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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/526329
74 BCBusiness july 2015 Photos courtesy of toms be partners and invested $5,000 for Clark to investi- gate the idea. The two went door-to-door at Coastal's C-suite offices with their pitch; eight people on the management team put in $50,000 each. "That was cool," says Hardy. "That shows you the camaraderie and belief that people had in Sean's ability." Clark sold all his Coastal shares to fund Shoeme and started the hard work: living in his par- ents' basement in Dunbar, he set up the website, travelled to shoe shows, established relationships and packed and shipped boxes. He launched the site in January 2012, and in the first year reached $1 million in sales. It was not easy. Clark calls Hardy an unrelenting boss, whose style seems anything but "serendipitous." Now he considers Hardy a good friend, but then it was clear that business was busi- ness. Hardy gave him sales targets that he had to meet in order to get the next instalment of cash, and frequently he was close to missing them. "It was very stressful," says Clark. "On my second wedding anniversary dinner, I spent the entire time emailing back and forth with him because a major issue had to be dealt with. He works 24/7." By August 2013, sales at Shoeme had dropped well below costs. Clark's credit cards were getting declined, his suppli- ers were sending threatening letters, a board member quit, and a mentor told him it was time to close up. He recalls in vivid detail a hot summer evening when he met Hardy at the Coastal office. "I'll never forget," Clark says. "It was Roger and me. I said, 'So we're done?' He just looked at me and said, 'Of course not.'" The next month, sales rock- eted; by the end of year two, sales totalled $5 million. "He not only sees the future," says Clark, "but he has the ability to will it into existence." In the fall of 2013, soon after Coastal Contacts had opened nine retail stores in Canada and Sweden, the president of Paris-based Essilor flew to Vancouver and delivered an offer on Hardy's desk to buy the company—something in the order of $200 million. Hardy had received offers for the company since the early days, and he knew what to say: "I'm disappointed. I think it needs to be a lot higher." By February 2014, after months of negotiation, a deal was reached and passed unanimously by the Coastal board: $435 million. Essilor clearly believed in the company's poten- tial; Coastal's 2013 sales totaled $217 million, and it had become the world's largest online retailer of contact lenses and eyewear. "People were like, 'How do you sell your baby?'" says Hardy. "Well, it was a baby, but then it was an adolescent and a young adult, and when you have a team that's able to run it themselves, that's when it's not your baby anymore. It's kind of launched from the nest." (In May of this year, the company's new CEO, Roy Hessel, announced a rebrand- ing. "Contacts" would be dropped from the name, and Clearly's new strategy shoe pioneers Toms' flagship Venice Beach store is a model for the type of shoe retailer Hardy envisions