Marcus Frind was appointed CEO of Cymax Group Technologies this week and owns about 70% of the company.Lucas Oleniuk/Globe and Mail
Since selling his lucrative online dating business Plenty of Fish Media to Match Group for US$575 million in 2015, Marcus Frind has expanded into real estate, wine production, steel production and soil testing. , and has dabbled in a variety of businesses, including lending to start-up companies.
Now one of B.C.'s most successful technology entrepreneurs is returning to the job that made him one of the province's richest men: running technology companies. Frind this week became CEO of Cymax Group Technologies, nine years after he first invested in and served on the furniture e-commerce company's board. He currently owns about 70 percent of the company.
Cymax “lack of vision and direction and is just doing the same thing over and over again” and is about the same size as it was four years ago, he said in an interview. “There are a lot of things we want to do. It's really about changing the company and culture and turning it back into a startup.”
Cymax, based in Burnaby, British Columbia, is an online marketplace where furniture and home décor vendors can sell and ship products through their website and other websites such as Amazon.com, Walmart.com, and Houzz.com. I am running a place. We also operate an online cargo logistics platform that matches sellers and shippers.
Cymax was founded in 2004 by Iranian immigrant Arash Fasihi. The company started selling TV stands online and sold similar furniture categories through its platform, copying Wayfair, which at the time did not ship to Canada. Cymax operated 170 sites in three years, and in 2009 sales reached $60 million.
But when Google changed its ranking algorithm for search sites in 2011, the company was hit hard, with traffic and revenue dropping 30% in five days. Cymax responded by raising external capital, increasingly automating its business, and reducing the size of its product catalog.
Sales rebounded to $140 million in 2015, when Mr. Frind of the Business Development Bank of Canada and Salman Partners invested $25 million, but Cymax ramped up operations and began managing sales, returns and listing data. It fluctuated over the next few years as it was collected and researched. How to improve profit margins. After the company became profitable in 2018 and Mr. Frind became the majority shareholder, Mr. Fasihi was succeeded by Chief Operating Officer Rizwan Somji as CEO in 2019.
Cymax's revenue more than doubled to about $300 million in 2020 as e-commerce sales increased as people stayed home during the pandemic. Cymax hired an investment banker that year to consider an initial public offering (IPO), but that did not materialize.
The online furniture retailer's revenue rose during the first two years of the pandemic, but has since declined by about 25 to 30 percent from its peak, and Cymax's revenue fell last year as Chinese competitors began selling directly to the north. This decreased to US$278 million. America, said Mr. Frind.
Meanwhile, Cymax has been in the red at various points over the past year as its margins have declined as it has increased its workforce to meet rising demand. Somji resigned in December and was replaced temporarily by Chief Operating Officer Mike Hellenberg as Cymax hired a search firm to find a full-time replacement.
A few weeks ago, Frind concluded he was the best choice. “I’m pretty much the only person with this skill set and the ability to get what needs to be done done in such a short amount of time,” he said. “With 'Plenty of Fish,' I literally wrote every line of code and built the server. I know product, marketing, and programming inside and out. So working on this meant that every department You can go and find out exactly what they are doing, what not to do, and how everyone can work together more efficiently than they currently do. Where do you need to tie the thread? I only know.”
Rather than just advising and sometimes even helping, as he has done in the past, Frind said, “When we can control the whole process,” Frind said, he will make impactful changes, such as adding generative artificial intelligence to the platform. He said it would be easier to bring. He said Cymax was “kind of stuck in time,” including an aging user interface that needed a coding refresh. “I'm going to work on that and reinvigorate the product and the growth. If you think about the potential, it should be five to 10 times the size it is now. There's a lot of opportunity everywhere, so it's important to take advantage of it. It is important.”
Mr. Frind's expansion into another major business is also facing challenges. Like other winemakers in the Okanagan Valley, his Frind Estate Winery is facing a second year of poor production due to January's frigid temperatures, which has resulted in 95% of the region's wines. He estimates that 50% of the area was destroyed. 2024 grape harvest. This could force many local winemakers out of business, but it won't affect long-term plans to expand the “hobby” operation, which currently owns about 400 acres of vineyards and another 900 acres of land in the region. He said he would not.
