Vlad Rekovski - Manage your dream. Your opportunities are endless

A few years before that, I met a family of immigrants from Russia, they had an ice cream parlor in a neighboring town. I received from them all the necessary recipes and ice cream production technology. The trading base for this market was in Hannover, and the suppliers of ingredients just wanted to come to you and show you how it is better, cheaper or more expensive, and most importantly, how to prepare this sweet product tastier and faster. I want to say that the cost of producing one kilogram of ice cream, even from very high-quality ingredients such as whole milk, natural cream, frozen natural strawberries from Poland and fresh, ripe bananas, seemed very attractive to me.

From the end of January, I began preparations to open my own ice cream production in May next year with its further wholesale. I rented a suitable space in the very center of the old city, bought a Mercedez Sprinter and started refurbishing it. I needed a special freezer and other equipment that still needed to be made. And I also needed everything I needed to get permission from special bodies of technical sanitary and hygienic supervision for the transportation and storage of ice cream. I also bought a used Italian mechanical ice cream machine, two large freezers for storing the finished product, and other equipment for making products.

In May, as planned, I opened production. Sales were strong, but the weather had a huge impact on them. There was practically no demand on rainy and rainy days. Goslar and his tourists only saved me. All the cafes in the old part of town were filled with them. I have delivered ice cream to several cafes in the city, cafes at summer pools and all kinds of outdoor events. The summer was successful, I made good money.

Autumn began, and I began to look for an opportunity to organize something else additionally that could bring profit all year round, regardless of the season. I have had connections in Russia since the days when I bought the products of the “Sweetly” factory in Yekaterinburg. Since this all started.

I renewed contacts with the sales department of this candy factory (of course, these were already other people), requested a catalog of goods and prices to assess the possibility of importing to Germany and selling in bulk. When I worked in Germany in the same N & D-Markt, I already knew well what types of products of the candy factories are in demand in Germany. In addition, I had information about the purchase prices for Germany of well-known factories in Russia, such as “Red October” or “Rot Front”, and some other factories from different regions of Russia. The products of the “Sweetly” factory were not yet available on the German market at that time.

In Yekaterinburg, they were very interested in my proposal, and my friend, who lives there, became the representative of our German company. We studied together at the university. He negotiated on site and we got a decent discount on the factory’s wholesale sales prices. And so the first truck with forty tons of “Sweetly” products was shipped and went to Germany.

By that time, I had rented a warehouse with a small space, in which I planned to set up my office and hire a sales manager and accountant. But I also needed a small truck to transport products to customers directly to the stores. To do this, I turned to a former colleague with whom I worked at N & D-Markt. I offered him to work with me as a partner. Delivery on request from retail stores should have been his responsibility. My former colleague knew very well all the shopkeepers in our region. Alexey Pyatkin listened carefully to my proposal and a week after our conversation he accepted it. We invested in the opening of our enterprise in equal shares of 50 x 50 and opened the VolkWestGbR company. VolkWest translated from German means “People of the West”.

At first I had the idea to name the company a little differently: VolkOst, which in Russian means “People of the East”, but the theme of “East” is associated in Germany with the eastern part of Germany, or rather, with the former GDR, which I have not seen especially warm attitude from the people of the West at that time.

Subsequently, Alexey carried out purchases of fruits and vegetables at the wholesale market in Hanover, which also brought good profit when selling in parallel with the main product.

We hired an accountant and a sales manager who offered our assortment to stores by phone. Our company worked as a small team of four people in a friendly manner and together, each doing his own thing. We clearly assigned responsibilities with my partner and did not overlap, organizing quite effective and well-coordinated work. We sold 50% of the first delivery in two weeks and ordered the next delivery, adjusting the assortment and order volumes. The second car quickly passed customs control and arrived at the warehouse two hours after arriving at the customs terminal, already using the experience and contacts at the customs office in Goslar. At the factory in Yekaterinburg, we were given the green light: “VolkWest” orders were shipped out of turn. Delivery by a transport company to our customs terminal in Germany took seven calendar days.

The interest rate for customs duties mainly depended on the sugar and cocoa content and averaged about 25% of the value of the product itself. Sales were gradually growing, we successfully coped with competitors, bringing orders exactly on time and selling vegetables and fruits in parallel. At the request of clients, I began, together with the “Sweetly” company, to develop special packaging for the German market for certain types of goods, and I also began to invent my own names. In addition, the factory itself began to print stickers with information on the composition of the ingredients included in these products in German. This was a prerequisite for complying with German trade rules and very convenient for us: we no longer spent our resources on translating and printing this huge number of stickers. Our business started to develop. During the month we sold on average about 80 tons of “Sweetly” products, about 20 tons of fruits and vegetables, and I began to develop, together with Polish suppliers, pickles according to my mother’s special recipes: pickled tomatoes and cucumbers in cans, as well as canned vegetable salads.

By that time, my wife and I had lived seven years in Germany, and in the last three of them our family life has not been very good. We became neighbors to each other, we practically stopped talking to each other, and our relationship lost its meaning. I once asked my wife: “Do you think our relationship, which we came to after ten years, should remain so for the rest of our lives?” I continued after a short pause: “But what about the warm attitude towards each other? For example, before leaving for work, kiss and say “Darling, I love you”? ” But in response I heard only one sentence: “What are you, this only happens in the movies!” After what I heard, my soul became sad. I didn’t continue the conversation, I didn’t even say anything in response, I just left the apartment and went to my work. Perhaps I did the wrong thing and it was worth continuing, but, as it was before, many attempts to talk turned into scandals and mutual reproaches. I definitely didn’t want this anymore.

And the reasons for our quarrels were different, and it was my fault, I do not deny it. After a while we parted. I rented a one-room apartment in the village (officially it was the city of Finenburg, where our warehouse was located) and moved there. Since 2002 I have been living alone. Of course, I often met my son Max, then these were the brightest moments of my life for me. I remember how we walked with him along the shores of the small but picturesque Lake Finenburg, we swam there, organized picnics and went fishing. Already in those years I began to instill in my son a love of nature. It is very important that a person grows up with understanding and love for what he came from, where our beginnings come from, where each of us can find comfort and peace and, even being in solitude, does not feel lonely. All this is called in one word – “nature”.