leksandr Gorbunov, a property investor from the Siberian city Krasnoyarsk, had a simple solution when Zara, the Spanish clothing giant, closed its stores in Russia over the invasion of Ukraine: import it himself.
now allows nearly anyone to resell products bought abroad. “We don’t just buy everything … We have a designer who chooses what to buy from the latest collections – we don’t want to simply fill our store with Zara clothes.” The products that now arrive in Russia are often originally intended for export to countries that are part of the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union and with whom Moscow shares one customs union: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The products are then shipped to Russia and sold on the market, with western brands losing all control of their distribution and sale.
But their store on Moscow’s Tverskaya Street is stocked with iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max in alpine green, a colour that was only released after Apple pulled out due to the invasion. Staff there said they expected there would be a slight delay in getting stocks of the iPhone 14 if it is released in September. “It will take about a month, so October,” said a sales associate. “But we will get it.”