Making Good on a Business in Electronics

Found in the heart of Manhattan, Lafnac Computer Store brings to mind New York’s old mom-and-pop retail days, as well as cabbie-turned-billionaire Tamir Sapir – through electronics. Giving up driving after roughly a decade behind the wheels of a bus along with a taxi, he opened up a store that grew to become popular with high-ranking diplomats among the nearby Soviet embassy. Why was it so popular? Surely the convenient walking distance was obviously a component, but it’s also likely that Old World ties aided the Georgian-born Sapir to supply the Commie big shots with state-of-the-art consumer goods hard to come by back home. When the Soviet Union collapsed, such ties secured him the rights to disperse petrochemicals, which proceeds he parlayed to a real estate empire.