The 9-5 life is not for everyone. In fact, it’s one of the factors why many of us consider entrepreneurship in the first place. Having control of our own schedule, growth, and career path is often too tempting to pass up.
At least, that’s what Mehdi Kajbaf found when he made his foray into the professional engineering world. Finding it too restrictive for the life he wanted to live, he decided to do a 180 and join his brother-in-law’s matboard cutting/framing startup. And so their family business, Matboard and More was born. Shifting into the custom mat space, they found it to be wildly underserved and got to work carving out their spot as a niche leader by providing online frame customization and high quality mats that no-one else sold.
Finding rapid success, they outgrew their warehouse 3 times in the first year of service, and 11 years later, they remain a prime leader in frames of all kinds thanks to their dynamic website and Google ad strategies.
Allow me to introduce Mehdi Kajbaf…
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I am Mehdi Kajbaf, CEO and Co-Founder of Matboard and More. We are the number one custom matting and framing e-commerce business in the USA.
My background is as an Engineer, and when I discovered that the 9-5 grind was too restrictive on my life, I switched gears and pursued my MBA. In that process I discovered there are so many different ways to live life, and so many careers to pursue.
I went down the path of becoming a Health and Wellness facilitator and Life Coach, but quickly switched gears when Matboard and More came into my life! From the moment I saw that first prototype website, I could see my entire future and my ticket out of the 9-5 life I was so dreading. That was for sure my biggest motivation at the beginnings of the business.
The original idea to start selling custom mats came from my partner, Mohammad. He’s also my Brother-in-Law. He’s been in framing his whole life, and so he has been a great resource, especially around supply chain, logistics and operations.
The other partner is my brother, Reza. So it’s been a family business from the start.
They initially started by selling matboards out of Mohammad’s garage to one big client (where Reza was actually working at the time). From there, they realized the need for custom mats was huge and competition was weak, so they worked on building out the site.
When Reza showed me the first prototype of the site, that was when I decided I had to get involved. From there, I helped take the website and business to market and a couple months later they welcomed me in as an equal partner, and 11 years later it’s been everything I hoped and more!
The first website was as simple as you could imagine. Essentially a setup wizard to select the matboard color, size and a few simple options. It was linear, and you had to go back and forth to make changes. Still, it wasn’t bad for 2012 and it was super fast.
From the beginning we knew we had to give customers the option to select any size, and color which has been a core part of the business since day one.
From there, we started to spend on Google to get feedback and see if the website would convert. It did, even if poorly to begin and from there we iterated, tested, iterated, tested until you see what we have today which is a fully dynamic website and a wide range of customizable options unlike any other custom matting site!
At the absolute first stages of the company, I wasn’t involved, that was Mohammad and Reza. Mohammad was incredibly resourceful. He got a used computerized mat cutter, used his connections and relationships to get incredible wholesale pricing on the most popular white and black mats and then got to work cutting. He cut hundreds of mat in that garage, before we moved into our first warehouse.
That was probably no bigger than 750 sq. ft., and we used every inch of it.
In the first year I think we moved up warehouses three times, each time expanding the team and adding more machines. It was a lot of fun seeing that growth!
The most successful channel for attracting customers has been Google since day one. Primarily AdWords. SEO of course has been important, but overtime it’s become more and more difficult to get the Organic traffic and paid traffic has become more expensive.
Our clients tend to come looking for us. It’s not like you can disrupt someone’s day and say, hey, did you know you need matboards? More likely, customers have an intent, and we make ourselves discoverable. It’s worked great.
For retention, we definitely have a large group of loyal customers, many which we attracted those first days. It’s no gimmick, simply have great quality and treat people well. We’ve recently started doing more of the re-marketing, couponing etc. but nothing beats just having great quality and service.
In my early days of Entrepreneurship I loved Tim Ferris. The 4 Hour Work Week is one of the best books I think. I loved the practical steps, though I will say what really resonated with me was more so the philosophy of not making excuses, optimizing for success and executing.
Tim’s lessons around focusing on effectiveness versus efficiency have stayed with me.
It’s not about working more, and longer but about doing the right things.
He’s only gotten more popular and successful so it seems like his life philosophy is working great for him!
There’s always people who scoff at these extreme ideas, like a 4 hour work week, but I am eager to learn more! I’ve truly crafted my life around that vision and I’m very fortunate to have mostly escaped the rat race.
Things are great! Covid was a really strange time in e-commerce, but as we’ve come out of it it feels like we’ve finally found our stability again. Our production team is incredible, we are fully staffed for the first time in a long time. So the focus is now on growth and sales.
We are pushing on all channels now, and we’ve seen a tremendous increase in customer orders. We hope over time that just keeps building and we have our biggest Q4 ever!
My advice for everyone starting out is to act. There are way too many entrepreneurs waiting for something to happen. Nothing is going to happen on it’s own.
Be on the lookout for opportunities, put yourself in as many positions to find those opportunities and when something comes along you go for it.
Keep your eyes open, keep moving forward, don’t wait.
Check out our site! matboardandmore.com, and I’m available by email if you’d like to reach out, mkajbaf@matboardandmore.com
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