Keir Reynolds (Mezzi.com photo)

Mezzi Holdings Inc. Chairman, CEO and Director, Keir Reynolds (Mezzi.com photo)

There’s a new venture deal that just went public in Canada that we expect to receive significant attention. It’s being coined a “smart luxury” fashion play and is called Mezzi Holdings Inc. The promoter/CEO is Keir Reynolds, no stranger to CEO.ca readers.

We share our experience with Keir in the following article, as he tells us the story of his new company.

Authentic @StockPromoter

The CEO of Mezzi Canada is 35 year old Vancouver, Canada venture investor and stock promoter Keir Reynolds.

Keir’s a second generation financial professional. He briefly joined his father at a big bank after university, but found the environment not dynamic enough. Instead, Keir became an investor relations professional for mining, energy and technology companies.

He took to it naturally, earning a reputation for effectively promoting a stock to both retail and institutional audiences. He was involved in some quality natural resource promotions including Realm Energy (bought out in 2011) and Newstrike Capital (always a popular name for buyout speculation).

I first met Reynolds in 2010 when he was using the Twitter handle @StockPromoter. He was unashamed of the moniker, and told me that embracing the role made him more effective. Keir looked the part, too: pin stripe suits and pocket squares. He reminded me of what Howe Street must have been like in the good old days.

Beyond his colourful appearance, I found Keir to be a man of ideas and action. In the Summer of 2011 he came to me with a TV show idea called StockMash. In the show, two promoters would pitch venture stocks head-to-head, and the audience would vote on their favorite. Reynolds thought it would be entertaining and great promotion for the companies, and also valuable information for speculative investors.

After some early brainstorming, I was reluctant to finance the idea but Keir pushed on and turned it into a crowdsourcing technology for investors. A few months later he sold the concept to a larger firm for a 6X return on his invested capital in under a year.

This would not be the last time I missed an opportunity to make money with Keir.

A year later, in the summer of 2012, Keir and I met for coffee in Vancouver. He told me he thought the mining meltdown was still in early innings and that it would be much longer and more devastating than others expected. He wanted to diversify beyond just the resource space and get more into technology.

Keir had an idea to create a publicly traded venture capital incubator, LX Ventures. He offered me a piece of a $0.10 financing and even suggested I come and work for the deal and join the board, which I declined, believing that technology venture capital should best be left to private VC’s.

The last laugh was Keir’s in December 2013 as LX-Ventures was one of the most actively traded stocks on the TSX Venture Exchange, trading more than $100 million dollars worth of stock in under 4 months and hitting nearly $1 per share.

At LX, Keir recruited an experienced tech CEO in Mike Edwards. Edwards took over the social media fanbase monetization app, Mobio, and Reynolds helped bring in a steady stream of celebrity endorsers, from Cristiano Ronaldo to Kim Kardashian. As Mobio launched, the stock soared. It was an easy pitch to understand: monetizing the social media streams of online influencers. He would ask celebrities how much revenue they were receiving from their online content creation. The answer was often none.

Unfortunately, Reynolds and Edwards did not see eye-to-eye. Keir left the company abruptly in early 2014, and the stock has since sunk to under $0.10 per share, proof of what an asset he was to the company.

Keir, what happened to LX, and what do you say to the investors that bought it for $1.00?

Tommy, great question to lead off with. It’s an important one and I suspect a lot of people would like to know just what happened. LX was both the best and worst deal all wrapped up into one for me. I have a lot of respect for Mike but do wish I had been more forceful to stop some of the decisions that were made. He was a bit out of his comfort zone in the public markets and was faced with many differing opinions about how to operate the company. To this day, I regret not standing up, saying no and taking more control of the situation. I’ve never had the tiger by the tail so strongly only to lose hold of it so quickly. I left because I had been tuned out by those that felt they knew better. I’m sorry for investors. They deserved better. I was hopeful that with the distraction of me gone, the company might better find their way. I was wrong. I still believe in the original concept of what Mobio was but believe far better software development and executives with a deeper knowledge of mobile advertising are keys to making it work. At the end, I was sure raked through the coals for leaving. A lot of blame was pushed my way. I was a traitor in many people’s eyes. It comes with the territory. However, I felt I had exhausted every possibility to force change and leaving was my final protest. I’m still happy that I had the original vision and was an early mover in the resurgence of tech in the public venture capital arena. I wasn’t wrong and now it seems that every investor and broker is open to the sector.

Turning to Mezzi, what is it, and why should investors care?

Mezzi smart luxury briefcase (Mezzi.com)

Mezzi's "smart-luxury" men's briefcase, made in USA (Mezzi.com)

Mezzi is my next vision. A vision of where the wearables sector is going. The internet of things. In my mind, the ultimate wearable is a woman’s handbag. When I was a young child my mother’s handbags always carried around goodies to make the day go by better. She seemed to have an endless supply of sweets and toys to keep me occupied. In revisiting this theme as an adult, Mezzi is really at the fast approaching intersection of high fashion meets smart technology. Beautiful form meeting convenient function. The problem with the multibillion dollar wearable sector is that most wearables well, look like a piece of geek tech. A calculator watch from the 80’s looks better than many attempts. With Mezzi the goal is to make wearables that are extremely functional yet do not compromise on fashion and style. Allowing a Mezzi customer to carry around all the electronics now in our lives: laptops, tablets and ever increasing in size phones in a handbag, briefcase or carry-on that looks as stylish as a vintage designer handbag.

We’re also allowing for a completely new user experience for our customers by connecting their smartphone to their luxury leather goods for the first time. Our Mezzi App, launching in the coming weeks, showcases a new type of GPS locating technology that works through crowd-sourcing. It’s very cool stuff and will eventually bring far better accuracy, precision and power efficiency to GPS technologies. This is just the first in our plans of integrating other features and functionality into our app and products in the coming future.

I can’t say enough about the team we’ve assembled. They’re really gelling and I’m lucky to work with each of them. Our designer is an absolute rock star. He’s charismatic as could be and has me drooling at the designs he conjures up.

Lastly, as far as the sector's health goes, there’s far more M&A events within the fashion and fashion accessories market each year than in the busiest of mining markets. People looked at me sideways the last go around. I see this one quite clear as well.

How long do you think it will take to play out?

We plan on having a very active news cycle. So, there should be both shorter term and longer term opportunities for investors. If a company doesn’t pride itself on keeping its shareholders loyal, then why be public at all? It’s a duty to display the ability to execute again and again, over and over. The next 12 months are shaping up to be amongst the busiest pace that I’ve ever had.

How to get more information?

Add MZI.v to your ticker list, get on our email list and buy yourself some smart luxury by visiting our website at mezzi.com. We have a promotion code for the first 25 readers of CEO.ca to get 25% off purchases made today by using: CEODOTCA25OFF

 

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to meet your specific individual investment needs and it is not tailored to your personal financial situation. Nothing contained herein constitutes, is intended, or deemed to be — either implied or otherwise — investment advice or a solicitation to purchase or sell securities or investments of any kind. The author is biased with regards to Mezzi Holdings, having a financial relationship with the predecessor company, CCT Capital. At the time of publishing, author owns shares in Mezzi Holdings, but that is subject to change in the future without further notice. This letter/article reflects the personal views and opinions of Tommy Humphreys and that is all it purports to be. While the information herein is believed to be accurate and reliable it is not guaranteed or implied to be so. The information herein may not be complete or correct; it is provided in good faith but without any legal responsibility or obligation to provide future updates. Neither Tommy Humphreys, nor anyone else, accepts any responsibility, or assumes any liability, whatsoever, for any direct, indirect or consequential loss arising from the use of the information in this letter/article. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice, may become outdated and may not be updated. The opinions are both time and market sensitive. Tommy Humphreys, entities that he controls, family, friends, employees, associates, and others may have positions in securities mentioned, or discussed, in this letter/article. While every attempt is made to avoid conflicts of interest, such conflicts do arise from time to time. Whenever a conflict of interest arises, every attempt is made to resolve such conflict in the best possible interest of all parties, but you should not assume that your interest would be placed ahead of anyone else’s interest in the event of a conflict of interest. Everything contained herein is subject to international copyright protection. Please see Mezzi Holdings web site for more information and important legal disclaimers at Mezzi.com.