Numi Organic Tea co-founder Ahmed Rahim reflects on his rebellious youth and experimentation with substances growing up in Cleveland.
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Starbucks acquiring Tazo drove independent coffee roasters to buy Numi instead.
“It was actually a great opportunity for us, because coffee roasters and the food service didn't want to support necessarily Starbucks, so they wanted who's the new kid on the block, and Numi was a great fit, so we actually were able to take advantage of that o…”
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Numi Tea Financed Its Launch With a $250K Line of Credit on Dad's Home
“We went to our dad and asked him if he would use the leverage of his house to get a loan. So we partnered with a bank in Cleveland and he refinanced his home and he had a line of credit on his home up To X amount, but we just started with a 250,000 dollar line…”
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Numi hit $4.5 million in revenue by year four on $2,000 salaries.
“Yeah, we were already probably north of four and a half million by year four, and we were probably taking two to 3000 a month of salary.”
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Hain Celestial made a firm acquisition offer to purchase Numi Tea.
“Yeah, they did make a hard offer.”
Disclosure
Numi tapped a $1 million credit line on their father's house.
“We just had this working line capital from the bank on our dad's house, which by then increased to almost a million dollars.”
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Numi's revenue flatlined during the Great Recession after hitting $20 million.
“There were years we were growing 40, 60, 70%, but at this time, as we were maturing a little bit, and we were probably north of 20,000,015, twenty million, those kind of growths became a lot more challenging. Then, well, there was the 2009, 10 recession. Where…”