How One of Vancouver’s Own Became Canada’s E-Commerce King

Few people in Vancouver have not heard of Clearly Contacts or Shoes.com. Coastal Contacts, the parent company of Clearly Contacts was sold in February 2014 for $430 million. Shoes.com was valued at $320 million in 2015. Roger Hardy, the founder of Clearly Contacts and co-founder of Shoes.com, plays squash with my dad, and I occasionally run into him on the court. Although he is a very successful businessman and has been named “Canada’s E-commerce King”, he has also had his share of difficulties, most recently when it was announced in January of this year that Shoes.com would shut down and will be filing for bankruptcy.

But you can bet that this set-back is not going to stop Roger for long. To quote Chip Wilson: “Roger is a builder. He has the ability to see where the world is shifting, four, five, six years out. He can see the future—and he’s building something now for then.” He’s constantly eyeing the future when he invests up to $5 million every year in up and coming companies that grow more than 100% annually with $10 – $20 million in annual sales.

After Roger graduated from Bishop’s University, he moved to Whistler where he spent a year skiing. Always a competitive athlete, it was this competitive spirit that pushed Roger to succeed in the online world where many before him with similar dreams had failed. From an early age, his passion for business was fuelled. Starting with selling t-shirts at Bishop’s, he then moved on to get his first job with Loomis Courier where he would bring his clients boxes of donuts in an effort to encourage conversation and build rapport. His motivation was twofold: Loomis sales people from across the country were ranked on weekly sales, Roger not only enjoyed the competition of aiming to be the top salesperson at Loomis, he also learned a lot from talking to his clients about their businesses, thereby gathering enough research to build the foundation for his own empire.

Hardy went on to work at Wesley Jessen VisionCare Inc. in logistics, where he observed and learned enough to form his idea for Clearly Contacts. Later on, Hardy invested with a fellow squash player and let him take the lead on building Shoes.com.

As Thao Atkinson explains in her blog post Is it worth it?, “Expectancy theory shows that the higher rewards associated with a more difficult task does not necessarily peak one’s’ interest unless it is considerably valuable to the person who wants the reward.” Roger highly valued his investments and worked hard to achieve his ambitious goals and it has certainly paid off. As in every business, sometimes you win, as Roger did with Clearly Contacts, and sometimes you learn, as he no doubt recently did with Shoes.com. Given Roger’s track record and business acumen, it’s only a matter of time, before Hardy’s next business venture emerges.