⬅ # 2291 Jose Maria Aristrain|# 2293 Daniel Feffer ➡

# 2292 Gary Friedman 

$1.31B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 7/1/2024
-$30.3M (-2.31%)

# 2292 Gary Friedman 

$1.31B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 7/1/2024
-$30.3M (-2.31%)
OccupationFounder and CEO, Wildberries
Source of WealthFurniture Retail
Age66
ResidenceBelvedere, California
Marital StatusMarried
Children2
EducationDrop Out, Santa Rosa Junior College
Age-Adjusted Net Worth$873.57M
Gary Friedman
Gary Friedman
United States
Net worth: $1.31B

Wealth History

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Biography

Early Life and Entrepreneurial Start

Tatyana Vladimirovna Bakalchuk was born on October 16, 1975, in Moscow, Russia, to a Koryo-saram family, with Korean ancestry.
She graduated from Kolomna University.
Initially aspiring to become a designer, Bakalchuk returned to teaching English after the 1998 financial crisis struck Russia.
In the early 2000s, she met Vladislav Bakalchuk, her future husband and co-founder of Wildberries.
Tatyana Bakalchuk, a former English teacher, launched Wildberries in 2004 at the age of 28, in her Moscow apartment, while on maternity leave after giving birth to her first child.
Her husband, Vladislav, an IT technician, joined her soon after.

Career

During the 2014—2016 financial crisis, Wildberries adopted a platform business model, similar to Amazon.
The company thrived during the COVID-19 pandemic, experiencing a significant increase in online orders starting in 2020.
By 2020, Wildberries had over 7,000 pick-up points, offering flat delivery rates and free try-ons, pioneering these services in Russian e-commerce.
In 2021, Bakalchuk was a member of the Supervisory Board of VTB Bank and joined the All-Russia People's Front.
She engaged in talks with the Russian Federal AntiMonopoly Service regarding legalizing parallel imports after the Russo-Ukrainian War outbreak.
Wildberries faced accusations of selling counterfeit products by the Ministry of Industry and Trade in 2022.

Business Expansion and Acquisitions

In 2018, Tatyana Bakalchuk established WILDBERRIES HOLDINGS LTD in Cyprus.
In 2020, she acquired Standard-Credit Bank, later renamed Wildberries Bank.
The sales turnover of Wildberries surged in 2022, growing by 98% compared to 2021, amounting to 1.669 trillion rubles.
She announced plans to rebrand Wildberries in April 2023 due to advertising regulations.
Tatyana and Vladislav Bakalchuk own Wildberries, which became the largest e-store in Russia by 2022, processing roughly seven million orders a day with a reported total of 1.5 billion orders in 2022.

Sanctions and Controversies

In 2021, Ukraine imposed sanctions on Tatyana, Vladislav Bakalchuk, and Wildberries for selling Russian military uniforms and anti-Ukrainian literature.
Poland imposed sanctions on Wildberries and Bakalchuk in 2022 due to her connections with VTB Bank.
Bakalchuk faced scrutiny over her involvement with VTB Bank and talks with the Federal AntiMonopoly Service.

Personal Life and Family

Tatyana Bakalchuk is married to Vladislav Bakalchuk, and they have seven children, residing in Moscow.
Her sister, Maria Andreeva, works at Wildberries, and she also has another sister named Albina Tsoy.
Bakalchuk’s brother, Yuri Tsoy, is a former CEO of Starprofi.

How long would it take you to become as rich as Gary Friedman?

If you started with $10,000 and invested an additional $500 each month at a 44.06% CAGR, it would take you 5 years to reach Gary Friedman's net worth of $1.31B.

Is this realistic? It depends how closely the VIX-TA-Macro Advanced model performs to its history in the future. Since Grizzly Bulls launched on January 1, 2022, it's returned 48.24% compared to 16.19% for the S&P 500 benchmark.

Enter data in all but one field below, then calculate the missing value

Gary Friedman is very wealthy, but what's stopping you from reaching that same level of success? As summarized in our five fundamental rules to wealth building, becoming wealthy in a modern capitalist economy is not complicated. There's actually only three variables:

  1. Your starting capital
  2. Your earnings after expenses
  3. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of your savings

Most people start with zero or very little, so if you weren't born into wealth, don't fret! The majority of the fortunate folks listed in our Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index came from middle class or lower backgrounds. The most distinguishing characteristic of the group is their ability to consistently earn a high CAGR on their savings.

Every billionaire has a unique strategy to achieve high CAGR. For Gary Friedman, Furniture Retail is the primary source. Whether you choose to invest your savings in your own businesses or the businesses of others is not as important. The salient piece of the puzzle is ensuring that your hard-earned savings are generating sufficient CAGR to reach your long term goals.

Most people simply invest their money in index funds and call it a day. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it guarantees relative mediocrity. To achieve greatness, you need to invest your money to earn higher than average returns. In the long run, better investors will always finish ahead of better earners.

Source: Grizzly Bulls reporting

Methodology: Grizzly Bulls' Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world's billionaires and richest people. Grizzly Bulls strives to provide the most accurate net worth calculations available. We pull data from public equity markets, SEC filings, public real estate records, and other reputable sources.

The index is dynamic and updates daily at the close of U.S. stock market trading based on changes in the markets, economy, and updates to Grizzly Bulls' proprietary algorithm of personal wealth calculation. Stakes in public companies are tracked daily based on the relevant closing prices of the underlying securities. Additionally, stakes in private companies, cash, real estate, and other less easily valued assets are updated periodically through careful analysis of insider transactions, comparable public company sales / EBITDA multiples, etc.

Edited by: Lee Bailey