Meet Mehdi Kajbaf of Matboard and More

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mehdi Kajbaf. Him and his team share his story with us below.

Please kick things off for us with some background on the story.
Matboard and More™ is the story of three brothers who came together to build a family business that has come to be the fastest growing e-commerce site in the custom matting and framing industry. Reza and Mehdi are brothers by blood, Mohammad is their brother by marriage. Together, they’ve made the previously tedious and expensive process of getting your art framed, fun and easy. Within minutes you can get the exact matboard and frame combo for whatever you are trying to frame, with no limits on size, color and quantity.

Mohammad has plied his trade in the matting and framing industry for decades. Reza is a computer science wiz from the University of Waterloo, and his younger brother Mehdi is also a University of Waterloo Alumni and MBA. As the years went by, Reza continued his professional career as a web developer while also working on several ventures in the framing and matting industry with Mohammad. The combination of technical savvy and deep industry knowledge worked well, but true success was always just out of reach.

In 2011, after many failed ideas Mohammad and Reza came up with the concept for Matboard and More™. There was an epidemic of people with art that wouldn’t fit in any standard frame, and getting custom matting done cost more than people were willing to spend. Artists could only display their art in very standard and simple matboards, constraining their creativity.

Existing businesses were not able to do custom sizes in a user-friendly manner, particularly with the flexibility and agility required to serve individual customers as well as wholesalers. Furthermore, websites in the industry were using antiquated technology; the custom framing and matting business had shown little desire to move into the new millennium.

And so began the process of making Matboard and More™ a reality. With Reza’s development skills and his brother-in-law’s insider knowledge, Matboard and More™ was born. Their excitement, however, was soon muted by a distinct lack of initial success, similar to previous projects. It became painfully apparent that technical know-how and industry experience alone would not get the job done.

The business needed a third partner to push the business forward, and luckily Mehdi was no longer too young and inexperienced to get involved in the two brothers venture.

Mehdi, an Electrical Engineering and Schulich School of Business MBA graduate, provided the combination of fresh perspective and a keen business sense to take charge of business development and marketing. Matboard and More™ quickly saw a boost in sales and a growing customer base.

The three pillars of success, Technology, Operations, and Marketing were now ready to support the growth of what was to become the leading e-commerce solution in the picture framing industry.

Has it been a smooth road?
I feel extremely fortunate with the path we’ve taken to reach our success. I think we’ve had a smooth road compared to the horror stories I have heard from many other startups, but of course, there have been struggles.

Having three partners who come completely different backgrounds creates incredible diversity and creativity, but balancing that with ensuring we are aligned and working in the same direction is a continuous challenge.

The challenges also change as you go through the different phases of growth. In the beginning, our challenge was simply getting the first order, then their pains with production capacity, learning how to manage the influx of customer requests, maintaining and improving the website.

At every point we had struggles, but we were able to persevere. I think like with any business, the majority of struggles are human struggles of working together, communicating, staying motivated and creating a positive work culture that keeps the business moving along.

We’d love to hear more about what you do.
Our goal was to make displaying and protecting your art easy, economical and fun and for tens of thousands of people, we’ve made that a reality. Our business is a new take on one of the oldest industries in human existence, picture framing. There have been many innovations in framing over the centuries, but at the end of the day, they are variations on the same thing, protecting and displaying your artwork.

What was missing and difficult? Well, the biggest contribution we made was making it incredibly simple to customize your order for any sized artwork, providing hundreds of colors and putting it all online. Before Matboard and More, if you had a couple of old photos that were in odd shapes and sizes, you would have to either spend a lot at a local frame shop or get very creative with a big do it yourself project.

With Matboard and More, it doesn’t matter if you have a single 5 x 15″ odd piece of art or hundreds of photos for an art show to frame. You can order everything you need with just a few clicks from our website, and the product will be shipped in a couple of days.

You can choose from over a hundred colors of mats and frames. You can get the mat board only if you have your own frame, choose the kind of plexiglass and backing you want. Complete customization at your fingertips, and with our new site launch, now it’s easier than ever. We’ve made the whole site mobile friendly and added many features to make it even easier. We’ve also done a lot of innovation behind the scenes that allow us to be very efficient in our production and customer management capabilities.

I’m most proud of the over tens of thousands of happy customers that daily let us know how happy they are to finally have found a business like ours. In the early days, I would answer every phone call and e-mail, and it was so pleasing to hear from customers who had struggled for a long time finding a good way to get their artwork framed and hung, but now have their memories captured and displayed at their home or place of work.

I’m also proud of the thousands of artists that we’ve helped grow their business. At art shows across the country, you will see Matboard and more products used to enhance the artwork. Finally, being an entrepreneur means you create value not only for yourself and your family but all of the people who you employ. We’ve created amazing jobs for many people, allowing them to buy homes, raise families and live life happily.

Matboard and More has contributed to America in many meaningful ways, and I’m very proud of our team and myself for being a part of the journey.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Marietta has been the perfect place for us to start our business.

First, we are geographically located very well for shipping. We can reach almost anywhere on the East coast in a couple of days including huge markets in Florida and New York. The West Coast is not that far either, and being a travel and shipping hub makes the whole country accessible.

Secondly, Marietta has amazing facilities at fair prices. We have had to move our production facilities a few times as we’ve grown and each time we’ve been able to find really good places. We have an abundance of land, and we can continue growing here.

Finally, there are great people living here, and we’ve been fortunate to have a great team working at our production facility. Being an e-commerce business, we could have our production almost anywhere, but I wouldn’t trade Marietta for anywhere.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.matboardandmore.com
• Phone: 6786886287
• Email: info@matboardandmore.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matboardandmore/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MatboardandMore
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/matboardandmore/

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