“Ulmart” company’s subsidiary declared its self-bankruptcy

Over the past year, the company received about a hundred claims with a total amount of more than half a billion rubles. In general, the problems of “Ulmart” have existed for a long time already. It is also worth noting that in 2017 the retailer redirected its suppliers to a new legal entity - the “Ulmarket”.

The number of problems swept the company before the New Year - "Ulmart" closed most of the outlets. Now the retailer works only on the basis of partner distribution points and in one shopping center in St. Petersburg only. 

However, customers complain about the problems with delivery of the orders, they can’t even get goods purchased online. They also note that the support service has stopped working.

It is not the first time “Ulmart” company has such problems. In 2017, the transition to a new legal entity was made due to the numerous debts. The agreements passed to “Ulmarket”, and the debtor, represented by “Ulmart” NP JSC, began to sue everyone.

But why seemingly successful “Ulmart”, which had the title of the largest Russian online retailer several years ago, started to have such problems? According to the numerous reports of insiders, everything happened because of an internal conflict. In 2016, co-owners of the company - Dmitry Kostygin and August Meyer clashed with shareholder Mikhail Vasinkevich over a development strategy. Vasinkevich was a minority shareholder and called a kind of “heavy artillery” for help – special legal forces “A1” from “Alfa Group”. This did not help him, but Sberbank intervened soon, claiming that “Ulmart” needs to repay a debt of a billion rubles.

As a result, a criminal case was instituted against Dmitry Kostygin (he was released on bail), and “Sberbank”, probably taking advantage of the problems of “Ulmart”, brought its own similar service “I take it” to the market. There are opinions that the bank originally planned the whole scheme to promote its own brand, but we are not going to judge.