The Industrialist Stefan Pipev and his Volatile Success and Hard Decisions in Times of Crisis

The study presents the professional development of Stefan Pipev –a graduate of the Academy of Economics in Wien, a third generation trader, industrialist and a partner in the brewery Prosek Brothers. The accent is put on the period from 1907 until 1927 when Stefan Pipev was managing the brewery on his own and in a partnership the industry established by the Prosek brothers. He succeeds in keeping the relative rise of the production and modernizes it with new technologies. His management coincides with multiple crisis - a fierce competition between the beer brewers, a lot of bankruptcies, raising excised duty, and the economic disruption caused by the Balkan, the Second Balkan War and the World War I. Despite the unfavourable circumstances the Bulgarian entrepreneur succeeds to fight off the competition and keep the trademark Prosek in the top three brewery industries. For the purposes of the research are studied documents from the State Archive – Sofia and State Archive – Veliko Tarnovo. Despite the low number of scientific and popular publications about Stefan Pipev all of them have been used in the study.