Building a High Impact Social Enterprise over 20+ Years: Roberto Milk, CEO of NOVICA (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How did your numbers track of the money that you sent to artisans as you went along?

Roberto Milk: It took us 10 years to get to $25 million. It took us another four years to get to $50 million. We got to $50 million in June of 2014.

Sramana Mitra: What is that number at now?

Roberto Milk: We just passed $100 million.

Sramana Mitra: This Kiva discussion was wonderful because that’s a great strategic move. What else did you do?

Roberto Milk: We realized that we were selling a lot of goods on our website but our constraints at that point were not supply constraints. Artisans wanted to sell more. Our job was then to figure out how to sell as many items from artisans as we could.

We realized that there were partners who we worked with where there was an opportunity for us to create private label websites for them to sell their goods. UNICEF approached us. They had the original idea. They had a very creative director who helped us develop the idea. That’s when we created the UNICEF market.

Sramana Mitra: Can you elaborate on how that private label website would work?

Roberto Milk: The UNICEF market looks very much like NOVICA except that it has the colors and brand guide of UNICEF. It’s almost like a wrapper on top of the NOVICA store.

Sramana Mitra: The backend is exactly the same? They’re selling products from your artisans?

Roberto Milk: Yes, we power it. That was a big success in the US. We launched the UNICEF market in the UK and Canada. Now we’re launching in the EU. We then built out a Kiva store. All the artisans in the Kiva store are artisans that borrowed money from Kiva. A lot of times, entrepreneurs need the capital. Sometimes what they need the most are the sales. 

Sramana Mitra: From an emotional perspective, the people who are lending money get satisfaction out of being able to see that come full circle. 

Roberto Milk: Absolutely. It’s the perfect demographic. Then we started expanding with these private label stores. There were organizations that we wanted to find that are perfectly mission-aligned. NOVICA is perfect for UNICEF, for example. What are the other UNICEFs out there?

We talked to National Geographic. This is 2017 now. We met with their CEO and said, “We’re doing this for UNICEF and others. We should do it for you guys.” They had just been acquired by Fox. There was a major change. They came back to us and said, “This is all nice, but we’re not that interested in artisan goods. We’ll sell you this whole business if you guys are interested in doing it.”

We acquired National Geographic on the media front. It became a huge opportunity for us. 

Sramana Mitra: They licensed the brand to you?

Roberto Milk: Essentially that. We acquired their catalog group. Instead of doing that private label, we became that site. National Geographic then sold to Disney at the same time we were getting out. We were able to repurchase our shares from National Geographic. That acquisition took us to over $30 million in sales.

Sramana Mitra: If you split up the major revenue blocks, you have revenues from your own website. You have revenues from the National Geographic catalog. You have revenues from Kiva and UNICEF. Is there any other block like that?

Roberto Milk: Those are the major ones. It’s our website, our module sites, and the National Geographic catalog.

Sramana Mitra: How does the revenue split?

Roberto Milk: We don’t normally talk about that. The largest, by far, is our website.

Sramana Mitra: So $30 million in 2019?

Roberto Milk: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Anything else that warrants a discussion?

Roberto Milk: I think that’s it. It’s been a long run. If it was purely a traditional business, people would have become less engaged. It’s actually the opposite. The more impact that we do, the more engaged and committed we are. Especially, at this time when there’s a calling for businesses to play a greater role.

The original calling was to empower, impact, and preserve. Then we shifted from that core mission to spreading happiness. Our latest evolution is to build global unity. We found that we do that in so many ways when customers discover artists and the artists discover customers. Global unity is our calling.

When we think about the money sent to artists, we are really targeting a billion dollars sent to artists.

Sramana Mitra: I love what you’ve done and I wish you all the best.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Building a High Impact Social Enterprise over 20+ Years: Roberto Milk, CEO of NOVICA
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