Entrepreneur From U.S.S.R. Touring U.S.

Soviet entrepreneur Eugene Vendrovsky’s bright idea for starting a small business, Russian style, wasn’t hatched in a garage, American style.

But his idea did involve ways to make Soviet garages safer for other entrepreneurs who might want to launch their own businesses close to home.

Vendrovsky, president of a small Moscow garage-door-security business, is one of a new breed of Soviet entrepreneurs that has emerged under Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s perestroika program of economic reform.

On Wednesday, Vendrovsky shared his story of entrepreneurial success with about a dozen local business people at the Santa Ana offices of the Southern California World Trade Center Assn. of Orange County.

Vendrovsky is taking three months off from his job to tour the United States and learn all he can about American business practices because, as he puts it, “for a Soviet businessman, having some Western experience will be very useful in the near future.”

“To understand how American business works,” the 33-year-old entrepreneur added, “is impossible to do in Moscow.”

Vendrovsky has enlisted the services of a Long Beach public relations company headed by a Russian-speaking distant cousin to help introduce him to U.S. business executives and show him how to make money the good ol’ American way.

In his remarks Wednesday, Vendrovsky also offered some tips for Americans who would like to do business in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet market, he said, “is wide open and anyone with good ideas and energy can make a great deal of money.”

The trade outlook between the Soviet Union and the United States has been improving as the Soviet government takes steps to make it more attractive for Western companies to set up joint ventures. For example, Western companies are now permitted to own as much as 100% of a company and have management control.

However, foreign companies looking for quick profits in the Soviet Union probably won’t find them, Vendrovsky said, stressing that research, patience and a long-term outlook are the ingredients of success.

Vendrovsky warned that American companies must be careful with whom they choose to do business. He said some U.S. companies have signed contracts with Soviet organizations only to find out later that the contracts were invalid.

‘You have to understand Soviet laws and who can or can’t (legally) be your partner” in a joint venture, Vendrovsky said. Because there is a severe shortage of foreign currency in the Soviet Union, he suggested that state-run organizations with foreign currency and government authorization to spend it are the best bets.

“Unfortunately, I have seen too many examples of large companies spending a great deal of money on travel to the Soviet Union, translators and limousines, as if it were a regular market, and come back with nothing because they did not do their homework,” Vendrovsky said.

Entrepreneur’s Itch

Vendrovsky was working as a computer analyst at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow when a friend persuaded him to join a small business that specialized in reinforcing residential and commercial doors to thwart burglars.

After working at his friend’s company for a while, Vendrovsky got the classic entrepreneur’s itch. He decided there was more money to be made by starting his own door-security business.

“The average charge for reinforcement of a front door was $40 U.S.,” he said. “My expenses were approximately 25%, the rest was profit. Soon I found out that the firm I had created on the side was making me 12 to 15 times my Academy of Sciences salary.”

Despite competition from five other companies, the Soviet businessman said, his company’s contracts have grown from $100,000 U.S. in 1987 to $2.5 million in 1989.

Asked if the Soviet Union is looking to China or the United States as an example of economic success, Vendrovsky, who stressed that his opinions were his own and not the government’s, said: “The United States is not the example, it’s the dream.”