by Herman Manson (@marklives) Paul Raphaely promises hot chocolate on a rather dreary morning at the NoMU offices in an industrial park somewhere near Cape Town International. It’s good stuff too, but the offices and factory floor are pretty spotless, which is disappointing after another editor promised me these guys could spend all day licking chocolate dust off their office desks, as she fully intended to do should they ever make her an impossible to say no to offer of employment.
The business is just starting to put a tough couple years behind it, says Raphaely, with the Great Recession and market instability in the US and Europe seeing exports collapse from 86% of its business 2010 to 14% today. It had lost 16 export markets after huge initial success in getting its products on international shelves in what Raphaely describes as ‘a helluva shock.’ At one stage NoMU was exporting to 38 international markets.
NoMU is owner managed by Raphaely and his business partner and wife Tracy Foulkes. Foulkes had run her own catering business back in 2000 and had started to develop products for a deli she wanted to open. Raphaely, then a brand manager at Seagram SA for Captain Morgan Dark Rum and Glen Grant Whisky, left his job to assist then girlfriend Foulkes in her new business.
NoMU of course sounds like ‘No-Moo’ – something Raphaely hoped would appeal to then vegetarian Foulkes as a brand name, and it evolved to ‘NoMOO’ and then ‘NoMU.’ Geddit? No meat = no cow = ‘No-Moo’(it’s their story and they are sticking to it).