“My source of inspiration is creation. Royal birds, “Platinum Ounce” and pink lilies of the valley by Samson Soghoyan This year the festival was held in two dozen restaurants - on what basis did you choose them

If circumstances had been different, our hero could have become an anesthesiologist. However, he realized himself in the pharmacy business, and then launched a number of successful projects in other areas. We talk about the ability to enjoy work and turn hobbies into business with Samson Sogoyan, General Director of the Samson-Pharma pharmacy chain.

Samson Gevorkovich Sogoyan

Born in Armenia, in the village. Tashir, January 26, 1967.

Father is a famous cheese maker, mother is a pharmacist.

He graduated with honors from school and the Dagestan State Medical Institute with a degree in general medicine (1992). While studying at the university, he worked as a preparator at the department of general hygiene.After completing his studies, he completed a clinical residency specializing in anesthesiology and resuscitation at the Moscow Institute of Laser Surgery.Corresponding Member of the Academy of Medical and Technical Sciences.

In 1993 he created Samson-Pharma LLC. Now this pharmacy chain has 33 pharmacies (data as of May 2014) and is a repeated winner of competitions for pharmaceutical industry professionals - “Platinum Ounce”,“Golden Mortar”, “Golden Networks of Russia”.

In 2010, he began diversifying his business by creating the Samson Bouquet Flower House, a boarding house on the Azov Sea, an eco-farm in the Kaluga region, La Ferme cafe, and the Samson-Med medical center.

Everything that happens in life is taken for granted and the only possible one. He is a romantic and a perfectionist by nature. Loves and knows how to cook.

He is interested in photography and is well versed in floristry, including rare types of flowers.

Your network today is a serious player in the pharmaceutical market of the capital and Moscow region. How did it all begin?

Since the organization of the Samson Private Enterprise in 1993 and the opening of the Moscow State Geological Prospecting Academy named after. Sergo Ordzhonikidze of a tiny pharmacy with a total area of ​​8 square meters. I found this difficult time when I was an intern at a medical university, practically deprived of any income. Therefore, I decided to try my hand at the pharmaceutical business - after all, drug supply and medicine are related fields. In addition, my mother is a pharmacist by profession. Having no experience in pharmaceutical activities, I invited Rinata Kirillovna Kazaryan to the position of head - she became my first mentor in understanding the intricacies of the pharmacy business. Despite the small area, our point had significant advantages: I relied on rare and defective items, which at that time were only ours. In addition, the pharmacy quickly gained fame due to its minimal markup - it did not exceed 5%. As a result, after a year of operation of the point, huge queues formed in the academy hall. I realized that our services were in demand and enthusiastically continued to develop the business, although initially I considered it as a temporary occupation. However, circumstances turned out differently, and today, 20 years later, the Samson-Pharma pharmacy chain has not lost the authority and trust of customers; we are still known and appreciated.

What are your future plans for developing the network? Do you want to expand your geographic presence? Or maybe, according to modern trends, merge with some network?

I can compare Samson-Pharma to a unique handmade box, because I personally take part in most of the processes that take place in it. This is possible due to the fact that all our points are localized in Moscow and Moscow Region. If they are located in different regions, it will be almost impossible to control a high level of quality. Therefore, I consider expanding the geography of our presence in other cities unjustified. Our global plans - increasing the number of pharmacies to 50 - are connected exclusively with the capital.

Regarding the general trend of mergers and acquisitions, we have already received offers to purchase the network. But there are no intentions to sell the business or merge it with other market participants. Samson-Pharma has its own unique history and its own development path.

Treating visitors is our priority. Even a minor remark from a client will not go unnoticed.

Today the network is known for various technical innovations - a robot pharmacist, electronic queues and much more. Is the investment in such equipment justified?

Of course, modern technologies that make it possible to organize an efficient work process, on the one hand, result in significant costs and long-term investments, on the other hand, they provide an undeniable competitive advantage. After all, today’s customer, demanding and picky, cares not only about the available assortment, but also about quality service. Thanks to innovative solutions, we fulfill the task of increasing the level of network operation and its image attractiveness. For example, an electronic queue system in pharmacies allows you to optimize the management of customer flow, improve the psychological climate in the sales area and increase the productivity of staff. Robotic lines for collecting and storing medicines, installed in 4 Samson-Pharma pharmacies, significantly reduce service time, freeing up precious minutes for communicating with visitors. The ability to provide competent consulting services is one of our competitive advantages. Therefore, the company’s expenses in the field of innovation are justified. This fact is confirmed by the official data of the RNC Pharma rating, according to which Samson-Pharma is the leader in the Top 25 pharmacy chains in terms of operational efficiency in the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2013.

How did employees and visitors perceive the introduction of CRM sensors and devices in the checkout area that allow them to evaluate the work of the first-rate employee?

Pharmacy employees - with due understanding, customers - with enthusiasm. Installing CRM sensors is a good motivation tool that disciplines top managers. Everyone who works in the company knows that customer service is our priority. Even a minor remark from a client cannot go unnoticed.

CRM sensors give our customers the opportunity to be heard and really influence the level and culture of service. In addition, we use the CRM system as an electronic questionnaire: we identify needs and draw attention to current topics related to health. Sometimes the results are quite unexpected. Not long ago, for example, we found out that every 5th buyer does not know about the normal blood glucose level, and every 6th diabetic person measures their sugar level only once a week. Agree, these are very alarming indicators, indicating a low level of medical literacy of the population, which needs to be increased, including through consultations in pharmacies.

And if we talk about the pharmacy market as a whole, there are also a lot of problems here, right?

I would highlight the following global difficulties. The first is the presence of uncivilized competition among pharmacy chains. The second is the fragmentation of all participants in the pharmaceutical market, from manufacturers and distributors to small pharmacies. The third is the lack of a balanced, fair pricing policy. In my opinion, there should be uniform selling prices for all networks; differences can only be due to the amount of discounts or the volume of bonus agreements based on the results of a quarterly or annual period. All these points must be regulated by civilized market mechanisms.

The Samson-Pharma chain is a repeated winner of the Platinum Ounce, Golden Mortar, and Golden Networks of Russia competitions.

You have extensive experience in business diversification: a cafe, an eco-farm, a medical center, a boarding house on the coast of the Azov Sea, flowers... What is the reason for your interest in these areas?

All our endeavors are united by the idea of ​​preserving health, increasing the duration and quality of life. A person who takes care of himself can be truly healthy and happy: he eats organic products, chooses to relax in climatic conditions that are comfortable for the body, regularly takes care of his health, consulting with doctors and pharmaceutical specialists not only in case of illness, but also with preventive measures. purpose. It is this idea that unites all areas of activity of the Samson Group of Companies.

How do you manage to juggle managing so many projects?

Business diversification is partly dictated by the desire and opportunity to master a new direction. Creation is an ideal “power source”. I recharge from what I do and get tremendous pleasure from the process of implementing business ideas. Initially, I set the bar high for myself. A perfectionist’s approach to any task, on the one hand, requires enormous effort, but on the other hand, it guarantees impeccable execution and high quality. New projects are also an opportunity for personal development and growth, including spiritual growth.

Of course, a team of professionals helps me in my work. It is important that the people who work with me are burning with ideas, constantly developing and believing in the result. We can't do it any other way.

You probably don't have much free time. And yet: how do you prefer to relax?

For me, vacation means traveling, including gastronomic travel. I really love to cook, so I make sure to get acquainted with the national cuisine, look for new products and cookbooks. When I return home, I try to recreate the dishes I liked or prepare my own version, adding new ingredients or slightly changing the recipe.

Do you have any hobbies or perhaps collections? Tell us about them, please.

I'm interested in the art of photography. I think I have a good understanding of this issue. I also have two themed collections. One was gradually formed from gifts from friends and partners - these are old pharmacy bottles and other utensils. The second is a collection of small boxes that I bring from different countries, there are already more than 300 pieces.

Text prepared by Yulia Akimova

One of the reasons is my love for a healthy lifestyle. I have a medical education, and I chose this profession not by chance: all my life I wanted to help people be healthy. The desire to improve the quality of life is the basis of all my activities.

At the time when the idea to create a farm arose, the food market had become quite diverse, people were fed up with simple and cheap ingredients and turned their attention to more expensive types of meat. Then we realized that it was possible to introduce a new product to the market. We began to study the experience of foreign colleagues, choosing what we could surprise consumers with.

Before embarking on this project, we talked with premium retail chains who reported that they were interested in having guinea fowl meat and eggs on their shelves. They had previously purchased these products, but we offered to supply the meat chilled and not frozen - this fact really attracted them.

After weighing all the pros and cons, we came to the conclusion that guinea fowl is exactly what makes sense to work with. Firstly, it did not exist in Russia, secondly, the meat has excellent taste, and thirdly, the guinea fowl egg is also a very interesting product.

Guinea fowl is an undeservedly forgotten product.  This bird is not sick with anything; its meat has the highest protein content among birds - 27 g per 100 g of meat.

Were there any enthusiasts involved in raising guinea fowl in Russia at that time?

Then we became pioneers in this matter. There were no guinea fowl in Russia. Experience was gained in France, where this bird is very popular, where its consumption amounts to more than 10% of all meat.

But in France, no one breeds guinea fowl on an industrial scale - farmers work there, so we had to significantly modernize and adapt the knowledge acquired in this country to Russian conditions. We found a supplier, the Grelier company (the world's second largest producer of guinea fowl hatching eggs), received all the necessary permits for production, acquired 15 hectares of land, received support from local authorities and began construction. There was a completely empty field here, without any communications, so we had to do it from scratch. Today we import only hatching eggs from France; everything else is localized.

Today, La Ferme is the only full-cycle company not only in Russia, but also in Europe that works with guinea fowl on an industrial scale. Now we can even say that we ourselves can teach the French something.

The production areas are isolated from each other, the premises are heated with natural gas, and water comes from its own artesian well. On the territory there are 12 poultry houses with a capacity of 40 thousand birds, of which: 9 poultry houses for raising young animals for meat, 1 workshop for raising replacement young animals, 2 workshops for laying guinea fowl. There is also an incubator, a slaughterhouse and an administrative building.

What are the specifics of growing guinea fowl?

When raising guinea fowl, we use the same technology as when raising broiler chickens, with one exception: we do not vaccinate or use antibiotics, because the bird has a strong immune system and is resistant to diseases. In the first days, guinea fowl are given more protein-rich food, and from the age of one month we use walking areas for them.

You buy eggs for an incubator in France - do the birds lay eggs poorly in our conditions?

We raise grey-speckled guinea fowl of the Essor meat cross, which has good meat and dietary qualities. We receive eggs from France - 12 thousand eggs per month - this is an incubatory, fertilized egg. We produce food-grade, dietary, unfertilized eggs, which are not used for incubation.

Are you planning to expand your farm? What other areas of business are you interested in?

Today we keep an experimental number of ducks on the farm and are going to expand our range of poultry. The farm currently breeds yellow naked chicks from hatching eggs from the famous French breeding center Sasso. Like guinea fowl, it is a dietary source of animal protein.

Also on the farm in 2014, a “Garden of Health” was planted. These are more than 500 fruit trees: apple trees, cherries, pears, plums and others. More than 50 hives for bee breeding were purchased.

We have our own cafe La Ferme, it opened in the spring of 2013.

How interesting is guinea fowl to restaurants?

Our guinea fowl are in demand among leading Moscow restaurants. For example, dishes from it are on the menu of the White Rabbit restaurant. Boris Zarkov. Meanwhile, until recently, practically the only player in the restaurant market presenting farm products was our own cafe La Ferme. The victory in the tender for servicing the Aeroflot company changed everything - the farm supplied guinea fowl to the airline’s business class passengers for three months.

Before this it was impossible to get into restaurants. And then we got a call from the restaurants Dellos And Novikova. Today we are represented in such restaurants as Gusyatnikoff, Savva, Yesenin, Asia Hall, Cheese, Bellini, Darbazi, Chaika, Lastochka, Angelo, AQ Kitchen, AQ Chicken, Accenti and Bureau of Taste.

It is the restaurant business that I call my most profitable project. But I don’t want to develop my own network on principle.

Do you work with chain stores?

Today the farm produces approximately 15 tons of products per month, and these are quite significant volumes, given the not very high demand. Our products are available in such chains as Globus Gourmet, Auchan, Metro, Green Perekrestok, VkusVill, Myasnaya Istoriya, and the Food City shopping center. In addition, we have our own online store, where prices for exotic birds are quite affordable (a guinea fowl carcass will cost no more than 600 rubles). We sell guinea fowl and yellow chickens in farm chains (for example, in the Petrovsky market chain), and in the Spinach store on Stary Arbat.

So far, however, the farming project does not bring profit and should pay off no earlier than in five years. In total, about 300 million rubles had to be invested in it, money, among other things, went towards equipment that was bought abroad.

Why is guinea fowl a relatively rare product in Russia; you rarely see it on store shelves or on restaurant menus?

Few people know about the excellent qualities of guinea fowl meat and eggs. We are actively working to tell everyone about this. A festival is one of the ways.

Are there any intentions to make the Guinea Fowl in Moscow festival larger-scale?

Preliminary results show that restaurant guests are interested in this product. From the comments of some, we know that 30-40 portions of dishes from the festival menu are sold per day.

Yes, perhaps over time there will be more participating restaurants or the festival will be held more than once a year.

Did you take part in creating the festival menu for the participating restaurants, or is your task to provide the chefs with a quality product and wait to see what happens?

Rather the second: we do not require anything specific from the chefs; they are completely free to choose flavor combinations and ways of serving guinea fowl.

I myself love to cook, and guinea fowl especially. Considering that in 2013 I published the book “100 Guinea Fowl Recipes” under my own authorship, I was especially interested in how each of the chefs would solve this problem. Some decisions were unusual even for me. These are the dishes that interest me the most.

This year the festival took place in two dozen restaurants – on what basis did you choose them?

What was required from the restaurant, first of all, was the desire and consent to participate in the festival, which is designed to return guinea fowl to the tables of Russians.

For some of the chefs, guinea fowl was a well-known product: it had either been on the menu of this restaurant before, or the chef had experience working with this bird. For others, guinea fowl turned out to be an unknown, new product. Regardless of this, each of the chefs creatively approached the development of dishes for the festival and showed...

The oldest Moscow chain of discount pharmacies, Samson-Pharma, has changed its owner - a certain Alexander Larin. It is possible that he is a nominal buyer; the real new owner could be the Erkafarm company, which is developing, in particular, the chain of pharmacies Doctor Stoletov and Ozerki.

Moscow entrepreneur Samson Sogoyan sold his pharmacy chain Samson-Pharma. According to Kartoteka.ru, its owner was a certain Alexander Larin, who was previously listed as a co-owner and general director of the St. Petersburg Freya LLC. This company was owned by British Virgin Islands-registered Freya Development and was liquidated in 2016. It was not possible to contact Mr. Larin.

In March 2018, the industry publication Vademecum reported that the Erkafarm pharmacy chain (Doctor Stoletov, Ozerki, Good Pharmacy) could become the owner of Samson-Pharma. In the same month, Armine Danielyan, commercial director of Erkafarm, was appointed general director of Samson-Pharma. Mrs. Danielyan still holds both of these positions. According to two Kommersant sources in the market, Samson Sogoyan sold his network to Erkafarm: the deal is allegedly completed, and Alexander Larin is the nominal owner. Erkafarm declined to comment and did not refute or confirm the purchase of Samson-Pharma. It was not possible to contact Mr. Soghoyan. Previously, experts estimated the cost of its network at 2.5 billion rubles.

According to one of Kommersant’s interlocutors, such a transaction scheme was necessary for Erkapharm so as not to directly buy the financially unstable pharmacy chain. This could ruin the company’s relationship with Sberbank, which financed the previous Erkafarm deal: the acquisition in November 2017 of more than 1 thousand points with a turnover of 20.2 billion rubles. united pharmacy chain "Rainbow-First Aid-Ladushka". As a result, at the end of 2017, Erkapharm included 1.2 thousand pharmacies, its market share was 3.8%. Kommersant's source suggests that as soon as the financial situation of Samson-Pharma improves, Erkafarm will become the direct owner of the network.

The chain of discount pharmacies “Samson-Pharma” was created by Samson Soghoyan in 1993. According to Vademecum, the company's revenue in 2017 amounted to 10.3 billion rubles - 11.61% lower than a year earlier. In November 2017, the network began receiving claims from creditors. Now, according to Kartoteka.ru, the company is a defendant in 49 cases totaling 211 million rubles. Market participants claim that Samson Pharma still owes about 600 million rubles. two largest drug distributors - Protek and Katren.

One of Kommersant’s interlocutors notes that Samson Pharma’s problems are related, among other things, to the fact that its owner hastened to open new outlets. At the end of the first half of 2016, the network included 58 pharmacies; a year later there were already 74. As a result, traffic did not increase, but was distributed between new and existing points. The summer of 2017 was marked by low purchasing power, which led to a decrease in Samson Pharma's revenue. As a result, the chain was unable to continue loading its pharmacies with goods. In the second half of 2017, Mr. Soghoyan had to close up to 20 points.

According to the general director of the Neopharm pharmacy chain, Evgeniy Nifantiev, if Samson Pharma went bankrupt and left the market, distributors would lose money for goods shipped but not yet paid for. “This would lead to tougher work with other pharmacy chains,” explains the expert. He also assumes that Erkafarm will retain the Samson-Pharma brand, well known to residents of Moscow and the Moscow region.

That the oldest pharmacy chain in Moscow, Samson-Pharma, has changed its owner: founder and CEO Samson Sogoyan, who has managed the company for the last quarter of a century, has sold the business to the Erkafarm chain. We tell you how Muscovites will remember the pharmacies under Sogoyan’s management and how this business story ended.

Samson-Pharma began in 1993 with a kiosk with an area of ​​8 square meters. m in the building of a geological exploration institute on the far outskirts of Moscow. The permanent owner of the network, Samson Soghoyan, got his hands on this point when he was working in residency in the specialty “anesthesiology and resuscitation.”

Soghoyan was born in the Armenian Tashir, grew up in Dagestan and in 1991, after graduating from medical school, moved to Moscow. The times were not the best for medicine - so a recent student, without any hesitation, undertook to “raise” the half-abandoned pharmacy. “When I saw the pharmacy, which was completely deserted, I couldn’t pass by.<…>I got down to business, and within six months there were queues at the pharmacy,” the businessman said in an interview.

Since its opening, Samson-Pharma has relied on the uniqueness of its assortment and minimal markups - 5-7%. The pharmacy was one of the first in the country to search for and deliver rare drugs to order - in conditions when the state pharmacy system had already collapsed and the commercial one had not yet been born.

Founder of the Samson-Pharma chain Samson Soghoyan

Over 25 years, the Samson-Pharma network has grown to only 59 points (at the peak of development - 74), all within Moscow. This was Sogoyan’s conscious strategy: in an interview, he more than once compared his business to a “handmade box” and claimed that he did not plan to enter the regions so as not to lose total control over the company. “I want to have a very stable, controllable and predictable type of business that I manage and whose performance I can directly influence. As an operations officer and general director, I am involved in all processes, I know all the ongoing business processes in the network, and in each pharmacy I know many of the employees personally, because I started working directly at the first table in some pharmacies,” the businessman said in the “Course” program Potapenko" on "Echo of Moscow" at the end of 2016.

According to Soghoyan, throughout history the network has grown organically (and therefore slowly). The entrepreneur also attributed the slow growth to personnel problems. “The growth rate of our network corresponds to the availability of qualified personnel in the market. Our pharmacies employ only highly qualified specialists with specialized pharmaceutical higher or secondary specialized education,” Soghoyan stated in an interview with Vadmecum magazine.

The businessman’s “manual” approach led to the fact that by the end of the 2010s, pharmacies of completely different formats were operating under the Samson-Pharma brand. On the Internet you can find expensive premium outlets on the central streets of Moscow, and quite hard discounters on the outskirts, in second lines of houses far from the metro, and middle-class pharmacies. The same thing happens with the assortment: in Samson-Pharma, on the neighboring shelves there are both popular drugs with minimal markups and premium cosmetics for impressive money. Soghoyan explained such a “zoo” as a struggle for efficiency - according to him, the allocation of several separate formats within the network under different brands would require an increase in costs and business costs.

A couple of years before the sale, Samson-Pharma had the largest average bill among Russian pharmacy chains - 1,490 rubles. At the same time, according to the owner, the company kept a minimum markup on vital and rare drugs (2-5%) - and received its due from parapharmaceuticals and dietary supplements, where the markup reached 25%. The revenue of one pharmacy averaged 20-25 million rubles. against 10 million rubles. on average for the Moscow market.

Inside the Samson-Pharma pharmacy

Rumors about the sale of Samson-Pharma, according to Samson Soghoyan himself, have been circulating on the market since 2013. In 2015, the owner even called their appearance a “small information war” against the company - and explained this by the concern of “not very successful competitors.”

The company's real problems began in the summer of 2017, when Sogoyan tried to simultaneously expand the network by a dozen and a half pharmacies. Significant investments in growth coincided with a prolonged decline in demand - and as a result, the network ran out of money to maintain the volume of purchases. Suppliers responded by raising prices, Samson-Pharma stopped paying normally for supplies; lawsuits began pouring in, and by the end of 2017 the company found itself in unsustainable debt. Kommersant sources estimated the debt to the two largest suppliers of drugs “Protek” and “Katren” alone at 600 million rubles. In addition, by March 2018, arbitration courts were considering cases involving several tens of millions of rubles against the network. There were also large-scale obligations to banks.

About 20 pharmacies had to be closed - but this did not help. Despite Sogoyan’s confident statements in the press that the issue of selling the chain is still not being considered, in March a deal was being prepared between Samson-Pharma and one of the largest chains in the country, Erkafarm (brands Doctor Stoletov, Ozerki, Good pharmacy." Market participants then estimated the cost of Sogoyan’s network at 2.5 billion rubles. excluding debt and real estate.

In July 2018, Kommersant reported that the co-owner and general director of St. Petersburg LLC Freya, which ceased to exist in 2016, became the new owner of the Samson-Pharma chain. According to the publication’s sources, the Erkafarm company became the real owner, which thus insured itself against the risks associated with the unstable financial condition of the purchased network.

Samson Soghoyan did not comment to the press after the sale of the company to which he devoted 25 years of his life. According to open sources, he remained the owner of a number of non-core projects - in particular, a medical center, a floristic company and a guinea fowl farm.

Alexey Maksimuk | website

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