Part II: A Chance Encounter — and the Spark of an Idea
In the year 2000, I moved from Siberia to Moscow — a major shift both geographically and personally. Shortly after settling in, I landed a job at Samsung, the renowned Korean conglomerate. I joined a small division called Samsung Corporation, where just four of us were Russian employees, working closely with three Korean colleagues — our superiors.
At first, it felt like any ordinary job. But it wasn’t long before something curious caught my attention.
Each day, the Korean staff would drink a dark, earthy-looking beverage — a kind of brown powder stirred into hot water. I assumed it was a traditional tea or perhaps a health supplement, nothing unusual. Then, one day, my boss asked me a surprising question:
"Could you help me find high-quality chaga in Moscow?"
That stopped me in my tracks.
He explained that he suffered from an ulcer and had found chaga to be the only thing that helped control the inflammation and manage the symptoms. This wasn’t just folk medicine for him — it was something real, something that worked. I soon learned that the Korean diet, rich in spices and heavy meats, can lead to digestive and inflammatory issues. For them, chaga acted as a natural counterbalance — a protector of the stomach and liver.
That conversation was a turning point.
Until then, chaga had lived in my memory as part of childhood — tied to forest walks, birch trees, and quiet wisdom passed down through my father and grandfather. But now, I was seeing it through a different lens: highly educated professionals from another culture were not only using it — they valued it.
It was then that the idea took root.
I realized I was sitting on a well of untapped potential. But before I could do anything with it, I needed to truly understand chaga — to build a knowledge base of my own before considering any commercial steps.
From that moment on, my connection to chaga deepened. It went from memory to mission. Yet when I started searching for information, I quickly hit a wall.
Even in Russia, knowledge of chaga was scarce. In urban areas, hardly anyone had even heard of it. In rural communities, a few people remembered it as lesnaya meditsina — "forest medicine" — but that knowledge was fading fast.
There were no books. No mainstream discussions. Just a few obscure scientific papers hidden in aging Soviet-era medical journals — dense and difficult to digest. I spent long nights in libraries, photocopying, reading, organizing, and translating information into something useful. It was slow work, but piece by piece, I began to understand the true power of this mushroom.
At the same time, I was dealing with my own stomach issues. I began taking chaga regularly — and I haven’t stopped since. That means I now have over 20 years of firsthand experience. My trust in chaga isn’t theoretical — it’s lived.
I knew this mushroom deserved a far wider audience than it had. But the next challenge was clear: how do I share it with the world?
From Research to Reality: Building Something from Nothing
Back then, the internet in Russia was slow, expensive, and unreliable. There were barely one or two mentions of chaga in English online — and none offering real, high-quality extract for export.
While still working at Samsung, I managed to track down one of the only two manufacturers in Russia producing high-quality chaga extract. Both were supplying exclusively to Korea (and occasionally Japan). One of those manufacturers is still my partner today.
To my knowledge, no one else in the world was exporting authentic chaga extract at that time.
I decided not to arrange supply just for my Korean colleagues — but instead, to build something of my own. A business. A bridge between traditional forest knowledge and modern global interest.
Learning the Hard Way: One Line of Code at a Time
The first thing I needed was a website. But I couldn’t afford a web designer. So I went to a bookstore, bought several books on HTML, and began to teach myself. For months, I spent nights learning to code and build a simple site from scratch.
In 2003, after much trial and error, I launched Chagatrade.ru — the world’s first dedicated website offering real Siberian chaga extract to an international audience.
My English was still limited, especially when it came to scientific terms, so some of the text sounded awkward to native speakers. But it was honest. And most importantly — the information was real.
Setting the Record Straight
Verified Launch: According to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, chagatrade.ru was first archived on December 4, 2003 — confirming its active presence at the time.
Early Global Presence: At that point, there were no English-language websites focused on chaga. The topic remained obscure in the West, found only in scattered academic references or Russian sources.
I launched the site with two goals:
1. To share clear, accurate, translated information about chaga.
2. To offer authentic Siberian chaga extract to the world.
But it wasn’t easy.
I had no budget for ads or marketing. For five years, I worked on the site daily, leaving messages on forums, joining health boards — doing anything to spread the word. Most of the time, I received only a few curious emails, often from people who had never heard the word “chaga.”
I almost gave up.
But little by little, interest began to grow.
I kept going. I published articles, shared translated research, created a forum. Slowly, orders started to trickle in — first from Europe, then the U.S., then Asia. By 2009, I had a small group of loyal customers who appreciated the quality and noticed real results. By 2012, Chagatrade.ru had become the top Google result for “chaga” in several regions.
A Changing Landscape — and a Rising Tide of Confusion
But after 2010, things began to shift. New websites started appearing — many of them directly copying my content, even my photos. Some made exaggerated claims, others invented stories about long family traditions or mystical powers. The truth took a back seat to flashy branding and fast sales.
Worse still, many of my long-time partners stopped ordering from me — but kept selling “Siberian chaga extract.” I began to ask: If they weren’t buying from me, where was their product coming from?
Then the answer became clear: China.
China has no native chaga. It lacks the birch forests necessary to grow it naturally, and importing it is banned. Yet, Chinese factories began flooding the market with mass-produced substances labeled as chaga — powders and capsules that resembled chaga, but were something else entirely.
They were cheap. They looked the part. But they weren’t the real thing.
Foreign businesses jumped at the opportunity. And just like that, the market was saturated with low-quality, ineffective imitations — sold under the name of a mushroom that had once been sacred.
Meanwhile, those of us who had worked quietly — without flashy marketing or big budgets — were pushed to the sidelines. And customers? More confused than ever about what chaga really was.
Why I’m Writing This Now
This story isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about truth.
About honoring a deep tradition. About the science behind a forgotten remedy. About starting with nothing but curiosity, old medical journals, and respect for the land that gave us this gift.
Today, I’m more committed than ever to continuing that mission: to bring the real chaga story back into focus — and to make sure it stays there.
In the next part of this series, I’ll share what I’ve learned over the last two decades: how to tell real chaga from fake, why most products on the market fall short, and how we can all make more informed choices.