April 27 | Moscow

We’re going around to see the competition today. There are four main competitors in addition to street level retail. Tsum (Tsentralniy Universalniy Magazin), pronounced “zoom”, which we saw yesterday. Gum, (Gosudarstvenny Universalny Magazin) pronounced “goom”, which is directly off Red Square. Crocus City Mall, a little farther outside the city center. And Luxury Village, an open-air center on the outskirts of the city.

We start at Gum, which is on Red Square, so we stop at the square and take a few pictures. We can’t actually get into the square so we miss the opportunity to get inside Lenin’s Tomb, or any of the other attractions.


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There were lots of soldiers and police, mostly standing around. The square itself is enormous. In fact, the main road through town is no less than 16 lanes wide. It’s incredible.

But because today is a holiday, there are almost no cars on the street.


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Gum was originally one, state-owned store housing over 1,000 shops. Today it’s several million square feet of luxury and bridge retail featuring about 150 shops. It’s three levels with a glass roof that runs the entire length of the building.


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One very interesting store was on the first level. It was a long, skinny gourmet grocery store called Gastronom No. 1. It’s called this because back in the Soviet days, the groceries were all state owned and they were numbered. This being the closest grocery to the Kremlin, it was number one.


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The name of the company that owns GUM is Bosco di Ciliegi, which basically means Cherry Wood, hence the cherry trees in full blossom throughout the center.


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Our next stop was Crocus City Mall, a contemporary center close to what you’d expect to find in North America. Same luxury brands. Immaculately clean. A little boring if not beautiful. We had lunch there in an Italian restaurant that was quite good. They sure know how to do retail and dining in this city.


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Our final stop of the day was Luxury Village, a super contemporary center that looked like something you’d find in the Hamptons, which is basically what the area was like, minus the ocean. It’s where all the rich people have their dachas, or country homes. In addition to the Gucci’s and Prada’s, there were dealers selling Ferrari’s, Bentley’s, Porches, and Harley’s.


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All in all, Moscow was what you’d expect from a country with new found wealth. A mix of traditional culture and conspicuous consumption. The wealthy here flaunt their wealth and bigger, better, faster, cooler is the name of the game.

We headed to the airport and waited in an Irish Pub. I’ve been to 15 countries just in the past 10 years and there’s been an Irish pub in every one of them.