Trade empire from a crate of oranges
Is it possible to create a luxurious Trading House with a capital of 8 million rubles out of 100 rubles and a box of oranges? Pyotr Kasatkin, the son of a serf peasant Count Sheremetyev, proved that all this is very possible.
In the XIX century. in Russia, a new form of entrepreneurship emerged - partnership. They became the most widespread form of entrepreneurship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1893, 50 percent of all partnerships in the country were concentrated in St. Petersburg.
Merchants, resourceful and resourceful people, skillfully adapted to new circumstances. The old principle, expressed in the proverb: “If you don’t cheat, you won’t sell,” has been replaced by the desire for accuracy in calculations, correctness and reliability, and a culture of trade.
One of these trading houses was the Eliseev Brothers house, which has long thundered throughout Europe, famous for the quality of its wines and other products. The Eliseevs' wine cellars and storerooms on the Exchange line of Vasilievsky Island occupied 4.3 thousand square meters. fathoms.
After aging, their wines were sold not only in St. Petersburg, but also sent to Bordeaux, London, New York. In 1892 the Eliseevs received a gold medal at an exhibition in Paris for aging French wines.
The first of the Eliseevs was Elisey Kasatkin. It was under this surname that the serf peasant of the village of Novoselki of the Rodionovskaya volost of the Yaroslavl district, which belonged to Count Sheremetev, was listed in the revision tale. And his son was recorded in the house book as the count's gardener Pyotr Kasatkin.
The same Pyotr Kasatkin, the son of Eliseev, who, on Christmas evening in 1812, surprised the count's guests with real fresh wild strawberries. This story is so well known that it hardly makes sense to tell it in detail.
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Well, the gardener raised strawberries in his greenhouse, well, he gave it to those who came to the estate to celebrate the Count's Christmas, his wife Praskovya Zhemchugova and his friend Varya Dolgoruky. Well, the master said foolishly: “Pleased! Ask what you want!"
As it turned out, 36-year-old Peter has long wanted one thing - freedom. For yourself and your family. And the master did not dare to break the word of the nobleman, given in the presence of witnesses. Already at the beginning of 1813, Peter himself and all his family (wife Maria Gavrilovna and three sons - 12-year-old Seryozha, 8-year-old Grisha and 6-year-old Styopa) received free and 100 rubles of lifting. Then they went to the capital, to rich Petersburg.
Having settled down to live with old acquaintances, Peter the very next morning bought himself a tray, bought a sack of oranges from the merchants and, filling the tray with unusual fruits, went out to Nevsky Prospect.
Oranges on the Nevsky among the aristocrats who made the promenade went with a bang. By the fall, they managed to collect the amount necessary to rent a shop in Katomin's house (Nevsky, 18) to trade "on a modest basis … raw products from the hot zones of the Earth." And in 1814 Peter became so rich that he ransomed his brother Gregory.
The business was going well, and by the end of the 10s. XIX century. the brothers have accumulated sufficient capital to join the merchant class. They signed up, noting the good memory of their father, Elisey Kasatkin, as the Eliseevs.
And in the early 1920s, Peter Eliseev, in order not to pay extra dealers, decided to go to those "hot belts" himself to buy goods. On the way, his ship docked on the island of Madeira. Loaded with drinking water, food, seized the post office and "forgot" on the island of Peter Eliseev.
Tom liked the local wine so much that he decided to shift the responsibility for the purchase of Spanish fruits onto the shoulders of the clerk who accompanied him, and he himself remained in Madeira, wanting to get better acquainted with the wine-making process.
The acquaintance lasted for several months. During this time, Pyotr Eliseevich made friends with all the port loaders, learned to distinguish "early Madeira" from "early Madeira", walked around almost all island wineries, squeezed out more than one bucket of grape juice with his feet and was raised on board the ship returning home in a semi-conscious state. But the merchant remained a merchant - together with him 20 barrels of the best Madeira wine were lifted on board.
Since the brothers' store warehouse was small, a special wholesale warehouse had to be removed at the St. Petersburg customs office for the new product. Eliseevskaya "Madeira" came to the taste of the capital's public, and on the signboard of the brothers, "and wines" were added to the word "products".
By the way, it was the brothers who called the wines delivered from the Iberian Peninsula "port", that is. wine from Portugal. For the quick delivery of goods to St. Petersburg, the Eliseevs purchased three vessels from Holland. The firm traded for cash and had an excellent reputation abroad.
Gregory quickly established direct relations with the best trading houses in Europe and developed trade within the country in the "main provincial" cities. The purchased batches of red and white wines, after aging in their own cellars of St. Petersburg and bottling (up to 15,000 units were bottled per day), the Eliseevs were sent abroad - to London, Paris and New York.
In the next two years, Petr Eliseevich made three more expeditions: to the French port of Bordeaux, Portuguese Oporto and Spanish Jerez. Soon the brothers' shop turned into the main wine-trading center of St. Petersburg.
The size of the premises did not allow to fully meet the growing needs of the clientele, and in 1824 the brothers bought their first house of their own (Birzhevaya Line, 10), in which they opened their first own store of "colonial goods".
In 1825, after the death of Pyotr Eliseevich, according to his spiritual will, the management of the company passed to the widow Maria Gavrilovna and the eldest son Sergei, who introduced in his shop the tradition of evening fruit eating by clerks.
In his opinion, in a "brotherly" company, all products should be the freshest, and therefore, before putting the fruits on the showcase, they were carefully examined and at any hint of marriage (a speck, a broken peel, a green barrel) were put aside.
Such products no longer went on sale under any guise. But it was also impossible to throw them away (God forbid, who will see that the Eliseevs have “spoiled”). And they did not give him home to the employees for the same reason. And therefore, after the store was closed, clerks, employees and loaders gathered together and ate oranges, peaches, marakuya, papaya and so on …
In 1841 Maria Gavrilovna died, and three brothers took the reins of the firm: Sergei, Grigory and Stepan Eliseevs. However, equality was only on paper - everything in the company was led by senior Sergei, who conducted the case according to the "father's method" and was not going to enlarge it.
Only after his death in 1858 Stepan and Gregory managed to turn around with might and main. Just a couple of months after Sergei Petrovich left this mortal world, the brothers established the Eliseev Brothers Trading House with a fixed capital of almost 8 million rubles, then they bought giant warehouses in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kiev, as well as in the wine-growing regions of Europe, started their own fleet.
All this allowed the brothers by the beginning of the 60s. to buy wine not just in large batches, but in whole harvests. For almost twenty years in a row, the brothers have been buying the best grape harvests from all the best European wine regions.
As a result - gold medals received by Eliseev wines at the Vienna and London exhibitions. Petersburgers and Muscovites were attracted by overseas bottles of intricate shapes with strange names.
In 1874 the company “for many years of useful work for the good of the Fatherland” was awarded the highest grace to be called “suppliers of the court of His Imperial Majesty” and to place on its signs and labels signs of the state symbols of the Russian Empire.
In addition to high prestige, such a privilege also provided good protection against counterfeiting. The fact is that if a dishonest merchant was punished with a fine for the falsification of someone else's products, according to the laws of the time, it was very real to go to hard labor for the illegal seal of the state emblem, having lost all means and rights.
In 1879, Stepan Eliseev died, and his only son, Peter, took his place in the firm. However, he did not manage the family business for long: the energetic and impudent uncle Grigory Petrovich quickly pushed him out of business, and already in 1881 Pyotr Stepanovich officially left the company.
Already his son - Grigory Grigorievich - in 1900 at the Paris World Exhibition will present a collection out of competition - "Retour Russie", for which he will be awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor, the highest award of France.
By that time, the expression “Eliseev's empire” already existed: they owned not only shops and goods, but also their own transport - ships, cars, horse carts; had their own candy and fish workshops, vineyards in the Crimea, a stud farm in the Oryol province, 117 apartment buildings in St. Petersburg, shares in banks.
It was, in fact, a well-established and well-established trade and industrial syndicate of world importance on Russian soil.
But, of course, the main event of G. G. Eliseeva was the opening of a superstore in Moscow on Tverskaya. Grigory Eliseev bought the palace of Princess Beloselskaya-Belozerskaya at the intersection of Tverskaya Street and Kozitsky Lane on August 5, 1898.
The grand opening of the "Eliseev's Store and the Cellar of Russian and Foreign Wines" on Tverskaya took place in the summer of 1901. Later, luxurious shops were opened in St. Petersburg and Kiev.
In 1910 G. G. Eliseev received hereditary nobility. His sons shied away from commercial affairs: against the will of their father, one of them became a surgeon, another - a lawyer, the third - an orientalist. For this they were deprived of his material support.
The apotheosis of the trading house was the celebration of its centenary on October 22, 1913, which boldly coincided with the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. The celebration took place in the office of the partnership, in Eliseev's own house on the Exchange Line. It was attended by 3.5 thousand people.
But the brilliant history of the Eliseevs trading house ended tragically. Grigory Grigorievich was a man with a stormy character, passionate, carried away. His hobbies included, for example, sailing: he founded in the Galernaya Harbor, in the premises of a yacht club, a sailing school for teenagers, where naval officers taught.
In 1914, Grigory Grigorievich fell seriously in love with the wife of a famous St. Petersburg jeweler. He announced this to his wife, Maria Andreevna, offered her a divorce and compensation - a lot of money, but she firmly declared: "I will not sell my love for any money."
Soon she hanged herself, as they say, on her own scythe; the sons broke up with their father and abandoned their father's millions. Grigory Grigorievich got married to his beloved and left forever abroad.
His two sons emigrated in 1917 and settled in Paris, but they never made peace with their father. Nikolai Grigorievich became an exchange journalist. They all now lie in the same cemetery - Saint-Genevieve de Bois …
The Eliseevs who remained in Soviet Russia in December 1937 were accused of counterrevolutionary activities and were shot. Today the descendants of the Eliseevs live in Russia, France, Switzerland, and the USA.
And the store on Tverskaya in Moscow remained Eliseevsky. Even in the official papers of the Soviet era he was called “Gastronome No. 1 Eliseevsky”. This was the strength of the brand created by several generations of St. Petersburg merchants.
Based on materials from sites factsabout.ru, phenomenonsofhistory.com and masterok.livejournal.com
