This article is an attempt to analyze ethnic entrepreneurship in Vladivostok in the late XIX – early XX centuries. A substantial proportion of immigrants in the urban population is a feature of Vladivostok. During this period, not only German, American firms appeared and were active in the administrative center of the Primorskii region, but also a stable extensive network of ethnic-based enterprises coming from China, Korea and Japan formed. The reasons were: the presence of a significant percentage of migrants from neighboring countries in the urban population a high degree of ethnic solidarity among the workers trade and services as the most important field of activity of the East Asian migrants unemployment or lack of competition in certain market segments. The author's attention is focused on the specifics of the business organization of migrants from East Asia. With a variety of issues, the author restricts her analysis to the issues specific of this business arrangement (active use of low-wage labor compatriots, financial and business mutual help of countrymen, shifting historical homeland techniques and methods of doing business in a new territory) description of self-organization forms the study of the role and place of national sales agents in ethnic groups. In the author's opinion, there is a certain dynamics in the development of forms of ethnic entrepreneurship. Ethnic entrepreneurship usually started to serve the needs of fellow-countrymen and in some cases it was way beyond near national boundaries, taking on the features of international advanced business. In the framework of such business companies opened their offices in different countries, the goods were bought in the markets of Europe, America, and Asia, and shipped to a consumer by various foreign companies, and the range of products was intended to different ethnic groups. In addition, there was an attempt to formalize and institutionalize the earlier «informal» ethnic associations of traders and entrepreneurs (through various communities and supervision of commercial agents) in the early XX century.