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  I began analyzing Saudis’ favorite buildings and top travel destinations, while poring through interviewees’ photo albums and computer disc drives. If nothing else, the mall that I’d been brought in to help design needed to symbolize an escape from day-to-day reality, as well as offer refuge from the cultural fear of fire. I eventually contacted three Saudi female psychologists to help me uncover so-called “reverse” symbols that would help dampen and relieve this national paranoia.

  Reverse symbols are common in children’s hospitals—the cartoon animal faces on walls, for example, that soothe children when they are about to undergo a medical procedure. Working together, we created large “fear” maps, which we counterbalanced with “dream” and “escapism” paths, all of which would underlie the mall’s future construction. I knew this much: whatever the mall ended up looking like, unless we took heed of the cultural fear of fire, we would have no customers.

  A few months later, the mall’s construction was under way. Most Saudi Arabian malls consist of a long corridor, with cold, marbled stores on either side. Most were designed and built by developers with strong links to the royal family and reflect the latter’s power, mystery and remoteness. The overhead light is either dim, or harsh. The corridors echo and the acoustics are poor. Other malls are ornate and pompous, with huge statues and artificial palm trees planted in sand beds, which is ironic in a kingdom whose natives would prefer to surround themselves with totems of the West.

  Our mall was different, in that it was focused on bringing in a more human dimension. The design team and I agreed we wouldn’t use certain colors, including red, orange and yellow. Revolving around images of water, with large canals flowing through the mall, our design created as strong a visual negation of the possibility of fires, or flame, or burning, as possible. We imported real bird sounds, and the rush of running water. Working alongside architects and designers, the mall became a dreamlike environment teeming with water images, including fountains, streams and even a wintry landscape with Swiss cabins, snowy mountains and ski slopes, to help Saudi Arabian women feel safe, and also to mirror the protection and the warmth that they felt as children growing up. If the cups I’d seen in Saudi households were arranged so they couldn’t fall, or topple, as a burning building might, I made sure that even the hills in the landscape were close to the ground. The calmness of the scene evoked a sense of protection against the elements, eliminating the metaphorical need for “plastic wrap,” as why would anyone need that level of immunity in such a cool, soothing environment?

  What did any of this have to do with the Russian Far East? Well, a few things. As is true in Saudi Arabia, Russian society was closed, with very few options for escape. In Russia, women were seldom given the opportunity to show emotion; in Saudi Arabia, women weren’t even permitted to show their faces. In both cultures, public expressions of creativity barely existed, and rulership and religion were dominant. Russia had Vladimir Putin and the KGB’s current incarnation, the FSB. Saudi Arabia had Islam and Sharia law. In the Middle East, however, children, and not women, were the center of the family. Since women weren’t permitted to reveal their bodies or identities, their children acted out their emotions for them. Saudi children, even young females, were allowed to express what Saudi women couldn’t. In common with Russia, the most popular cuisine in the region was Italian food. Russian fridge magnets were situated low enough to serve as toys for kids, whereas in Saudi Arabia they were beyond reach for most children, serving only decorative purposes. Russia needed toys, and Saudi Arabia didn’t.

  There is no way I would have picked up on the fridge magnets in the Russian Far East if I hadn’t worked in Saudi Arabia, no way I would have been reminded, again, of the unspoken balances between men and women, freedom and restriction, appearance and reality. When a society is out of balance, its natives will always find ways to compensate—or, in this case, escape. Alcohol in Russia is an escape. Cannabis in Holland is an escape. Prescription pills in the United States are an escape. What, then, were Russians escaping from?

  Generally speaking, Saudi families could afford to travel with their kids, whereas most Russian families couldn’t. Hence, the profusion of fridge magnets in Russian homes, symbolizing the places families wished they could expose their children to but couldn’t. I may be paraphrasing Sting circa 1985, but did Russians love their children, too? Yes. Did they wish they could provide for them, pay for long-distance travel, expose them to the world? Yes. But as I said, foreign travel is beyond the average Russian budget. As compensation, and in contrast with Saudi Arabian households, Russian families gathered and hung fridge magnets at a level where their children could see, touch and maybe even draw inspiration from them.

  The magnets were an oasis, a charging station for escape. Russian men had alcohol, but my guess was that fridge magnets were oases where Russian women and children went to refuel. By nature, oases belong to the past. As time goes on, they grow in romance, mystery and dimension. If most of us paid a visit to the real-life oases we remember—a summer at Martha’s Vineyard, a childhood trip to Europe—chances are we would be disappointed. Our memories can’t help making those places larger than life, slightly unreal. Situated in the most visited room in the home, fridge magnets were a pipeline to those imaginary places and experiences. They ensured a stream of energy from Paris, or London, or Tokyo directly into the kitchens of the Russian Far East. They gave Russian women—and Russian children—a ticket to another place and time, transporting and reenergizing them before dropping them back inside everyday life.

  In both Saudi Arabia and Russia, life isn’t easy, and escape routes, if they exist, are often blocked. Over the years many Russians who travel or live abroad have told me they feel out of place in other cultures. “The place where you are born best suits you,” is a well-known Russian saying, and most Russians believe the only possible place where you can find out who you really are is in the country where you were born.

  Still, what struck me most about life in the Russian Far East was the sense of community I found in every town I visited. I had a strange feeling I’d caught it on its last legs, too. In a Novosibirsk courtyard, I saw two Russian boys enthusiastically playing catch with a rock, in contrast to the United States and parts of Europe, where a new smartphone app occasions a few moments of excitement at most, followed by boredom. The Internet was gradually making its way into more rural areas of Russian society, even in areas as remote as Siberia, but full penetration was still one or two years away. One man I spoke with told me that since the Russian government had limited any and all personal initiative, or entrepreneurship, “freedom” had no choice but to find its way online. It was the only place Russian citizens could express themselves without the fear of reprisal.

  If trust doesn’t exist in Russia, the natives certainly don’t trust the Internet. The most popular social networking site in Russia, with around 110 million users (compared to Facebook’s 10 million), is VKontakte.com, or VK. Online privacy is a very real issue in Russia. In 2014, Vladimir Putin signed a law requiring all Internet operators to store their user data in centers within Russia by 2016. Companies that refused to comply, he said, would be banished from the Web, which means that any data stored on Russian servers is vulnerable to censorship. Additional regulations require blogs with a reader base of over 3,000 daily views to register officially as “media,” thereby subjecting them to governmental monitoring. In the wake of the political upheaval in Ukraine in 2013, VK founder Pavel Durov made headlines when he refused to hand over information on his website pertaining to Ukrainian protesters to Russian security agencies, or to block the VK page dedicated to Alexey Navalny, the anticorruption foe and Putin critic. Durov posted the government’s orders instead on his VK home page. It took only a few months for Durov to be dismissed as VK’s CEO. A longtime proponent of freedom of expression, Durov made it clear that VK had been taken over by the Russian government.

  Even when t
he government is not involved, e-commerce in Russia involves ordering a product online, then picking it up at a nearby outlet. As an analogy, imagine ordering books from Amazon, and going to an Amazon warehouse around the corner from your house to pick them up. Order something in Russia, and there’s no guarantee that your package will show up when it’s supposed to, or that it will show up at all.

  Back in my hotel one night, I placed every fragment of small data I had on a bulletin board—photos, videos, notes, observations, insights. I pictured the fridge magnets in every apartment. I thought back to the Orange Lady, and how the two things she’d wanted most as a girl, a dollhouse and a doll, were denied her, and of the emotional power of the things we crave the most when we’re young. I thought about the guilt that Russian parents, especially mothers, carried around with them, of not being able to give their children more than they themselves had as kids. Then there were the lack of mirrors and the frayed top ropes of the playground swings. Still, everything came back to the distilled emotional power inside those fridge magnets, and back to the imbalances in Russian society: the cold weather, the frustration, the distrust, what it means to be a Russian parent who wants more for her children. The preoccupation with children showed up in the worn rope swings and in the cardboard sheets of princes and warriors crowned with the heads of sons and daughters. Suddenly, I had my business idea.

  Over the next few days and weeks, I set in motion the rollout of a huge online website devoted to Russian mothers and their children. We called it Mamagazin, which in Russian means “Mums’ Store.” Our mission was to create the most honest, reliable e-commerce site in Russia. To help combat the high levels of distrust in Russia, I knew instinctively who to call upon to help me with the website: Russian mothers. They may have been nominally in charge of their households, but almost no one listened to them or sought out their opinions. Almost every Russian woman I spoke to told me how friendless and isolated she felt. Across Siberia, the strongest communities women have, now and in the future, are online.

  Mamagazin, then, was the first-ever online community that respected, and listened to, Russian women. It was built by mothers, for mothers. Yes, it is a company first, but it’s also a resource where mothers can tap into advice from other mothers, which is why we asked those very moms for their help in creating it. In Russia, we found out that most mothers buy toys in partnership with other mothers, to save on shipping and handling costs. In response, we created a mechanism that enables them to make one order, splitting the payments and even the products, using a single account. Realizing that grandparents buy around 40 percent of all toys in Russia, we also created a system where grandparents could submit the characteristics of the grandchild in question, their preferred price range, the child’s dreams, the topics on which they bonded the most with the children and even a wish list.

  Our goal? To let Russian women be heard. To appeal both to their actual children and to the little kids who still lived inside these women. Not least, one of our mission statements—smiles are infectious—was a way of trying to bring a measure of happiness to a country where smiles were rare.

  It had never been done before, but to help launch the business, we next recruited a select group of Russian women to serve as our “mom ambassadors.” What did the ideal “trustworthy” Russian mother look like? What were her characteristics? We then put the candidates who matched those characteristics through a two-month-long boot camp where they learned social and communication skills, and how to cope with unforeseen crises. Russian women are extremely introverted. They’re unaccustomed to small talk, or to letting a conversation build up slowly, or to building up a rapport; most go straight to the point. In effect, we taught them how to create casual conversation with strangers. They then partnered up and traveled across the country in pairs to thirty different cities, to meet with 150 additional mothers daily to discuss any and all issues they face. No selling, no pushing—just conversations in which women with children could talk, and listen. For most, being in the spotlight was a new, and emotional, experience. Every day we collected more than 500 good and great ideas. We implemented many of them, too, crediting the mothers who came up with them on a special honorees’ page.

  Our next step was to create a series of nationwide family festivals we called Mamafests, devoted to creating an experience for both mothers and children. We invited approximately 250,000 Russian mothers and their families. When they got there, children were given a mock passport, and told they had to accumulate stamps they would receive once they’d completed certain activities, including painting a character’s face, icing cookies, playing Angry Birds and tic-tac-toe, and racing other kids in cardboard cars. Eventually they could swap their passport stamps for prizes.

  Up until the point Mamagazin ran up against 2015’s sanctions on imports, and was temporarily “frozen,” the website—as well as our Mamafest projects—was the fastest-growing, most user-friendly e-commerce site aimed at parents in all of Russia, with over 500 employees, and Russian moms consistently voting the site as “The most appealing to visit.” Never before had thousands of mothers come together to help create a company, and never had a company gone to market by simply listening to what mothers wanted. In contrast to most other businesses, we had made the time to grow our business organically. We spent a year talking to Russian mothers, and another year building the website in line with what they wanted. Our bigger mission was to create a collective experience for Russian mothers, all of whom wanted the same thing for their children—a chance to satisfy desires their lives prevent them from expressing. Whether in the Middle East or the remotest regions of Siberia, it was a need reflected in the radiance and romance of a universally adored Parisian landmark.

  Chapter 2

  Sausage, Chicken and the Pursuit of Real Happiness

  Transforming the Future of How We Shop for Food

  Winston-Salem is the fifth-largest city in North Carolina, with a population of around 235,000 people. Along with Austin, Texas; Portland, Oregon; and one or two other US cities, Winston, as the locals call it, is a popular retirement destination for northerners who dream of good weather, good manners, an arts scene and enough variation from the American norm—grits on the menu, country music on the radio—to make them feel they are living in the United States, but also visiting. Still, a century after its founding, and despite an active biotech and medical research scene, Winston-Salem is still best known as the headquarters of R.J. Reynolds, which named a pair of popular cigarette brands after the city. Some locals, citing the city’s deep involvement with tobacco, call the place “Camel City.”

  Industry aside, the sidewalks of downtown Winston-Salem empty out by 5 p.m., as in almost every other American city. Most retail takes place in malls and shopping centers accessible via a series of highways and loops. Lowes Foods, a local family-owned grocery chain with supermarkets in North Carolina and South Carolina, is one of the region’s biggest retailers, but its revenues had been down since the 2008 recession. Walmart had infiltrated many of its markets, and Lowes couldn’t compete with the Internet on either volume or prices. Unless the company turned around its 100 or so supermarkets, it would have to shut down some of its stores. It’s not often I take jobs with regional companies, but Lowes was an unpolished gem. I wanted to prove to them, and myself, that with strategy and new ways of thinking, it was possible for a “smaller” organization to compete with the bigger-budgeted, better-known players in the supermarket industry.

  Many American strip malls and shopping centers have a derelict feeling about them. Most are similar in appearance. National food and retail chains—Chili’s, Applebee’s, Staples, Bed Bath & Beyond, Pier 1 Imports—stand alongside local businesses that trim nails, style hair or offer classes in self-defense. If asked, most natives would tell you that if they closed their eyes and shut out any nearby landmarks, or local signage, they could be almost anywhere in the United States. The sameness of everyth
ing has a numbing effect, just as it did for the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard who, assigned to take a road trip across North America for the New York Times Magazine last year, wrote, “Ever since I landed in Cleveland the previous day, the landscape had been the same, a sort of centerless, semi-urban sprawl of highways, subdivisions, shopping malls, warehouses, gas stations and factories.”1 Nothing in the landscape, he wrote, felt surprising or natural. Concluded Knausgaard, “I was supposed to write something about this trip, and not only that, I was supposed to use this trip to grasp something essential about the United States, perceive something with my foreign gaze that Americans couldn’t see for themselves. Instead, I saw nothing. I experienced nothing.”

  The Lowes supermarket anchored a shopping center a few miles from downtown Winston-Salem. Sharing the space were a neighboring arts and crafts store, an optometrist, a veterinarian and two vacant stores with cardboard across their windows and SPACE FOR LEASE signs with phone numbers on them. Inside, the store was cavernous, but its most distinguishing feature was that it looked and felt like any other American supermarket. A row of gleaming shopping carts up front. Stacks of baskets. Produce stands crowded with fruits and vegetables. Aisles filled with every kind of food or drink, surrounded by a refrigerated ring where orange juice, milk, yogurt and cheese were stocked. Batteries, candy, gum and celebrity magazines clustered around the check-out lanes. The overall color scheme was white, with touches of hunter green. The store was clean, but dated, and the shelves looked like they hadn’t been straightened out in a while. The few employees I met in their tan caps and black shirts and aprons were teenagers or college students: friendly, but inexperienced and not all that engaged.