Secret Firmi  № 5/2009
Ivan Marchuk

Back to Basics

Andrei Maximov laid his hands on the telephone numbers of Russian officials and built a business on the back of it, focusing on the applicability and reliability of the contact information. These days, with the database market affected by the economic crisis, his company is thriving.

Andrei Maximov, the principal shareholder of Maximov Publications, regrets that he underestimated the stability of the Russian political system. Last winter, a reference book “The Government of the Russian Federation” came out with a 3,000 copy print run. “A government reshuffle was widely expected and we decided against a larger print run”, he says. However, there were no big changes in the government. The entire run was sold out in no time and the orders keep coming.

His problems are ones other publishing houses would be happy to have. In the first three months of this year, the volume of orders for his reference books grew year on year from 14.65M rubles to 29.97M rubles. This is happening at a time when, on the whole, the information market for reference works is shrinking. “We expect the market to go down by 10-15% this year”, says Aleksei Razhev, Managing Director of another company, Euro-Address.

For Maximov, the present economic crisis is not the first one he has had to face. He started his business in 1995. Then his reference books only detailed contact information for State officials. In 1998, the frequent changes in the government made him shift to providing contact information for Russian business. These days, his main focus is once again on the contact details of State officials. “The demand for the business reference books is going down, while the interest in contact information for State officials is going up. In times of crisis, Russian companies do not economize on government relations”, says Maximov. Neither do they economize on Maximov’s reference books which cost 4,000-6,000 rubles per copy.

However, Maximov’s main hopes for growth are associated not so much with printed reference works, as with electronic databases. Their contribution to the company’s revenues is already almost as big as that of the print editions. “Companies are looking for new clients. Nowadays, we’re getting orders from those businesses and organisations that didn’t have to bother about sales before, such as in the real estate sector and MBA schools”, explains Maximov.

His competitors sell databases classified by industrial criteria. Maximov offers a combination of different criteria: geographical, professional and many others besides. “A letter addressed to a director from an unknown company will most probably be thrown away by his secretary without being opened. A letter to the Chief Technology Manager will get to him directly”, assures Maximov. His competitors offer larger databases at cheaper prices: 5-10 rubles for a listing compared with Maximov’s price of 20-40 rubles.

“Small and medium-sized business will not come to him, his prices are too high. He has his clients, we have ours”, says Aleksei Razhev. There is no mass demand for an expensive product. But Maximov is rather satisfied with it: thanks to his special clients, his business is stable in an otherwise volatile market.