TULA, Russia (Reuters) -From a small factory in Tula, a city south of Moscow, American musician David Arthur Brown exports Russian-made Soyuz microphones to Europe, the United States, China and beyond.
At a time when sanctions are squeezing Russia’s trade in commodities and technology, Brown’s company is one of the many non-sanctioned businesses with foreign connections battling geopolitical headwinds to maintain ties between Russia and the West.
But unlike multinationals such as Nestle, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble that have chosen to continue operating in Russia while hundreds of others have exited the country, Soyuz, which means Union in English, represents a much smaller niche.
With a team of about 60 workers, the company makes microphones by hand and from scratch at its two-storey Soviet-era factory in Tula, a city also known for spiced gingerbread “pryaniki” cookies, traditional water-heating samovars and arms production.
“You would have to be crazy to go into this business because it’s both a tiny market and an extremely crowded market,” Brown told Reuters. “But I believed that we had a strategic advantage because Tula has both very highly skilled labour here, because of the arms industry, and lower salaries than Moscow because it’s a regional city.”
Brown launched Soyuz in 2013 and the company’s microphones, some designed to evoke the distinctive onion domes of Russian Orthodox churches, retail for thousands of dollars.
Having loved using Soviet-made Oktava condenser microphones in 1990s Los Angeles, Brown wondered whether he could create a high-end microphone with Russian character that was equally as good as those of Austrian and German competitors.
Brown, frontman of the band Brazzaville, was touring in Russia when a visit to Oktava’s production site in Tula sparked a new ambition in him.
“The West made tanks, Russians made tanks, the West made rockets, Russia made rockets, microphones, cameras, everything,” Brown said. “It’s drawing from a long, rich tradition, it’s not just inventing something out of the air.”
Soyuz is not under sanctions, but all businesses operating in Russia have to contend with the barriers to trade that sanctions have erected, such as more complicated payment flows and circuitous trade routes through third countries to access the European market.
Asked whether sanctions against Russia had affected Soyuz or its shipping, Brown said that any business had to deal with multiple challenges.
“But the ones that are able to succeed are the ones that are able to remain flexible and find ways to continue their business,” Brown said.
“We stay out of politics completely. I’m not a diplomat. I’m not a politician. I’m just a singer and a mic designer,” he said. “But of course, we all have to deal with the geopolitical realities that we live in.”
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Alexander Marrow;Editing by Alison Williams)
