02.12.2015 13:00
Any collection is emotions and memories "sealed" in objects associated with them. Therefore, it is not surprising that our heroes' eyes light up when they begin to talk about their treasures stored in their offices.
Evgeny Bernshtam,
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Adela Financial Retail Group
Collects figurines sea pirates and American Indians
Every interesting story has its own backstory. Once upon a time, my friend Lev Khasis (First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank - FP) gave a figurine of the Israeli sculptor Frank Meisler for his birthday. I liked it, I began to collect the work of this master. Today I have one of the largest Meisler collections in Russia, more than 150 exhibits. Moreover, I collect only Jewish and international art, and what is especially valuable - pre-series castings.
About the same thing happened with pirates and Indians: on my birthday, Mikhail Fridman (creator and co-owner of Alfa Group - FP) gave me a figurine of Flint - a one-legged pirate, with a pipe, a crutch and a parrot on his shoulder. A week later, my wife and I accidentally saw two large figures in the store - an Indian and a cowboy with a cup of hot tea or chocolate in their hands. Despite the fact that we were flying home with a transfer, we carefully packed them and brought them. And this collection has been going on for 17 years. The collection even has a name: "We all come from childhood." Because childhood is Fenimore Cooper, Rafael Sabatini, Mine Reid, Robert Louis Stevenson. All of them are connected with children's impressions, addictions.
And my childhood was spent near the sea. I love him very much. When you go ashore at five or six in the morning, the sea is still very quiet and calm. The sun rises from behind the horizon, and this ray goes to your feet, and the waves roll in and recede ... Imagine, for 30 years I started like this every morning. Regardless of the weather and time of year. My father taught me to do this. He himself went to sea at 5:30 in the morning, after turning on the radio at full volume. And at six in the morning, along with the anthem of the Soviet Union, I, cursing, woke up in order to turn off the radio. And there was nothing left but to get up and follow the older generation. But when you come to the beach and feel the morning sea freshness with every cell, you understand that life is beautiful.
Nicholas Dadiani,
CEO"Pronto Media Holding" (portals Job.ru, "From hand to hand")
Collects wine and crystal
I collect exclusively French wine - equally Burgundy and Bordeaux, and in crystal I prefer the Moser factory. This oldest crystal company in the world is located in the Czech Republic. Crystal is, as a rule, a combination of glass with lead, but at Moser, patina is added to the glass. Thanks to this combination, incredible color solutions, amazing architecture of the dishes themselves are obtained.
I started collecting crystal many years ago at the suggestion of my parents who live in the Czech Republic - they sent me items from antique shops. I also usually bring my new exhibits from Moser from the Czech Republic, where I visit quite often. In Russia, the range of this brand is quite scarce, and prices are higher than in Europe. I'm more interested in rare items from discontinued collections that need to be looked for in antique shops and shops.
Even though Moser produces vases and decorations among other things, my focus is on tableware. I think that a functional thing has a much higher value. There are over two hundred items in my crystal collection, and about fifty in my wine collection. I have been collecting both for many years.
Crystal stands for me for a reason. Sometimes I eat from it, sometimes I drink. I drink, of course, the wine that I collect. You need to understand that I collect not only bottles of wine, but also impressions from it. I can open a bottle from the collection according to my mood and drink it with friends. I treat wine rather than as a drink, but as a culture of growing grapes that appeared in the Caucasus. Its role in the history of mankind, in the history of religion, Christianity is very large. All those subtleties that are associated with the process of wine production, I certainly like it very much. This is something that cannot be standardized. Anyway, the drink in each bottle will have its own differences, its own uniqueness.
I store wine in special refrigerators at home and at work. The most expensive item in the collection is the 1982 Chateau Margaux. Its cost is about $2000. From crystal, the most expensive item, or rather a set, is six multi-colored glasses from the 1950s. Their cost exceeds $2000. But my favorites are wine glasses with cut off stems. The cost of Moser dishes depends on the number of items in the set - the more there are, the higher the value of each. A single glass will cost much less than a glass from a whole set.
Evgeny Ivanovsky,
Deputy Chairman of the Board of Transcapitalbank
Collects antique securities
When I was an investment banker, I was engaged in the placement of debt instruments of companies. This is probably why the most visually interesting papers for me are the old bearer bonds. Now they don’t make such ones anymore, since bonds are placed in in electronic format You can't touch them with your hands anymore.
With the development of the stock market, bearer securities were often counterfeited. From here a large number of a variety of protective equipment, which often resulted in complex design elements. Some companies specifically hired well-known designers to decorate the securities they issue and outdo other borrowers. Even on bonds, especially municipal ones, the terms of issue were sometimes indicated in several languages, and you can read exactly what the money was spent on. And this is interesting from a historical point of view.
My favorite part of the collection is Russian papers issued in the pre-communist period. This is due, among other things, to the fact that, as a rule, it is necessary for a country to default in order to maintain the ideal physical condition of a bond. Then the paper is not destroyed and does not have time to decay.
I have been collecting the collection for about five years, replenishing it mainly through Ebay, as well as through professional sites that specialize in selling this kind of paper in single copies with certificates of authenticity. Bonds over 100 years old range from $50 to $1,000 on these sites.
I also try to buy paper "in bulk" from people who sell their collections, and then I look at what the catch brought. The volume of my collection does not change much, because I give repeated copies to friends, and we also form gifts from them for VIP clients of the bank. Now I have collected about 150 unique papers.
Sometimes there is an opinion that you can still get payments on collectible papers by suing the companies or countries that are the heirs of the borrowers. But this, of course, is more of a myth, because for most defaults, disputes will be settled within a few years.
Scribophilia is enough the new kind hobby (originated in the 70s), and at the moment the main collection factor is aesthetic, just like with old cards or posters. But over time, the demand will increase, and the supply, alas, will not expand, so the investment component will also begin to be seen. The cost of some securities is growing even by events. For example, this summer, the price of old Greek bonds jumped strongly - apparently, against the backdrop of an active news flow about this country.
Nikolay Galushin,
First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sogaz
Collects nails
As in most stories about the collection, it all started by chance - with a piece of twisted iron, which was found on the banks of the Volga at low water near the town of Myshkin. I walked over the stones, metal clinked, I bent down, picked up the find, tapped the growths of rust - it turned out that this was an old tetrahedral nail with a large and uneven head. Terribly crooked. But don't throw it away. I threw it in the car and forgot about it. The nail drove through the trunk for quite some time, but then fellow travelers joined him, who were also found by chance on the banks of the Moskva River in the center of Kolomna in the spring, when the water cleared of ice, but because of the dams, its level has not yet risen. I then, walking along the sandy strip of the coast, discovered a whole treasure - probably, the old house, which once stood on the coast, fell apart. In this place there were nails, old broken bottles, ceramics and so on. For some reason, I needed nails again. And then I remembered about the first one, which had been driving in the dark of the trunk for more than six months. This is how my collection began.
Then began trips around Russia, inspection of some ruins, which always led to the finds of the next iron artifacts. It is not even the nails themselves that are interesting, of which there are already more than two hundred in the collection, but their identification and the places where they were taken from. It can be said that I have memories of destroyed churches, abandoned estates, gates of sluices and old dams in the form of old, rusty and bent nails of various lengths. They are absolutely unique, because each of them was made by hands, not by a machine.
Nicholas Dadiani resigned as CEO of the Pronto Media holding, which owns the classifieds sites Hand to Hand and job.ru.
Updated at 20:40. Holding "Pronto media" financial director of the company Mikhail Kart.
Dadiani made this decision together with the shareholders of Trader Media East, which includes Pronto Media.
I have been developing the holding's projects for two years, during which time we have changed the team, philosophy, and business model. Parting as good friends, I am sincerely grateful to the shareholders for the fact that we were able to implement many interesting and innovative ideas for our projects. All this effectively and qualitatively affected the development of the company, it is difficult to imagine that the holding could have chosen a different model of transformation.
At the moment, my strategic aspirations and the capabilities of the holding's shareholders diverge, as well as the vision for the further development of the company. Therefore, we jointly decided to end the working relationship. Now the shareholders already have a clear understanding of the further development of projects, so my departure will not affect the company's operations.
— Nicholas Dadiani
Mikhail Kart, CFO of Pronto Media, noted that Dadiani helped the company "go through the difficult path of business restructuring and transformation" and prepared it to return to a leading position in the market. According to him, the holding intends to further develop the digital business, increase the audience of its sites and increase brand awareness.
During the work of Nicholas, the foundation was laid, which will serve as a good springboard for the return of the company to a leading position in the market. In the future, the holding sets itself several main goals: completion of product development, increasing the audience of the site, as well as increasing brand awareness. Currently under discussion current situation with shareholders, we have already developed further steps to develop the company as a digital business. As part of the agreements, funding for marketing activities and product development will be increased.
- Mikhail Kart, Financial Director of Pronto Media
Shareholders of Trader Media East have not yet decided who will take Dadiani's place as CEO of Pronto Media. New appointments will be announced soon, Kart added.
Nicholas Dadiani joined Pronto Media in the spring of 2014. Before that he worked commercial director Publishing house Sanoma Independent Media, as well as in the combined company Afisha and Rambler (now Rambler & Co). From 2000 to 2007, Dadiani headed the client service department at Young & Rubicam Moscow, and was also the CEO of the Wunderman agency. Prior to that, he worked for Maxima CG and McCann Erickson agencies.
Pronto Media focused on the development of online business in the second half of 2015: the holding refused to publish the newspaper Iz Ruk v Rukki in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and in other regions transferred its publication to a franchise. Now, according to company representatives, the franchise network has 27 partners and covers 51 regions of Russia.
Thanks to this holding, to finish 2015 with a profit: in March, the company reported a loss reduction of 4.8 times in dollar terms. At the same time, Pronto Media's revenue fell by 66.2% to $21.4 million.
The holding's revenue amounted to 169.9 million rubles. Trader Media East's loss decreased by 2.5 times, and revenue amounted to $2.3 million, which is 63.5% less compared to the first quarter of 2015.
Once every two weeks, Internet entrepreneurs and heads of Internet companies come to visit Maxim Spiridonov, co-founder and CEO educational company"Netology-groups". This is how the Runetology podcast is created. The Secret publishes excerpts from the most interesting conversations within this program.
45-year-old Nicholas Dadiani began his career in advertising. He rose from an account manager to the CEO of the Wunderman agency. In 2007, he moved from there to the Afisha publishing house, where he later became a commercial director. Dadiani retained this post after the merger of Afisha and Rambler, and since 2013 has been increasing the share of digital products in the portfolio of Sanoma Independent Media, having taken a similar position. Last year, he headed the Pronto Media holding. In an interview, Dadiani talks about the future of classifieds and how the holding is going to make money after the closure of the printed version of the publication Iz Hand to Hand.
A recording of an interview with Nicholas Dadiani and other guests of Spiridonov can be found on the Runetology website.
- Before heading Pronto Media, you have been involved in sales and clients all your life. Why?
In this direction, there are many opportunities to show the qualities that nature has endowed me with - sociability, the desire to hear a person, understand his needs and offer a solution.
What do you think is a good salesperson?
This talent cannot be described in one word. What all the great salespeople I've worked with have in common is the ability to listen.
- Can this quality be cultivated?
Yes. I got it after a tough training at WPP. It's called Maestro. The most important thing is to understand what a person really needs. To do this, you need to listen. After that, you need to ask ten times. You may find out things that people won't tell you in the first place because they like to give information in batches. The only way to offer a solution is to understand the person, and people don't tend to talk about their true problems.
For several years you have been systematically building a career in the commercial departments of various companies, but when you were approached with an offer to head the Pronto Media holding, you agreed. What was the reason?
I was intrigued by the scale. "From hand to hand" is the national brand of Russia. I feel good when I can project my picture of the world onto a big screen. With "From Hand to Hand" the reality turned out to be even more severe, and the tasks are more difficult, but more interesting.
From 2011 to 2014, the turnover of the Pronto Media company, which owns the newspaper and website Iz Ruk v Ruk, halved, from $108 million to $52 million. Were you invited as a crisis manager?
More like a transformation manager. When I joined the company, the bulk of the revenue came from print media in Moscow and the regions. Last year, this share was 65-70%. But even then there was a tendency to reduce income.
- According to the reports, shareholders should have seen that incomes are falling and things are not going as well as before.
They have seen this since 2008, but the share of revenue from the Internet was in the region of 5%. It is clear that attention was shifted to the paper edition and the formation of a regional network. When I was called to Pronto Media, they set the task of creating a beautiful, powerful and correct digital holding.
Have you been given carte blanche?
The main task of any SEO is to increase the value of the company. The shareholders approved the holding's reform plan. We re-evaluated all processes in the company, figured out the right location between business lines, built reporting tools. Thanks to this, back in November 2014, we predicted a negative trend for the Moscow edition of Iz Ruk v Ruk and closed it. And with a pure heart we went on.
- This is an interesting case - a jump from print to digital.
Attempts to strengthen the digital component have been made before, including by my predecessor Ahmet Ozer. Unfortunately, they were not successful. Probably, a person was needed who understands a little more what a digital holding is. That's why I showed up.
- And what is the holding at the moment?
The process that we announced in February ended just the other day. Today, the holding includes a Moscow office, a division in St. Petersburg, a call center in Tambov, and two representative offices in Kazakhstan and Belarus.
- That is, you closed or transferred to the franchise a huge number of regional publishers?
There were regional publishing houses in one form or another in 90 Russian cities. We have closed many of them. I myself visited the main cities and negotiated with colleagues. The fact is that they could not use a number of benefits, since the parent company Pronto Media is traded on the London Stock Exchange and falls under a number of restrictions that do not allow, for example, to switch to a simplified taxation system. Therefore, by franchising regional publications, we have made them profitable for the people who publish them.
- How did this affect the overall revenue of the parent company?
The company stopped bleeding. Now all regional enterprises are profitable. We do not bear any costs. The franchise idea turned out to be beneficial for both parties. Today we receive up to 30 proposals per day for partnerships in cities. The total income of the holding now has three components. This is income from irr.ru and Job.ru, from franchisees and from our representative offices in Kazakhstan and Belarus.
- Do you combine the revenue from Job.ru and irr.ru?
Yes. Of these, "From hand to hand" in the region of 70%.
Former Executive Director holding Svetlana Fefilova. Now she is the financial director of NTV Plus.
Was the decision to close the print purely financial or politically motivated? Were you bound by the law on foreigners who cannot own more than 20% of a media company?
It got us thinking, but nothing more. The Moscow print was closed solely because of financial performance.
There are several answers to this question. We have returned the regional directorate, which was closed under my predecessor, and will actively develop the franchise history. In parallel, we are developing regional offices. In particular, the Tambov high-tech call center for direct and active sales in cold and hot bases for Job.ru and irr.ru. But the most important thing is the product development of our company. We started earlier than Avito and have accumulated a serious technological deficit in relation to them and vertical classified sites such as cian.ru or auto.ru. Now we are making up for it. By November, the technological deficit will disappear.
- You will become no worse or better?
We will become different. Today in Russia, and in the world, probably, there is not a single site that would solve all the classified problems or the problems of advertisers. Closest to this Avito. But, giving coverage, they are sometimes very much inferior in the quality of the vertical even to us.
- Can such a full-fledged monster appear that will compete with the verticals of the classified?
This is very difficult, because the vertical business is more complex and difficult. It provides quality, while the general profile classifier provides coverage. These are different tasks, they do not always coincide. I do not know such examples either in the world or in Russia.
- The holding also includes the Job.ru website. How will this project develop?
In technology, Job.ru is not inferior to competitors such as SuperJob or HeadHunter. The uniqueness of Job.ru is that it is a site for the mass selection of working specialties. This is how it will develop.
- Not trying to compete with SuperJob and HeadHunter?
When I worked at Afisha, we had a wonderful competitor, Timeout. Recently, my teacher Ilya Tsentsiper and I discussed this point in relation to the competition between Avito and Hand to Hand. It is right to be in a different place and do what you are doing, and not try to catch up. Job.ru is positioned separately from other recruiting sites, and this is our happiness.
- Is Job.ru profitable as a business?
Undoubtedly. Especially given the current economic situation. There is an overabundance of white-collar workers now, and the whole movement is in the area in which Job.ru is strong.
In connection with the crisis, people rushed to sell? Or, on the contrary, have they stopped doing it? How is the situation presented through the prism of the federal announcement site and the personnel portal?
The activity of the real estate sales sector is higher than usual. But there were 13% fewer vacancies, especially few highly paid ones. People began to offer themselves much more - the number of submitted resumes increased by 30%.
Photo: Press Service of "From Hand to Hand"
- What should be the ideal classified site?
The most simple to use and diverse in content. Imagine that you went to a flea market in search of a door latch. And instead of walking through the rows of scrap metal, you immediately find a place where there is a large selection of heck. Without noise, din and sellers pulling you. The audience will go where it is easiest and fastest to find what it is looking for.
- Is this why Craiglist, which is terrible in design, is still the leader among classifieds in the USA?
Craiglist is losing ground a lot. But tell me, is eBay classified? eBay, having started with an auction model, has now become essentially a marketplace for classified sales. Most sellers on eBay are not people, but stores. The auction model is reduced to a not very large percentage, and the bulk of the ads is just a classified ad.
- In the auction in general, in my opinion, users have played enough.
An auction is good when a person himself cannot set a price. And when stores compete with each other, they more or less follow the market, they know what and how much it costs. Therefore, on eBay, most will "sell right now."
- What trends will determine the classification market in Russia and in the world?
In Hong Kong and several other countries, there is a combination of classification and geolocation. In some areas, you can point your smartphone at a house and see which apartments are rented in it. In Moscow, it would be interesting to combine classification and geolocation near metro stations. You go out and immediately understand where everything is. The main problem is that geolocation lives on content, and there is not enough content yet. In addition, there is now growing interest in the sharing economy around the world. For example, in the center of Moscow, owning a car becomes more and more painful. More and more people understand that it is more convenient not to own, but to use. Now sites are appearing massively that allow you to “share” an apartment, a car, a trip to the airport, and so on.
- Do you call Airbnb a classified?
Basically, it's a bulletin board. Another example. Services are now appearing on the automotive market that allow you to remotely evaluate a car and put it up for sale. You just come and pick up the keys. A general profile classification service cannot provide such a service, because it does not have sufficient expertise. And such specialization within the framework of the classification is a global trend. He is also slowly coming to Russia. But in Russia there is another funny trend that is less obvious in Europe and America - barter.
- I know that there are such groups in in social networks, but I have not heard of projects of this type.
Several regional companies contacted us with questions about cooperation. In the regions, it is easy to change tooth treatment for apartment renovation or ceiling painting. This is also a niche for creating a vertical classification. We have historically had this button on some "Sell or Trade" ads. I can’t say that it has become more popular, but we also see some kind of trend.
Cover photo: From Hand to Hand press service
Born August 22, 1970. In 1995, he got a job at McCann Erickson Russia, where he worked his way up from manager to director of customer service. In 1997, he became the head of the customer service department at the Maxima CG agency. In 2000-2007, he held the position of Head of Client Relations at Young & Rubicam Moscow. Since 2002, he has served as Executive Director marketing agency Wunderman Russia, within the Young & Rubicam holding. In 2007-2010 he was the commercial director of Afisha Industries, then the commercial director of Afisha-Rambler. In 2013, he moved to the same position at Sanoma Independent Media. From 2014 to the present, he has been the General Director of Pronto Media Holding (From Hand to Hand/IRR.RU and JOB.RU)
The worst thing for me in work and in life ... It's routine and depressing. I don't like dullness, I love the sharpness of life, adrenaline and I'm not afraid to walk on a razor's edge. I am constantly testing the boundaries of the world in which I live. This can be done in different ways: someone rides motorcycles, someone jumps with a parachute. I prefer to solve complex business problems that don't have a linear solution.
Being constantly on the road, I miss... I'm not bored. On average, I have one business trip per week. My business trips rarely last more than one or two business days. New cities, people, meetings, a constant flow of information - there is simply no time to be bored.
Multi-channel content consumption forces advertisers and consumers to… Respect each other. The greater the choice of channels for obtaining information, the more carefully it is necessary to choose advertising messages so as not to be intrusive. Otherwise, the audience will abandon your channel. In turn, consumers, if they want to receive quality content and do not want to pay for it, have to receive advertising information from those who pay for this content.
How long can you not use gadgets and the Internet? I don't know, haven't tried it. I always have two phones, a computer and an iPad with me. I get a lot of information, including business information, from social networks and mail, so I'm used to always being online.
In my opinion, the press market today is… A story that started yesterday. And also a story about the fact that the print media market has finally turned towards the reader: for a long time, magazines, including glossy ones, wrote only about what was interesting to the advertiser. The so-called organic advertising embedded in the content has significantly affected the rate of decline in interest in print media. Those players who are now able to refocus and abandon the income generated by organic advertising, in my opinion, have a better chance of maintaining their positions.
Commercial or CEO are not positions ... This is responsibility.
If I had stayed in advertising agency, then… I would try to combine the media and creative business, because the current process of segregation of these two businesses is limiting the opportunities for both. Today, only in isolated cases, the media and creative parts of the agencies go hand in hand. And integration is very important here!
Don't ask me about... Tom, what will happen tomorrow. I dont know.
Only open at night... Those who did not have time to finish their business during daylight hours. I sometimes treat them too. In principle, sleep is not my favorite state - you can oversleep a lot of interesting things.
What next business would you advise Pavel Durov to open? As I understand it, it is currently occupied by Telegram. And I think he's doing very well. This is one of the best messengers on the market. My compliments to Pavel Durov.
A good bottle of wine is... Bottle with old french wine. Ten years of age or older. Burgundy or Bordeaux, rather Burgundy. Though tastes change.
My medical background in business... Helps to divide people into "heads" and "bodies".
What is for me good taste? See the question about the bottle of wine.
What's the most unusual corporate gift you've received? Brocade robe with velvet trim.
One on one with brands:
My breakfast consists of brands: Lavazza, "Alphabet of taste", kefir "Nostalgia".
My app for work: Calendar.
My car: I have been driving for a long time Jaguar, but at some point moved to Audi A7 and I think this car is perfect from all points of view. It's hard for me to imagine myself driving another car. Although Jaguar does not let go: it was this brand that was offered to me as a company car.
My sports brand: adidas. I tried different ones and came to the conclusion that in terms of comfort and beauty, this particular brand suits me the most.
My gadget: iPhone, there is nothing to explain here.
My Icon Brand: Rolex and Hermes- brands that for many centuries have not made a single low-quality product and still retain their independence.
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