Successful business in Russia: self-sufficient or part of the ecosystem?

Is it possible for a business to be successful in the contemporary Russian market as a self-sufficient or a completely independent player? How valid or rightful would it be to ask such a question at all? Are there any companies in the market independent to the extent allowing them to dictate their agenda to everyone else?

"Our international experience of doing business gained over decades in different regions of the world gives us sufficient reasoning to be confident that business development strategy of the company works out for the Russian market too. The laws of business are universal regardless of the cultural and linguistic characteristics of a particular region."
"Dozens of experienced business development specialists work for the company— we know what to do and how to do it."
"If a company in Russia is part of an international structure, should we consider the interests of a regional distribution network at all: distributors, dealers and representatives, just resellers? We are the XXX! We know how!"
…

Unfortunately, there is a long list of companies who thought they knew both "how" and «when", and "what", and anyone of that list could stand for "ХХХ". Unfortunately, not all of those companies managed to develop their business in Russia to the scale originally intended, and some of them are not represented in our market today at all. In each individual case, of course, the reasons are different, every company has its own background, operates in its particular special situation, but there is also a common denominator of "defeatist" stories—it is difficult to agree that the loss of time, investment, lost profits could be attributed to victories—they knew what was best themselves. They knew how to properly build long-term relationships with customers, how to work with competitors, how to properly deploy a marketing campaign, they knew where and when to make a compromise, they knew how to cooperate with OEM partners. "We will deal with these projects ourselves. Your job is to ensure that the equipment is in stock." One can provide a long list of examples from the "life of a distributor", about everyday hardships, difficulties, challenges and victories. After all, the heart of the matter is, in fact, simple—in today's world, even in the current extraordinary environment, without cooperation, without combining knowledge and capabilities, experience and financial resources, it is difficult to achieve success, simply impossible, to be fair. Business snobbery could allow you to gain a foothold in the market, but only for a short period of time.

There is no revelation in the aforesaid at all, so it might seem. The truth has long been common knowledge: partnerships form the basis for a new round of development. But, unfortunately, real business and examples of damaged relationships with customers and failed projects just confirm the well known paradigm: theory is one thing, and the actual practice of doing business is quite another. The VSP Company, guided by some experience gained in the market, and specializing as of 1996 in a number of product lines for automation, Instrumentation products included, is successful in developing its business. Counting on longterm relationships with major industrial enterprises as well as with medium scale businesses in Russia, we focus on real values—partnership and cooperation, agility and longterm strategy.