Expedition brand founder Alexander Kravtsov has died: accounts of the cause of death differ

The sudden death of the founder of Expedition

On November 5, news broke of the death of Alexander Kravtsov — the entrepreneur who created the Ruyan group of companies and the Expedition brand. He was 58 years old. The company announced this in its Telegram channel: “Today, Alexander Kravtsov passed away suddenly in his 59th year of life. The creator of the Ruyan company and the Expedition brand,” the statement said, as cited by Gazeta.Ru. The company promised to announce the time and place of the farewell later. The first reports of the death appeared on Life.ru, citing BAZA.

What is known about the illness: two different versions

The cause of death was not named in the brand's official statement, but over the course of the day, media outlets put forward versions that contradicted each other. SHOT, which is cited by both Life.ru and Gazeta.Ru, claims that Kravtsov died of acute heart failure in Moscow; according to the outlet, in 2022 the entrepreneur had spoken on social media about a coronavirus infection he had suffered and “non-standard treatment methods.” Later, Life.ru citing the Telegram channel Mash gave a different picture: according to the channel, on November 3 Kravtsov felt unwell at the Pervy Nos café in Moscow's Airport district — his blood pressure dropped sharply, and he was taken to hospital in an extremely grave condition. On the evening of November 4, at around 22:00, his heart stopped; doctors spent about half an hour trying to revive him. Mash's sources claim that the entrepreneur suffered from an advanced cancer — initially the tumor was in a lung, then metastases spread to the liver, lymph nodes and bones, and against the background of the illness intoxication developed with impaired liver and kidney function. As Life.ru itself notes, there is still no official medical confirmation of these details. Thus, the final cause of death remains undetermined: the SHOT and Mash versions do not exclude each other, but neither has been officially confirmed.

Who Kravtsov was

Alexander Kravtsov was born on January 18, 1968, in Salekhard and graduated from the Gubkin Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas with a degree in field geology of oil and gas. In 1995, together with partners, he founded the Ruyan company, which at various times was associated with the brands Raptor, Mosquitall, Twist, Gardex, Salton and Forester. From 2002, the company focused on Expedition — a brand that Kravtsov positioned as “a way of life”: under this name, goods for travel and outdoor activities were produced, restaurants of northern cuisine and bath complexes operated. He was also the chief organizer of the international winter off-road race Expedition-Trophy, which has run across the whole of Russia from Murmansk to Vladivostok since 2005, and wrote the book “Business as an Expedition” about his own entrepreneurial experience.