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W I N N E R Rizwan Somji C E O C Y M A X G R O U P T E C H N O L O G I E S n Just a few things have happened since Rizwan Somji was appointed CEO of Burnaby-based furniture dropshipper and e-commerce firm Cymax Group in Janu- ary 2019. Somji, who got the top job after four years with the company in various roles, found Cymax at something of a crossroads. The business had seen a US$25-million Series A fund- raising round, partly led by Plenty of Fish founder Markus Frind's investment firm, in 2015. But Cymax was in some trouble. "Things were tough," recalls Somji, who was raised in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and came to Van- couver with his family when revolution hit in the early 1990s. "We'd blown through a lot of our investment—we were focused on the top line and weren't making enough bot- tom line there. Investors were nervous; they asked me to try and turn the company around and make a profit. We did, and haven't looked back." He's not kidding. Cymax saw 40-percent revenue growth from 2019 to 2020. Somji attributes that to a few things, including his employ- ees' mindset and an emphasis on organizational structure. "We gave the sense to the team that we were under- dogs, on our back legs. It was a simple focus—let's go and make a dollar, let's prove we have a real business model here," he says. "We shut down certain business units that were great ideas but didn't warrant the time and focus. And we looked to our partners and vendors that we worked with and assured them that 20 21 62 BCBUSINESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 GET COMFORTABLE Somji hadn't been a CEO before he was appointed head of Cymax in 2019 E N T R E P R E N E U R O F T H E Y E A R 2 0 2 1