Achievements
Artem Bektemirov is one of the co-founders of the Pharmacy Chain 36.6, first Russian pharmacy retailer that proposed a new format of “a supermarket of high-quality affordable health and beauty goods”.
Though the 36.6 business model was quickly adopted with its competitors, the pharmacy chain still is the leading player in its segment. The first drugstore 36.6 was opened in Moscow in August of 1998; and now there are 1192 drugstores in 29 Russian regions working under company’s management.
In 2003 36.6 became the first Russian pharmaceutical company that made a public offering of its shares at MICEX. In 2007 its consolidated sales were about $871.1 million.
Career Highlights
Bektemirov was born in 1969. In 1993 he graduated from Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Russian Federation Ministry for Foreign Affairs; served in the army. In 1991 co-founded the company Vremya with Sergey Krivosheev. Starting from selling of a technique to Moscow medical organizations, the company by degrees got over import and packaging medicines, and then engaged in pharmaceutical manufacture.
Being a student in summer of 1991 Bektemirov was working as a porter at one of the London hotels. Not far the hotel there was a drugstore Boots, and one day he understood that he visited it without any definite goal, but just because he liked it. Boots was very different from the Russian drugstores of that time where people were forced to come only to buy a necessary medicine and then quickly quit. That was the time when he realized the image of an ideal health and beauty goods store.
In 1997 the pharmaceutical company co-founded by Bektemirov and Krivosheev bought several drugstores. Artem was sure that the drugstores like Boots, comfortable, with the opened form of trade, would be certainly popular. But it was necessary to find a right form of realization of this idea. At that time the partners started collaboration with a consulting firm МсKinsey & Co. Consultants helped them to shape the idea of pharma-markets, and elaborated the project based on the best practices of pharmaceutical businesses in the world.
From 1996 to 2002 Artem Bektemirov was CEO of the company Vremya, the maternal company of the Pharmacy Chain 36.6 whose brand was created in 1998. In 2002 for the integration of several companies before the public offering the Pharmacy Chain 36.6 was registered as a company, and Artem Bektemirov became its CEO.
Leadership Experience
In his childhood Artem Bektemirov dreamed of being an actor but later chose the studying of the international economy. Serving in an army became an important experience. There he learned standing for himself and making quick decisions in critical situations.
In his own words, he had no leadership ambitions and liked loneliness. But later, when he became a leader, he realized the importance of the development of communication skills.
One of the hardest frontiers for Bektemirov became period of the 1994-1995s, when he by trial and error was raising his management team. Analyzing his past experience he thinks that if he could avoid some mistakes at that time, today the company’s achievements could be even more exiting.
Bektemirov is confident that it is very important for the company to create a comfortable environment for its valuable employees. These employees should know that the executives value the unique contribution of each of them. These employees should feel that they can solve any question any time by discussing it with any executive. In this case a talented employee most probably would stay in a company despite any attractive offers he would receive from other employers. “If I understand that a person is really a rare specialist and we should retain him for the company”, Artem says, “it is better to use individual approaches, which include two points: the increasing of the loyalty and his knowledge of the company’s business and the level of the interaction with the executives. Loyalty is advantageous for the company. And the loyalty of the employee in the difficult areas really matters.”
Being a successful businessman and a wealthy person Bektemirov is guided by a principle “everything that a man really need is cheap, and everything he does not need costs huge amount of money”. In his words, making money is not a stimulus to develop a business. He is following the desire to find himself and understand what he is able to do; and his biggest pleasure is the process of creation. “I am pleased to feel that we have created something complicated, that may be a foundation of building even more complicated system,” Artem says. “This is the thing that brings me pleasure, not the feeling of the ownership.”
Good2Watch VideoTM: Artem Bektemirov: To Communicate Vision You Need to Have Passion
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