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After several months of working by the maxim “We get what you need,” we already had good connections with authorized dealers, and thanks to this, we were able to land our first big fish. Even before we were an authorized Apple dealer, we purchased a shipment of computers from a dealer – a shipment that the customer had for some reason refused to pay for – and we sold that lot to another official dealer. Payment for these computers went from Switzerland to Turkey for some reason, in exchange for Hilal chocolates. Our profit from this transaction consisted of two computers, which became our primary asset and served us for many years to come.

After a while, we became an authorized dealer, and this enabled us to obtain new clients, which at the time were mainly western companies and organizations that had opened offices in Kiev. They were importing a significant portion of their computer equipment from abroad. The computers were mostly old and arrived the worse for wear, and they needed servicing and repair, so we earned a lot by providing such maintenance. Laser printers back then were very expensive and frequently broke down, and spare parts for them were expensive, too. So I simply went to a worker I knew at one of the Kiev metalworking plants and ordered a bag of spare printer gear wheels from him for twenty dollars, which enabled us to repair laser printers at a staggering profit. Electronics specialists whom I knew would repair computer power sources, which saved us from waiting a month for deliveries of spare parts and enabled us to solve a client’s problem quickly and earn something in the process.