21 February 2023
As a tenants we invested UAH 2.3 million in a new storage: Gennadii Vykhodtsev told Interfax-Ukraine about the first year of the war
On the anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a well-known news agency published an interview with a ukrainian investor Gennadii Vykhodtsev about the state of assets, losses, million-dollar investments in reconstruction and the future vision of the development of business projects. We offer a brief overview of the material
About the first day of the war: "I did not think about leaving Ukraine, although I have the right to do so due to my age. And on February 24, my partner Valery Makovetskyi made the decision to return to Kyiv, and we agreed with the team "from the wheels", as it is called, the first decisions on how to work Foxtrot in wartime.
What was the team's anti-crisis plan? "Even before the war, the evacuation of material assets from the front-line regions to the west of Ukraine began, the supply of goods to Foxtrot stores in the east and south of the country was limited, which reduced the losses that the war later brought. The dispositions of the management staff and the possible relocation of the central office were discussed. The security component of those stores that could work due to their distance from hostilities was prescribed.
The first painful blow: "This destruction of the warehouse in Gostomel and losses of UAH 650 million became very painful for us (the indicated figure is the lost profit, add here the bombed-out real estate, the morale of the employees who survived the Russian missile attack and the occupation – the amount will be many times bigger).
Our act when you were left without a central storage.The reaction to the destruction of the warehouse was part of the company's anti-crisis actions. First, we gave staff the opportunity to take families to safety. Almost one and a half thousand employees were transported to Lviv, where a central office was opened in one of the shops on the second floor. And then they invited people who had returned to their workplaces to evacuate the rest of the goods from the east and west, so that they could sell the equipment from the stores that were closed in the stores that could work. The entire transport fleet that we hired for the relocation of goods went to safe regions and thus we satisfied the commodity hunger that was already felt. The team evacuated 27,000 cubic meters from east to west. m of goods, making almost five hundred car journeys for this purpose. And already in the spring, Foxtrot opened a regional warehouse in the Lviv region. Subsequently, as a tenants we invested UAH 2,3 million in a new central warehouse near Kyiv, in Kolonshchyna, with an area of 22,000 square meters. m. Foxtrot's managers proposed to abandon reserve warehouse capacities in order to fully switch to centralized operational activities from one warehouse.
The full version of the interview is here