Two Canadian companies that helped furniture makers sell online appear to have closed, BetaKit reports, building on reporting by the Vancouver Tech Journal.
Cymax Group Technologies, founded in Burnaby in 2004 as a furniture marketplace, ran tools including Channel Gate for marketplace sales and Freight Club for shipping. Employees posted about the shutdown on LinkedIn, and a senior leader said he was helping with the wind-down. Plenty of Fish founder Markus Frind is Cymax’s majority owner and became CEO in 2024. LinkedIn lists about 145 people connected to the company. Cymax didn’t confirm the closure to BetaKit.
CommerceBear, a Toronto company launched in 2019, gave furniture manufacturers tools to sell on Wayfair, Amazon and Walmart. It raised $10.5 million USD (about $15 million CAD) by 2022 from investors including Inovia and Garage Capital. A source confirmed the shutdown to BetaKit, and the company’s website now returns an error.
Furniture sales have slumped since the pandemic buying boom. Canada-U.S. tariff tension and rising costs have squeezed sellers further.
Why it matters: Tools for a single industry rise and fall with that industry. Two closures in one niche in the same month show how exposed Canadian e-commerce suppliers are to U.S. marketplaces and cross-border trade.
