Carpe Diem in 1990s Moscow

After a decade in the U.S. business world, David Birnbaum ’83 headed for Russia. “The events taking place in eastern Europe were too historical to sit out,” he says. “Such a dynamic environment – Moscow in the ’90s was like Paris in the ’20s. Imagine a society with no rules, no laws, no norms. What would have been ordinary business events in the West presented mind-bogglingly complicated challenges in Russia.”

Birnbaum and his partners started by leasing a small Moscow warehouse and soon found multi-national clients who wanted Western-style logistics and distribution services.

“Russia had been the land of the big, fat ‘Nyet,’” recalls Birnbaum. “So we said ‘Yes!’” By hiring young, inexperienced Russians and developing them into managers who shared their passion for best-in-class service, they grew their business into a Russian market-leader with warehouses from Moscow to Novosibirsk, in Siberia.

After five years, Birnbaum and his partners sold their logistics company, but he stayed in Moscow to run it. In 2000, he moved to London when his investors made the first of two acquisitions en route to becoming the leader in the UK order-fulfillment market for online shopping.

In January, he was ready to take a break from leading a business that now employs over 1,000 with nearly $100M in sales. “Creating a business takes total commitment,” he says. “I’m doing things I hadn’t had time to do – I’ve just come back from a month of fly-fishing in Argentina and Chile and now I’m living in Barcelona, studying Spanish. And I have thousands of new ideas I could work on!”