The Company

The year 1993. The future Owner of AN-Security, Evgeny Klimov, participates in the organization of a Film and Video Fair in the "Manege" Central Exhibition Hall (St. Petersburg), fully organizing and coordinating the security of the event. The success of the case gives a start to a profile business, for which we find room in the former mansion of the archive of the Center for Cinema and Television.

Office on Krestovsky Island. Transport does not run (except for one tram), no one has cars. But the economic situation plays into the hands - the best of the best come to interviews: officers, including special forces seniors. By the end of the year, the team has 500 people, but on the brink of the New Year, competitors are seeking to close the company.

The year 1994. Evgeny and his new partners are launching a company under the name "Alfa-Nord" from scratch. The experience in working with Scandinavian companies has a special impact on development - contracts with international companies (Neste, Skanska...) appear. Here Alfa-Nord applies new ways to combat theft and corruption.

Corruption in the 90s was ubiquitous, which foreign clients were not ready for, so it was necessary to detect and stop theft by cunning rather than force.
Work experience, ups and downs, crises - all this helped Evgeny Klimov to find his own unique way of managing the company and people.

In 2003, Evgeny Klimov was close to the decision of selling the business - problems of the 90s were unsettling; the company exists and makes a profit, but it no longer brings the same satisfaction. Development had stopped, business had been stagnating…

It was at this moment that Western partners appeared, considering the possibility of conducting a security business in the North-West of Russia together with one of the local players. So the Company got a second wind, and Evgeny got a new partner - Mark Luts.

The arrival of European manager had adjusted the positioning. If earlier we were looking for customers among acquaintances, now we began to sell "security service", and this entailed certain changes:

Uniform was introduced (a white shirt, tie and a plain suit for all guards). It seems ridiculous to point it out now, but no one practiced it then.
We found (with difficulty) reflective vests for gas station employees. At the beginning of 2000’s those just started to be introduced for traffic police officers.
We recruited women to guard! In those days, it was simply nonsense. But the Company's new client, the O’KEI store chain, needed CCTV operators and salesroom detectives.

It was working with O’KEI that became an exit from the comfort zone for AN-Security. Seeing obvious successes in the work of its main competitor in retail, another large hypermarket chain also requested the service of providing safeguarding service from AN-Security. But O’KEI put a condition on our Company - "it's either us or them." This situation did not frighten the partners; Evgeny and Mark, after a series of negotiations, decided to work with O’KEI, and managed to take under guard all the stores of the chain, including regional ones.

The zone of influence expanded to Moscow and Rostov-on-Don, which caused some alarm among Estonian partners, but Evgeny and Mark defended their right to geographical expansion here as well. The culmination of the year 2003 was the creation of the company "AN-Security" with the prefix "South".

The year 2003 ended for AN-Security with the first challenges — the protection of hypermarkets "O’KEI" and access to the regional level, as well as moving to a new, spacious, multi-level office on Bolsheokhtinsky Avenue, 16 in Saint-Petersburg.

The new workspace already made it possible to separate the flows of visitors. The first administrative rules and regulations were introduced... And since 2004, the Company has been accumulating managerial experience.

There was an awareness that the institution of mentoring is necessary for high-quality work. So Yuri Gryazev came to AN-Security. He took on the task of selecting and forming a management team. Many employees who came to the Company then as line staff now occupy top positions.

Further regional expansion took place: following the south of Russia, Moscow region came into the sphere of interests of the company.

Growth of the business directly depended on the growth of customers. In 2005 - 2006, many efforts were made to ensure that the MEGA-IKEA corporation joined the ranks of customers. Negotiations on this matter have been going on since 2003, when there were only 3 IKEAs in Russia: two in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg — IKEA-Dybenko. But the cooperation, which continues today, began with MEGA-Parnas, which opened in December 2006.

New customers that year were MEGA-IKEA-Parnas, OBI-Parnas and 4 more O’KEI stores. 500 new job vacations have appeared! We had to urgently expand the staff.

In some cases, it was necessary to compensate for the lack of necessary approvals and documents for technical means of protection by additional guards. And to add people in excess of the required staff, as demanded by the customer. All this happened within one month — the historic December of 2006!

For 3 years, the company "AN-Security" had:

- increased the staff numbers from 300 to 1,000 employees,
- created a system of motivation, training and selection,
- received the largest contract of all time,
- expanded the geography of its presence with Moscow region.

It was a hyper-revolution. Everyone stood at security posts, even the accounting department worked at the facilities. It was at such moments that the corporate spirit was forged.

That period became the "Second Birthday of the Company", and all our "veterans" remember it with pride and warmth.

This is a period of experimentation, the search for our own identity and typical business solutions that would scale adequately to the growth of the Company. The total systematization of activities begins.

AN-Security is the first in its field to begin operating with such concepts as customer orientation, internal regulations, a clear division of activities, goal-setting, etc., which were already the standard for other, non-security types of services. The first principles of Corporate policy are formulated. It is this document that will be decisive in the future in the fundamental differences between AN-Security and other players in the security market in Russia.

Constant internal development also found external manifestations – along with the "corporate bible", a visual one was also written. The Company's logo also began to take on unique distinctive features in the form of four colored spheres. It laid the foundation for the formation of a new bright corporate identity.

Most of the regional representative offices are being opened. The company has become a unique example for its industry - able to find resources by showing the will and desire to work anywhere in the country. And where others could not mobilize, AN-Security succeeded and occupied a significant part of the market.     

In 2007, offices appeared in Krasnoyarsk, in 2008 — in Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd, Ufa, Yaroslavl, Murmansk, in 2009 — in Sochi, Dedovsk, Lobnya, Klimovsk, Volzhsky, Stavropol ... The number of employees grew to 4,000 members, and the annual turnover up to one billion rubles!

In 2008, the Company celebrated its 15th anniversary. It was the first big corporate event. For a security company in 2008, a jazz party - with a demonstration of specially filmed commercials about each branch in the style of a comedy show, popular at that time, with the display of new uniform in the like of a staged fashion show - was an event more than progressive. And all this was accompanied by a big live band.

The main management outcome of this period was the conclusion that now seems obvious: security is the same service as any other. Oddly enough, this simple postulate is still not realized by most of the Company's competitors, but for AN-Security it served as a launching pad for further development.

Back in 2010, amendments to the law "On Private Security Activities" came into force. Foreign shareholders lost the opportunity to be co-founders of the PSC. The difficult parting with the Estonian shareholders stretched until the end of 2014. And at that time, the business was in an extremely dynamic phase, and the search for optimal solutions was not easy.

At the beginning of 2012, the Company already had management tools for geographical expansion. One of the main conductors of system solutions has become the commercial service. It was engaged in tender monitoring, active sales, technological processing of applications, systematic preparation of commercial proposals and necessary packages of documents. One of such routine applications was participation in the competition for the protection of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi.

The focus on working in projects of this level already existed, which affected the result: AN-Security won the tender. In total, four companies were selected, but only three actually acted. Also, a new selection was made among accredited companies to ensure the safety of the Olympic Torch relay.

In 2013, the 20th anniversary of the Company took place. It was the second big holiday that went down in history not only for AN-Security; it became the top event of the Russian scale, nominated by the national award "Silver Archer". The landmark event "4 COLORS" served as an impetus to the beginning of conscious, planned charity activities. Since that moment, we have had our own policy in the field of social responsibility of business. No significant internal event took place without a charity element anymore. The slogan "celebrate wisely" had become permanent and unchangeable for AN-Security.
The celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Company has become a vivid symbol of this good undertaking, and in fact – a large charity art project. The place of action was the Arts Square and the Mikhailovsky Theater in Saint-Petersburg. The director of the street performance-photo exhibition and the theatrical show "4 Colors" on stage was Vasily Barkhatov. The headliner was prima ballerina Diana Vishneva. The host of the charity auction was Leonid Yarmolnik. A special guest was Chulpan Khamatova. The total amount of funds collected in favor of the Gift of Life and AdVita funds amounted to about 7,000,000 rubles.

Meanwhile, since the second half of 2012, preparations for the Olympic Winter Games had begun: trainings, tests, including ones at Olympic venues, figure skating competitions, hockey matches, short track competitions. With a fairly modest income, this resulted in serious investments. The whole of 2013 was devoted to preparing for participation in the Olympics. The Olympic Torch Relay became another challenge, as in addition to the actual run, it included accompanying events in the cities through which it passed. Events organized by Coca-Cola, the IOC's partner, added up to it. Thus, AN-Security provided continuous service of the highest quality along the entire route of the relay, and this is almost half of the country's territory!

The relay race ended in Sochi, where preparations for work in the conditions of the Olympics were already beginning. It was very difficult: from the resistance of representatives of the local administration to general organizational omissions. And this was in the conditions of gaining experience "in-action", constant recruitment of employees, whose number has reached 1,700 members. The facilities were also difficult to administer: the Russian Fan House, Coca-Cola, Bosco venues and projects, almost the entire sports infrastructure located in the Lower Cluster… During the project, the tension in the work of most services also increased. For example, the Fan House at the beginning of the Olympics hosted 15 thousand guests a day, and in the second half of the event the number of visitors reached 30 thousand a day!

In general, the Olympics were taken extremely positively, a great overall success was felt by everyone. For the Company, unfortunately, the event was not associated with positive financial results. It was an investment in the experience and reputation of AN-Security. One of the long-term indicators of this approach were contracts for the security provision of all Coca-Cola production sites in Russia.

The Sochi Olympics gave an incentive to accumulate not only experience, but also materials for a portfolio – media archive. This project has made us progress at an incredible rate. Thanks to it, we decided to take on the next, even more ambitious step – ensuring the security of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

The year 2015 began in conditions of severe internal austerity - the Company had not yet managed to compensate for investments in the creation of security infrastructure for the Sochi 2014 Olympics. But it was at this time that the organizational foundation was being created, on the basis of which we learned to overcome financial turbulence.

Supportive, technical and administrative services were transferred to the Management Company, a Financial Control Service was created, and the management structure was optimized. By the beginning of 2017, the Company was fully prepared for the tender for the provision of security services for the FIFA Confederations Cup. This was our first experience working on a geographically scalable project. In September 2017, the Company created a project group engaged in preparing for the World Cup in Russia. The material base was provided, staff was recruited and distributed, anchor partners were being searched in the regions. In general, 2 months before the tender for the selection of security contractors, and 9 months before the Championship itself, we decided for ourselves that such an event would not pass us by.

By November 2017, the Company was already ready to put 8,000 employees at the World Cup facilities. Initially, 3 cities were assigned to AN-Security: St. Petersburg, Samara, and Volgograd. And then other selected security service providers turned out to be… not ready to meet the actual requirements of FIFA, including the quantitative composition. First, facilities in Rostov were transferred to our area of responsibility, and then - facilities in Saransk. When it came to the 6th city - Kaliningrad, we had to persistently refuse.

In addition to the remoteness of the facilities from each other, their different formats and the already "stretched" staff of people, there were also logistical challenges - a need to organize air travel for more than a thousand security guards. This circumstance meant that it was impossible to abide by the budget and offered only one solution - Rosgvardiya had to provide transportation of personnel by military aviation. It was incredible for the military themselves. Our employees were transported by military plane to a military base near Kaliningrad. That's how, unexpectedly, the 6th, but not the closing (!) element in the puzzle of the World Cup cities appeared...

As a result, the 2018 FIFA World Cup had become the most difficult, fun and significant project for us — both for business and for the team. We have never experienced such unity and teamwork, and on such a scale. No one was looking for the guilty, did not shirk, everyone fit into the work with healthy audacity and irony. Such a resource, no longer material, allowed to pick up objects in familiar Sochi. A local contractor, to put it mildly, needed help.

The 2018 FIFA World Cup gave us fantastic statistics: more than 13,500 employees, in 13 cities, at more than 100 facilities! No one has ever worked with such an expanse, either before or after. In fact, we have provided more than 50% of the project security-related services in Russia. Today, it will be very difficult for even world leaders in the field of security to recreate this. Therefore, today we are the carriers of unique experience; both at the level of the process organization and at the level of employees.

The single-team attitude helped the Company not only internally – all major clients understood our involvement in the World Cup and provided support in every possible way, showed loyalty. It was an inspiring experience when the Company, its employees, customers, partners, everyone who was somehow involved in the Championship, from the organizers to the fans, became one team sincerely devoted to topping the overall result. Therefore, the period from 2015 to 2018 was the peak of our team's cohesion, brand awareness of the Company and other, more pragmatic indicators. We had finally established our reputation as one of the best security companies, and now — not only in our country.

After the World Cup in Russia, the team gathered to celebrate a quarter of a century since the founding of the Company. The 25th anniversary differed from the previous celebration in its orientation. This time it was a gesture of gratitude, first of all, to the employees. Thanks to their efforts, selfless work, professional and humane attitude, the Company had honorably fulfilled not only the tasks assigned to it. In the most difficult conditions, the team was able to prove to itself that it is capable of solving any problems. Therefore, the participants of the anniversary were given the opportunity to relax themselves in the atmosphere of a big football holiday — in the largest sports bar in Europe, located a stone's throw from the St. Petersburg Arena stadium, where until recently the very same employees were on labour watch.

During the rapid growth in the period from 2015 to 2018, we formulated for ourselves another important element of the corporate strategy. It's about constant quality monitoring and bringing the quality to a single standard. By the end of 2019, the service quality assessment system was finalized. And in 2020, the first results were already being summed up. Experience has shown that by creating such a system, we were not mistaken. It is constantly developing and improving with the annual summing up of the KPIs of the quality of services of each division.

The second strategic goal in this period was to go beyond the Russian market. In 2019, we registered companies in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
The decision to build a business in the Middle East was dictated solely by marketing calculation. The security market in Europe was already established and quite conservative, so it was rather difficult to enter there. In Dubai, everything was still (and is still) developing and constantly growing, new facilities and infrastructure are being built, and all this requires protection. Moreover, this market has the prospect of maintaining such dynamics for the next 10-15 years. Moreover, the legislation in the areas of regulation of security activities in Russia and the UAE are almost identical. Therefore, it was comfortable for us, having experience in Russia, to transfer that experience to the Emirates.

The company has made great progress in the strategy of building a business and is beginning to actively offer its services in the Middle East market. The prospect of growth is up to 4,000 employees, noting that this one is rather a pessimistic forecast. After all, Dubai now is the entry point to the entire World.

The stage of sustainable development means that the security service is considered as a whole range of measures. And this service is growing in assortment and quality. The first swallow in the package of our services was the "Transport security" direction. Then there was "Fire Safety", with work on the formation of a powerful fire station and the purchase of the first fire truck. Also in our portfolio there are cases of water rescue and emergency rescue services. Our new areas - cyber, environmental and technosphere security - are also experiencing a stage of rapid development. Today we are aiming to create our own recruiting structure within the Company, which will be able to subsequently satisfy not only the internal needs.

Our plans are to expand the set of services, providing them with our own infrastructure. We are building up the base in each element, looking for new intelligent solutions and implementing them into work. We are developing niche know-hows. For example, mobile inspection points and mobile autonomous control nodes. They provide new opportunities in terms of mobility, offering services in a wide range of conditions.

The special military operation that began in 2022 poses new challenges to us. We are working to compensate for objective business losses by increasing resources in alternative market segments and searching for new opportunities. In the conditions of restrictions, our position is to continue development, increasing the pace, working ahead of the curve. We are not saying that it will be easy, after all, when was it ever easy? "Golden moments" had happened, and we remember them with gratitude. Time will pass, and we will also remember today as the starting point of vigorous growth.
And our team is ready to make efforts to become the better versions of ourselves and make our country better with us.