FUTURE SHOP A SHREWD MOVE
Chain’s founder fled Iran when shah toppled in 1979
Hassan Khosrowshahi had the proverbial curse — or maybe it was, ultimately, the good fortune — to be born into “interesting times.” He was born just as the reigning monarchy of Iran was toppled. A year later, its prime minister was assassinated. His successor nationalized Iran’s oilfields, annoying the great powers, which ousted him in a CIA-orchestrated coup. The monarchy returned. It was overthrown by ultraconservative theocrats who still hold power.
Khosrowshahi was born in 1940 into a prosperous merchant family. He was educated in England and Iran, where he took his degree in law and economics from the University of Tehran.
His father, Ali Khosrowshahi, had assembled the Minoo Industrial Group, a major industrial manufacturing firm specializing in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food distribution.
He joined the family business in 1961 and married a woman from another privileged family. She served on the boards of leading corporations, including Minoo. But in 1979, when the revolutionaries overthrew the shah and installed a strict Muslim theocracy,
Minoo Industrial Group was nationalized. Khosrowshahi and his wife Nezhat fled.
They settled in Vancouver in 1981 and founded the Inwest Group of Companies.
Inwest launched Future Shop, a big-box electronics retailer, in 1982. It proved monumentally shrewd. Future Shop went from three stores in B.C. to 38 across Canada. By 1996, it was the leading computer and consumer electron- ics retailer in the country and had annual sales exceeding $2 billion. The company was sold for $580 million in 2001. Khosrowshahi focused on real estate development, pharmaceuticals, investments and philanthropy, as well as contributing to civic life.
He has served as a director of the Bank of Canada, of Canada Post, been an executive committee member of the Business Council of B.C., has chaired and is a member of the board of trustees at the Fraser Institute.
But there has been political controversy too. B.C.’s Liberal government was accused by the opposition of selling land in Coquitlam to Khosrowshahi’s development company — he has been a top donor to the Liberal party — for less than assessed value.
Khosrowshahi is a benefactor of social services organizations, the arts, museums, educational institutions, medical research agencies and hospitals. Both Hassan and Nezhat won the Mayor’s Arts Award for Philanthropy. He is a member of the Order of Canada, the Order of B.C. in 2012, and has been inducted into the Business Laureates of B.C. Hall of Fame.