Brand strategy in conditions of import substitution and withdrawal of foreign players

Three models of response to the withdrawal of a foreign player — and why they cannot be compared on one scale

In the top of the search results, variants are usually listed: brand acquisition with rebranding, launching a new brand-analogue, copying the business model without changes. The problem is that these three paths solve different tasks and exist in different time horizons. Acquisition with rebranding (Starbucks → Stars Coffee, McDonald's → «tasty&point») provides instant operational launch, but inherits the risks of the previous positioning. A new brand from scratch requires more time and money for recognition, but does not drag along someone else's reputation. Copying the model without rebranding — the weakest option: it lasts exactly until the original returns or legal claims appear.

A telling example is the company Sweety, which operated under the Tutti Frutti franchise. In two years, it did not simply rebrand, but completely rebuilt its product: it developed its own mixes from Russian ingredients, conducted a full rebranding, and restructured its logistics, after which it launched franchising in new cities. This is no longer mimicry or a temporary patch, but the construction of an independent asset.

Why the consumer perceives the Russian analog as a compromise — and how to change this

Research shows a dual picture: a significant portion of Russians say they are satisfied with Russian brand analogs and consider their quality competitive. But at the same time, many cite quality as a drawback of domestic products, while buyers consider price and availability as key advantages, not enthusiasm for the brand. This is the diagnosis: the analog is chosen rationally, not emotionally. As long as the brand competes on price, it remains a substitute in the buyer's mind — once the original returns with the same quality and status, loyalty will follow.

Working with this prejudice should be done not through advertising promises, but through three practical steps:

1. Publicly acknowledge the differences between the product and the original — do not hide the fact of recipe or raw material substitution, but explain why the new solution is independently valuable (for example, Sweety with Russian ingredients).
2. Build your own emotional touchpoints — service, community, loyalty programs that did not exist with the former brand and create a new reason for choice, unrelated to nostalgia.
3. Do not exploit visual similarity to the departed brand beyond the transitional period — it undermines trust at the moment when the market begins to view copying as a sign of weakness rather than courage.

What happens to a brand if the original returns to the market

The strategy of 'living here and now' is dangerous precisely in the long term: if a brand is built entirely as a replacement, it has no own semantic core, and when the competitor returns, the buyer will simply return to the familiar name, especially in premium and status categories. The only way to minimize this risk is to build the brand as an independent unit with its own product history from the very start, not as a 'Russian version of X'. The Finnish Paulig, renamed to Poetti, retained contracts with the same clients — 'Vkusno i tochka', Moscow metro — precisely because the new owner did not try to portray the former brand, but inherited the production and distribution infrastructure, building his own identity on it.

Practically, this means dividing the strategy into two layers: operational (supply chains, contracts, personnel — what is truly valuable from the predecessor) and communicative (name, visual code, tone of voice — what must be new and protected from legal and reputational claims).

Intellectual property and mimicry: where the boundary lies

Mass mimicry of departed brands is not only an ethical but also a direct legal risk. Applications for trademark registration of well-known departed companies — Apple, Skoda, Nestlé, L'Oréal Paris and others — have been filed with Rospatent. Some of these applications are rejected, but at the same time counterfeit products under the names of the former brands appear on the market, which destroy the residual brand reputation faster than the departing company itself. For a brand building a long-term strategy, this means two things:

• You cannot rely on visual and verbal mimicry as a stable business model — regulation is tightening, and such trademarks are regularly challenged;
• You need to independently register your own intellectual property at the start, not after the brand has gained recognition — otherwise, copycats will copy you already.

Of the three paths—mimicry, an authentic product, and the acquisition of an original brand—only one is legally protected and scalable beyond the transitional period: the creation of one's own, registered identity, even if it is built on the infrastructure of a defunct company.

How to incorporate import substitution into a multi-market strategy

A common gap in most analyses is that a brand created to substitute for the domestic market often lacks a plan for expansion beyond it, although such a plan determines how the positioning will be today. Three models of localization operate here, each setting a different horizon of thinking.

If a business views import substitution as a temporary niche 'until better times arrive,' it chooses an adaptive model and usually gets stuck at a local scale. If the goal is to build an asset that will outlast the return of competitors and extend beyond Russia (to the CIS, the Middle East, or Asia), the strategy must be laid out from the start through an integrated ecosystem: unified product standards, a protected IS, a flexible CRM infrastructure that works equally well in Moscow and Almaty. The Russian fashion segment is illustrative here: a significant number of foreign brands have left the fashion segment, while interest in Russian analogs has grown—but only those players who treated this growth as startup capital, not as a window of opportunity for just one season, will be able to sustain this interest after the market becomes saturated.