Yury Yavorsky - Suvorov & business. Everlasting lessons from the russian master strategist

…A Moscow entrepreneur running a small retail shop decided to procure Italian shoes directly from the manufacturer. She went to Italy herself and found that designer shoes by high-street brands had a discount subsegment. These shoes sold cheaper due to minor production flaws or as older collections. The price tag was several times lower and topped out at 10—15 euro.

She bought a hefty batch of shoes, put it on display, and waited for a swarm of customers or lively trade at the very least. But… Sales dropped two or three times below average. A friend of mine, who told me this story, came by to visit the entrepreneur soon after. He found her in tears, on the brink of selling the shop and her business.

He gave her two tips. The first was to “throw in another zero on the price.” The shelves and inventory were swept clean within a month or two! The business lady went to Italy again and bought another similar batch. She tried to sell it at ten times the cost again, but on the second go, she did actually go broke. All because she did not hear or just did not want to heed the second tip. “Once you are sold out, never do this again!”

It is possible to trick the demand once or mislead the competition for a limited time, but you have to remember: in their ability to survive, evaluate and see through lies, the consumers and the market are extremely sensitive to change and will not be taken for a ride twice.

As a source of insight for business strategy, one can discover tremendous value in the story of Suvorov’s assault and seizure of Izmail that was thought to be an unassailable fortress. Suvorov, a general-in-chief at the time, began by assuming a disguise not to be recognized. He took a shabby attire, an aged horse, and, accompanied by a single orderly, studied the fortress all round.

Next, he ordered to mock up fortifications that closely resembled Izmail for drills. His troops, shoulder to shoulder, practiced to blanket the moat with bundles of twigs, prop up ladders to quickly scale the walls where they practiced stabbing and slashing dummies. The Turkish and Russian forces were more or less equally matched; the fortress fell two and a half hours into the battle. The Russian army lost 2,000 men; the Turkish army lost 26,000 dead and 9,000 captured.

Any business venture can be approached as an unassailable fortress. Before Suvorov, Izmail had been besieged and stormed by three generals, including Prince Potemkin. What failed them? Same troops, same weaponry, same fortress…

But did they go around the fortress looking for weaknesses? Or did they drill their troops on similar fortifications? At what time and in what manner did they launch their offensive?

Suvorov first undertook a thorough and forceful two-day cannonade; the attack started at 5:30 in the morning, when the Turks had their morning prayer. And he won.

When an entrepreneur makes preparations to launch a business project, similar strategic thinking and action are indispensable.

…As I realized that retrofitting latest-series cars to build armored vehicles requires bulletproof glass of a whole new level, I decided that we could not use existing technologies. Increasing the thickness of ballistic glass by a mere millimeter made the car heavier by 50—100 kilograms, which degraded its performance and put additional load on its strained drivetrain.

I had to go roam the world of bulletproof glass manufacturers. Under various “legends”, sometimes posing as a prospective buyer, or sometimes supplier, and so forth, I visited production facilities in different countries, from Italy to Brazil. I always carefully studied the production process, the equipment and other details of this complex operation.

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