The Challenges

Everyone was exited but at the same time they were frustrated, as the customer was checking each and every little detail. It wasn’t a usual case for the people who had spent most of their life in the Soviet Union. The employees missed the development work a lot, so they began doing it with great pleasure and enthusiasm. But again they had a strange demand from the customer. They had a deadline which happened to be really “dead” and the time was short. For a Soviet people the time could have been expanded easily and without any penalty.

The concepts like competition, market share, price leadership and alike were alien things for Arthur and the management of the company. They had to learn business from the very beginning. So happened that their first customers were Eastern organizations like “Mother Lady of Armenia”, USAID, Peace Corp, World Vision and alike. All of them had Eastern working style and demands. So Arthur began managing his company in the same fashion as the customers were used to see in their countries. He learned how to treat them, also he succeeded in negotiations. These organizations were the first sources of information and the experience in business that Arthur had at that time.

In fact the company didn’t have any marketing department. It was known among Eastern organizations which had experienced a lot of troubles working with the locals who had Soviet working style. As Arthur was honest and trustworthy person and could suggest the service and production they needed in the way Eastern people were used to, he got a lot of orders and soon expanded his company. His company became well known in Armenia.