Resistance to Magnit. The founder of the Altai network “Maria-Ra” successfully competes with Galitsky

When the first Magnit chain store opened in Barnaul, which usually easily deals with local traders, Altai businessman Alexander Rakshin assured the local press that he was ready for a fight

The family of the 66-year-old businessman, former physical education teacher Alexander Rakshin #164, owns the largest company “Maria-Ra” in the Altai region and, according to Forbes, is the wealthiest in the region. The family is Rakshin himself, the general director of the company, his wife Galina, his son Evgeny, a lawyer with a degree from the Altai University, and his daughter Alla, a graduate of MGIMO. They each own 25% stake in Maria-Ra, which was ranked 106th in the Forbes 200 largest private companies with revenues of 76.3 billion rubles.

In early September, Forbes estimated the Rakshin family’s fortune at $310 million. The Altai family did not make the annual rating of the richest families – in 2017, the “admission ticket” to it was $950 million. The last time the owners of Maria-Ra were in this rating was in 2015, when their total wealth was estimated almost twice as high – $600 million. The Rakshins’ fortune estimate fell not at all because of the company’s fundamentals, with which Maria-Ra is doing well: the network’s revenue has been growing steadily at 14-15% for three consecutive years. The stock market let us down: the shares of public trading companies, which we use as analogues, fell significantly during the year.

Rakshin Sr. started the business in 1993 with a small vegetable store in Barnaul, which he named after his mother, Maria Rakshina. Today the chain has 936 stores in Altai, Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Kemerovo regions. “Maria-Ra ranks 7th by revenue among Russian retail chains and 1st among regional ones. It is overtaken by federal retailers: Magnit, X5 Retail Group, Dixie, O’Key, and Lenta. The company “Intertorg” (stores “Narodnaya 7ya Semya”, “Ideya”, SPAR), which operates in the North-West region and Moscow, is ahead of “Maria-Ra” by revenue only by 1.3 billion rubles.

In 2014, when the first Magnit chain store opened in Barnaul, which usually easily dispatches local merchants, Rakshin assured the local press that he was ready for a fight. Even 10 years ago, under the guise of an engineer of a Moscow network, he went on a reconnaissance in the distribution center of “Magnit” to understand how the competitors work. As long as he keeps his word, the number of stores and Maria-Ra’s revenues are growing at the same pace.

The Rakshins have another competitor in Barnaul – Auchan, but the French chain, unlike the Krasnodar one, shares its revenues with them: Auchan leases space in two shopping centers owned by the family – Volna and Galaxy. The Rakshins own seven shopping centers in the Altai Territory and Kemerovo Region, in which they rent a total of nearly 170,000 square meters of retail space.

The family business is not limited to this: Rakshin Jr. owns a company which is building a hotel complex in SEZ “Biryuzovaya Katun”. Arkady Rotenberg also plans to build a complex for VIP-tourists there – his “Stroigazmontazh” owns the Altai company “Sfera Lesa”, which is engaged in the project and intends to invest 1.1 billion rubles.

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