OMSK – Textile trader Galina Koroleva has got Omsk’s fabric market sewn up, after years of weaving her way through hurdles that started even before she took out a $200,000 loan on the eve of Russia’s August 1998 financial crisis.

Today, Koroleva owns a thriving 1,000-sq. meter store and has a chain of small outlets inside other Omsk retail centers – but her success was hard-won.

Her story is typical of many of Siberia’s small businesspeople in that a poor salary and the hope of a better life prompted her to become an entrepreneur in the early ’90s.

The 45-year-old had worked as a schoolteacher, police clerk and transport personnel officer before she decided to turn Siberia’s geography to her advantage and jump on a train heading hundreds of miles east to neighboring China to try to earn a decent living.

"At that time, there was only one way to earn money – to sell cheap Chinese goods at open-air markets," she said, adding that she made 50 purchasing trips to China between 1992 and 1993.

"The first consignment from China ruined me," she said, citing a lack of demand for the cheap knickknacks that she bought from market traders.

"I was ruined and dispirited, but a friend of mine lent me some money and told me what kind of goods I should buy in China in order to sell them in Russia successfully."

Business picked up, and Koroleva hired three people to sell her goods at an Omsk market before taking a break in the United Arab Emirates in 1995 that was destined to change the direction of her business.

Koroleva said she was so smitten by the beauty of local fabric sold in an area textile store, Kamlish, that she made up her mind on the spot to set up a similar operation in Omsk. "I just thought that selling textiles would be possible, because most Russian women, including me, like to sew," she said.

She worked out a deal with the shop’s owner and founded Omsk’s first fabric shop in mid-1998, operating under her surname and supplied with textiles from the Arabian businessman. Koroleva said she was amazed by the demand for the fabric, which she was selling on her market stall then.

The success spurred her to take out the $200,000 loan from a local bank and she paid it back by borrowing from Kamlish and in turn paying the Arabian firm as profits increased.

Koroleva said the plan struck an obstacle with the August 1998 financial crash, which hit profits and sent alarm bells ringing in the Arab Emirates. "I flew to the Emirates and asked my partner – who was really frightened by the financial news from Russia – not to give up cooperation and to wait a while."

The Russian firm had to change its tactics to survive, dealing with Russian fabrics and selling them for low prices alongside the Arabian range.

"My profits diminished significantly, but the turnover increased," Koroleva said. She started buying directly from textile plants in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ivanovo, Barnaul and Novosibirsk.

The debts were paid off at the end of last year and the firm still stocks Kamlish’s products, along with Russian fabric and textiles from Poland, Japan and Indonesia. Today, the store and other outlets sell woolen materials, chintz, stockinet, manmade fibers and upholstery material. Most of the fabric sells for between 60 and 120 rubles a meter, although top-of-the-range textiles retail at 200 rubles .

Now, Koroleva simply plans to carry on her business at the store in Omsk’s Neftyanniki district, a 20-minute bus ride from the city center.

While she won’t reveal her profits, she says business is good and that her only regret is the difficulties she has with domestic producers, which she says are difficult to deal with and "do their business as if they were still living under a socialist system."