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Mustela-Talir
By its founder's account, regulation took away the trade this company was built on: ointment bases made for pharmacy compounding. It switched to cosmetics. Realnoe Vremya reported ₽24.5M in revenue for 2015; registry filings show ₽29.6M for 2024, at a company Alexander Devyatayev has held as sole participant and director since 2002.
Four addresses in Kazan
Shut out of pharmacies twice, an ointment maker turned to creams
In January 1993, by the founders’ account, a Kazan company delivered its first tonne of mink-oil ointment base to Tattekhmedfarm, for Tatarstan’s pharmacies. Alexander Devyatayev, a docent at the Kazan medical institute, had spent six years developing it. Within a decade, he says, a ban on pharmacy production had closed that trade, and the company needed another use for its formula.
A formula built for the pharmacy shelf
Mustela-Talir (Мюстела-Талир) is a trade name. The registered company behind it is OOO Mustela (ООО «Мюстела»), and its story starts in a laboratory rather than a shop. Research on the base began in 1987 at the Kazan medical institute, per Realnoe Vremya, where Devyatayev worked on it with a pharmacist colleague. He has traced the idea to his reading. “The idea of creating a pharmaceutical production came when I read in an article by Italian scientists that mink oil contains linolenic acid,” he told Business Online in 2012. Papers published at about the same time, he said, linked atopic dermatitis to an inherited deficit of that acid, and he drew the parallel.
Production moved into premises at ul. Yuliusa Fuchika 34 in Kazan around 1992; the year comes from Firdaus Devyatayeva’s 2012 statement that production had run there for twenty years. The MUSTELA trademark application was filed in July 1993, and the mark was registered in June 1995. The early years were lean. Devyatayev told Business Online in 2012 that between 1993 and 1998 he sometimes went half a year without being paid. From 1998, the founder told Business Online in 2014, the company was an annual winner of the “100 Best Goods of Russia” programme.
The current legal entity was registered in January 2001. Registry records show Devyatayev as its director and sole participant from 27 December 2002.
When the pharmacy closed
The founder says pharmacy production was banned by law in 2002, and that the ban ended a trade in ointment bases that had supplied most of Tatarstan’s pharmacies. By the founder’s account, the company stopped making medicines and became a cosmetics maker.
A route back into medicines existed in principle. The founder says the GMP rules that arrived in 2010 required larger production areas and an investment of ~€2–3M, founder-stated, which the company did not raise. The ointments were abandoned for good, and the knowledge built for them went into creams.
Speaking to Realnoe Vremya in 2017 about taking the business to a new level, Devyatayev said: “But then it will be a different business. It may be interesting, but it is fantastically risky. Whoever owns it decides its further development.”
Making its own oil
From 2005 the company made its own cosmetic mink oil. By the company’s own claim, as Realnoe Vremya reported in 2017, it was Russia’s only producer. In April 2005 a sister company, OOO Talir (ООО «Талир»), was registered at ul. Karbysheva 7 to make cream-soap and shampoo, giving the group its double name. It is no longer an active company, and Talir continues as a product line under OOO Mustela.
The method stayed close to the pharmacy. Creams were made by hand by pharmacists in a 400-square-metre Kazan workshop at 50°C, per the founders in Business Online in 2012 and 2014. The company sells them through its own branded shops at ul. Baumana 17 and ul. Karbysheva 7, alongside the workshop on Fuchika Street.
Recognition followed the creams. In February 2014 Business Online reported a European gold medal for the company’s black-cumin cream; the founder put turnover at the time at ~₽15M and said 60% of customers were tourists. In April 2016 the Halal Committee of DUM RT certified four of its creams, made without mink oil, under certificate 1346/2016, valid to April 2019.
A small house, on the record
The numbers describe a business that kept its size. As reported by Realnoe Vremya, OOO Mustela earned ₽24.5M in revenue and ₽8M in net profit in 2015. In 2017 the outlet reported capacity of 150,000 units a year; the founder put the headcount at 35. Registry filings show revenue of ₽29.15M and net profit of ₽1.065M for 2023, with an average headcount of 23. For 2024 the filing shows revenue of ₽29,642,000 ($345K USD) and net profit of ₽590,000, about a fifth above the 2015 revenue in nominal rubles.
Business Online described Firdaus Devyatayeva in 2018 as executive director of the Mustela-Talir group, and the company website reported her speaking in that role at the Russia exhibition-forum in March 2024.
One participant since 2002
Ownership is simpler than the group’s name suggests. Registry records show Alexander Devyatayev holding 100% of OOO Mustela as its sole participant and director, a position he has held since 2002. His daughter Diana led the company’s DR9 professional line in 2017.
The know-how built for the ointment base went into creams, which the company sells at ul. Baumana 17. Per the founders in 2012 and 2014, they were made by hand in the workshop on Fuchika Street that the company has occupied since about 1992.
Researched 22 sources in Russian, English.