Skip to content
Subscriber Only

How Australia’s Ruslan Kogan Built an Off-Brand Online Retail Empire

One of Australia’s fastest-growing businesses started with 1,000 cheap TVs.
Ruslan Kogan

Ruslan Kogan

Photographer: Tom Ross for Bloomberg Businessweek

Australia’s most aggressive online retailer got its start with an impulse buy. A decade ago, Ruslan Kogan was living in Melbourne, fresh out of school and doing consulting work for Accenture. At night, he made extra cash selling imported T-shirts and wallets on EBay. He decided to lay out some of his savings on a high-end, $5,000 TV but didn’t want to pay full price.

On a whim, Kogan contacted the brand’s little-known Asian manufacturer. He posed as a retailer, claiming he’d be interested in buying 100,000 TVs if the company would send him a sample unit for cheap. The TV maker made him a way better offer: all 100,000 for $1,000 a pop. “In that moment, I thought, There is a real gap in the market here,” Kogan recalls. “I quit my job, and my mum cried because I was going to become a TV salesman.”