A One-Stop Solution to Improve Your E-commerce and Logistics Journey
For any business, making a move into e-commerce is not easy. Startups have more pressing priorities than creating complex websites and fulfilment systems, while more traditional businesses can find it difficult to know where to start. For those in the furniture space, it can be especially challenging due to the difficulties of moving large items and the fact that customers typically like to see—or sit on—an item before parting with their money.
Cymax Group Technologies emerged in 2004 as a website selling media furniture. Soon after, it began building websites for other firms operating in the furniture sector. While the company still operates two boutique marketplace websites—Cymax Business, for commercial customers, and Home Square, for the consumer sector—it has since evolved into a leading e-commerce technology and logistics services platform. Today, Cymax Group prides itself on designing e-commerce solutions that enable ease, scale and certainty for its partners.
With the rise of online marketplaces, Cymax Group now leverages two platforms. Channel Gate relies on powerful artificial intelligence and almost two decades of data to optimize product listings for furniture manufacturers and vendors, and it integrates with critical channels and some of the world’s leading marketplaces. Freight Club, Cymax Group’s end-to-end freight shipping platform, allows furniture manufacturers to manage all logistics elements—including shipping, insurance and returns—through a single portal.
“It’s a network of more than 30 carriers providing volume-discounted rates and services to retailers of all sizes,” explains Chris Randall, Senior VP at Freight Club. “Whether or not businesses are selling with us on the Cymax e-commerce site, or handling their own direct-to-consumer operations, they can leverage Freight Club to manage all their shipments through a simple web portal or API connection.”
“Furniture vendors and manufacturers are drawn to Cymax Group because we empower our partners and are committed to delivering exceptional experiences,” says Zarine Halim, VP of eCommerce at Cymax Group. “We provide them with access to a multichannel e-commerce and data platform, best-in-class marketing expertise and personalized account support including catalog management, go-to-market strategies, trend analysis and growth opportunities. We leverage almost two decades of data and powerful AI to make e-commerce easy. These end-to-end solutions enable seamless activation and scale.”
Crucially, Cymax Group offers actionable advice to its customers, based on its many years of experience. “The e-commerce and logistics journey can be viewed as a sequence containing dozens of business decisions across different contexts and settings,” explains Chief Technology Officer Brad Kent. “Our role is to automate and optimize each of those decisions using technology and machine learning to ultimately deliver better results for our vendors and better experiences for customers.”
The company has enjoyed a period of rapid growth along with the shift toward remote working, which has seen both organizations and consumers invest in better furniture for home offices. “That was a huge push in 2020,” says Randall. “Since then, we have continued to grow by providing product, a carrier network and a set of services that simplify a retailer’s shipping operations and satisfy changing consumer demands. In these turbulent times, we are proud that both Freight Club and Cymax Group continue to see strong growth.”
Cymax Group’s success is being widely recognized, and in 2021, its CEO, Rizwan Somji, won EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award. “I am truly humbled by this recognition,” said Somji. “I am proud of the team who work alongside me every day and the innovations we have to allow furniture vendors to succeed online.” Cymax is included in Communitech’s 2022 roster of Canadian companies shown to have the highest probability of reaching $1 billion in revenue, and Freight Club was a finalist in the BC Tech 2022 Technology Impact Awards.
Cymax Group’s focus in the coming years is to continue “democratizing e-commerce,” says Somji, enabling furniture manufacturers of all sizes and resources to take advantage of the potential of selling online. “We believe in creating access for companies of all sizes so that they can better themselves and their businesses,” he says. “Our success over the past few years is a testament to the team we have built here at Cymax Group and the resilience and fortitude they have shown through challenging times. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you can’t be successful in e-commerce. Finding the right partner is essential.”