What Happens When the Business Wins but the Founder Loses
There are conversations that don’t fit neatly into the usual Add To Cart format of growth tactics, channel mix, and customer acquisition strategies. This is one of them. And it’s probably one of the most important ones we’ve published.
Grant Arnott founded Power Retail in 2010 and launched Click Frenzy in 2012. For over a decade, those two businesses shaped the way Australian ecommerce ran: the industry intelligence, the major shopping events, the annual All-Star Bash. If you’ve worked in Australian ecommerce at any point in the last fifteen years, Grant’s work has touched your career in some way.
In March 2026, Click Frenzy and Power Retail went into receivership. Six months before that, the New Zealand Grab One business went into liquidation. Grant came back on Add To Cart to tell the full story, publicly and without a PR filter. It’s about debt, private equity, what the inside of financial collapse actually feels like, and what it does to a person when they can’t see a way out.
The Decision That Changed Everything
Click Frenzy was making money. Good money. Grant was turning over comfortably over a million dollars a year, the business was cashflow positive, and it had a genuine runway ahead of it. By his own account, there was no pressing commercial reason to bring in outside capital. The private equity conversation started more as discovery than necessity.
“It was really about, okay, well, we’ve been past the startup, scrappy startup mode… we were actually established.”
The deal happened. New executives came in. A new board. A new strategic direction built around aggressive growth and an eventual IPO. And in late 2021, to fuel that growth, the business acquired Grab One in New Zealand, taking on significant debt to do it.
“As soon as we made that decision, it just moved us into a very changed position.”
What followed was the slow unravelling of a business that had spent twelve years doing things the right way. The Grab One integration was harder than anyone had modelled. The IPO didn’t happen. COVID hit and changed the ecommerce landscape in ways that didn’t benefit Click Frenzy the way it benefited pure-play retailers. The travel category evaporated. Marketing budgets were cut to manage debt. And once you cut marketing in a business whose core model is demand generation, the downward spiral starts very fast.
“Everything felt futile because if we’re up, it’s like, great, what does that mean? Okay, it might have bought another month of life. If we were down, okay, the end was coming faster.”
Grant’s advice to anyone considering private equity is measured and honest: ask yourself whether you actually need it, whether you live in the same universe as the people you’re taking money from, and whether their definition of a good outcome matches yours. He’s not writing a blanket condemnation of private equity. He’s clear that it works for plenty of businesses. But he is clear that for Click Frenzy, it was unnecessary and ultimately catastrophic.
“If they’re probably more likely to be interested in you because you don’t need them than because you do need them… they want to back winners.”
.A $200,000 mistake for a bootstrapped founder can be an existential crisis. For a private equity firm running a portfolio of bets across multiple businesses, the same mistake barely registers. If your business becomes that flat bet, you feel it in a way they don’t.
Running a Business When There’s No Way Out
The last three years of running Click Frenzy and Power Retail were, by Grant’s account, three years of knowing the outcome was inevitable. He was re-appointed as CEO after the previous CEO stepped down, attempting to stabilise a cost base that had ballooned under the growth-at-all-costs strategy. But the debt was too large. Interest was consuming cash that should have been going into marketing and people, the two things that had always been the engine of the business.
Grant still turned up. He still ran the All-Star Bash. He still ran the Power Retail retail media events. He was still smiling and waving at an industry that had enormous affection for him.
“Look, I didn’t want to be there this year. No, I didn’t want to be there last year. That’s how sad I was.”
His team gave him a reason to keep going. He talks about transparency as a key part of leadership through that period, and the office as a genuinely happy place even when everything outside it was crushing him. But the personal weight of it was severe in ways that went well beyond commercial stress.
When Business Shame Becomes Something More Serious
This is the part of the episode that matters most, and it takes some courage for Grant to say it plainly.
At the lowest point, Grant was seriously contemplating taking his own life. He had a large insurance policy. He lived on a main road. He was doing the maths on how long it would take his wife and stepchildren to recover, and convincing himself they’d be financially better off without him. He describes it as calculated rather than impulsive, which in some ways makes it harder to hear.
“I knew I was in serious trouble. I knew it was going to happen. So I went to a psychologist.”
The psychologist confirmed what Grant already knew: he was high risk, and he needed care. He went through several months of sessions. What helped him through it, alongside the professional support, was a trip to New Zealand to meet the Grab One team. Staff who’d never met him but were hungry for leadership. Being needed by people who were counting on him gave him something to hold onto.
The board situation changed in early 2023 when four directors resigned. From a business perspective, that accelerated the end. From a mental health perspective, Grant says it was a turning point: the immediate weight lifted, the compulsion passed, and his psychologist noted the difference.
Grant was also named Industry Person of the Year at the ORIAs during this period. Standing ovation from a room full of people who respected everything he’d built. And privately, he was barely holding on. The gap between external recognition and internal experience is one worth sitting with, especially in an industry that places enormous weight on visible success.
He made the decision to separate his sense of self-worth from the commercial outcome, and he’s clear that it became a deliberate strategy rather than something that happened naturally. He’s proud of what he built. He’s proud of his contribution to Australian ecommerce. He is not ashamed of what happened to the business, even if the personal cost was immense.
“I am immensely proud of the contribution that I’ve had to this industry and it only makes me more motivated and more excited and more determined to get some more runs on the ball.”
What’s Next
Click Frenzy and Power Retail have been acquired. Grant says the buyers, who he’s known since 2013, are the right people for it. He’s happy the brands have a future, even if his chapter with them is closed. He has some notes on the rebrand, delivered with characteristic good humour.
For himself, he’s back to what he’s always been good at: building from scratch. Business content, media, connecting buyers with vendors. He’s spending time in the AI tools available to founders right now and is energised by what’s possible with a lean starting point. He’s not buying businesses this time. He’s building one.
“I’m a builder, not a shopper.”
The hero’s journey, as Nathan pointed out in the episode, has a second act. The struggle in the middle is what makes the ending worth anything. Grant is in the part between the struggle and the comeback, which is honestly where the most interesting stories come from.
If You’re Going Through Something Similar
Grant mentions seeing a psychologist as the best money he ever spent. If anything in this episode resonates with where you are right now, that’s the most important thing right now..
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Based on the Add To Cart podcast Ep #626 with Grant Arnott, founder of Click Frenzy and Power Retail. Join the Add To Cart community for free.
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