Ross Paquette’s online platform Maropost expands with Neto and Retail Express purchases

The inside story on how an online Covid friendship between the Canadian owner of a $3bn tech company and an Australian entrepreneur sparked the sale of two Queensland tech start ups.

Maropost founder and CEO Ross Paquette in Brisbane. Picture: David Clark

IT was in the cold of Sweden hunkering down at the start of the Covid storm when Canadian entrepreneur Ross Paquette was told of the opportunities in sunny Queensland.

The founder and chief executive of North America’s fastest growing marketing automation platform Maropost — now valued at $US2.3bn ($3.23bn) — wanted to create an all-in-one commerce platform for his already successful business.

Then he found his online “Covid buddy” — serial Australian entrepreneur Carl Hartmann.

“When Covid hit, my wife is Swedish so we made it over to Sweden,” Mr Paquette said.

“A friend — another tech founder — introduced me to another gentleman (Carl Hartmann) who had tech companies and other businesses in Queensland. So we connected and became Covid friends.

“Carl said there were great companies there so we bought two of them 12 months apart.”

Maropost founder and CEO Ross Paquette.

Maropost recently acquired Maroochydore-based Retail Express — a cloud-based retail management and point-of-sale system start-up — for a total consideration of more than $55m.

Last March, Maropost acquired Fortitude Valley-based global award-winning e-commerce platform, Neto – now called Maropost Commerce Cloud — for about $60m.

The acquisitions have created a unified platform for Maropost that empowers commerce merchants to manage their core tech stack in one place instead of using a variety of different software.

Sunshine Coast-based Mr Hartmann, who co-founded logistics software business Temando and recruitment software company Compono, and expects his latest venture Lyre’s Non-Alcoholic Spirit Co to crack the $1bn valuation target this year, said he had built a good relationship with Mr Paquette during Covid.

“Ross has built a really profitable business and invested in both Compono and Lyre’s and that’s where we built a relationship,” he said.

“I learned about his business and he asked me to join his global board. I saw Maropost was a really well run and profitable business and he was looking to diversify and build up a more end-to-end commerce offering.

“Neto and Retail Express were companies which had great success at home, great founders but didn’t have capitalisation to reach their global potential … so it was fun to play the matchmaker on this one.”

Temando, Compono and Lyre’s Non-Alcoholic Spirit Co co-founder Carl Hartmann.

Mr Hartmann said their business relationship also solidified when they both invested in a number of the same Australian companies including Noosa biotech company Provectus Algae.

“I only met Ross in the flesh last Sunday (January 30) after the international borders opened up. We’ve spoken so much over the last couple of years we pretty much took up from where we left off. That’s the world we live in I guess,” he said.

A former professional skier and elite rower, Mr Paquette, 38, founded Maropost as a one-man operation 11 years ago and its annual recurring revenue is expected to be well over $US100m ($140m).

Headquartered in Toronto, Maropost currently employs 350 people in Canada, Australia, India, the US and is expanding into Europe.

Mr Paquette said at this stage after buying Neto and Retail Express they were not seeking more acquisitions having built their major unified platform.

“It was a fast and furious approach to acquire the companies and merge everything together as soon as possible and move forward,” he said.

“Now we can do both retail and online and our customers can grow with us which is something that no one else is doing on the market today, even remotely close to it.”

Both companies delivered strong synergies with Maropost’s marketing automation platform which converts prospects into clients through the delivery of targeted messages to the right contacts at the right time.

Neto helps retailers and wholesalers reduce the complexity of running and scaling their businesses by centralising channel product data, inventory and sales orders, while streamlining the fulfilment of orders at scale.

Retail Express was founded 15 years ago and is the Australian and New Zealand leader in POS (point of sale) for mid-market and enterprise retail brands. As well as POS its advanced cloud retail management platform caters for inventory management, order fulfilment and superior reporting.

Under founder and chief executive Aaron Blackman the company supports more than 5200 retailers including Forty Winks, Early Settler and Nutrition Warehouse. Over that time it has processed more than $50bn in transactions.

Retail Express CEO Aaron Blackman.

While Neto has been merged within Maropost, Retail Express will continue under its own identity.

“Aaron Blackman is a phenomenal individual. It was important to find like-minded individuals which was a major draw to the business as well,” Mr Paquette said.

“We’re extremely excited to work with the experts at Retail Express. There are incredible synergies between our companies from the customer, technology and philosophical perspectives.”

Mr Paquette said Australian software developers and companies were world class.

“There’s a major entrepreneurial spirit in Australia, certainly when you are talking about the retail side,” he said.

“When you look at the technology approach there is certainly a significant amount of innovation happening and you only have to look at Atlassian and Afterpay which have become major global players.”