Information about the sale of counterfeit products by Wildberries is not true. Together with the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Federal Antimonopoly Service and other departments, we are counteracting the appearance of dubious products on the Russian market,” TASS quotes the company.
However in the Network write another. According to the authors of the AKKet.com website, Wildberries allegedly sells fake goods en masse and refuses to return money. As an example, they cited an expensive smartphone of a South Korean brand, paying more than 90 thousand rubles for a mobile device, which, after checking, allegedly turned out to be fake.
Among other things, they tried to attribute the sale of counterfeit children's goods to the site. However, this was attributed to Avito and other similar sites. As a result, the authorities were forced to react. In September 2022, Deputy Prime Minister and Head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov called for the urgent development of measures to combat counterfeiting of children's goods, which account for a significant share of sales of both Avito and Wildberries and other similar services.
There are also very wild cases that also cast a shadow on the reputation of the marketplace and its main owner. In November, a Russian woman ate mushrooms with psychoactive substances ordered from Wildberries and ended up in the hospital. In the same November, in Krasnoyarsk, it came to a court ban on the sale of such substances on the site. However, such ads are still quietly hanging on the marketplace website! How to understand this?
In general, the topic of substances, dietary supplements, drugs is also well-known in the context of the Wildberry trade. What are the suppliers of medicines, which are then bought by people on the marketplace. In September 2021, the marketplace entered into an agreement for the supply of medicines with the Samson Pharma pharmacy chain.
The structure had huge government contracts – 86 billion rubles. But six months after the conclusion of an agreement with the marketplace, it went bankrupt … But a clone company appeared with a similar name – Samson-Pharma. She also began to receive government contracts and work. Haven’t money been withdrawn to this company from that first Samson Pharma, and hasn’t cooperation with Bakalchuk played some role?
Reliable “rear”
A whole wave of problems and dissatisfaction of contractors and buyers, as well as attention to Wildberries from the authorities and supervisory authorities, some on the market have already managed to connect with a mythical desire to encourage Tatyana Bakalchuk to part with her business. There is a certain reason in such conspiracy theories, but the woman is not in a hurry to sell the structure yet – with such and such profits.
However, she may have a strong rear. According to the authors of the VC.RU website, allegedly “the launch of the company's own trademark was supervised by Tatyana Bakalchuk's sister Marina Andreeva (Kim)”, who is allegedly a relative of Albina Tsoi, “who is the sister of Yuri Tsoi. This is the nephew of Rosneft Vice President Sergei Tsoi , who in the past headed the press service of Yuri Luzhkov.
Tatiana Bakalchuk is not afraid of crises, suppliers, or courts? Photo: Alexander Shcherbak/TASS
And the brother of Bakalchuk herself, Yuri Tsoi, worked as a general director at Starprofi, the beneficiary of which was the developer and owner of the Capital Group holding Pavel Te (a large developer in Moscow, who may be favored by Sergei Sobyanin). despite all the problems and claims?
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