Here’s a great Feature Story on Nutiva, as we prepare to move our HQ. From Ventura County Star.
Read the original article HERE.
Photo by Chuck Kirman, Photos by Chuck Kirman / Star staff
Nutiva, with its headquarters and warehouse in Santa Paula, has been a pioneer in getting hemp food products to consumers.
Now in its 11th year, the company has branched out into coconut and chia seed products and generated about $10.3 million in revenue during its most recent fiscal year, which ended in June. Its founder wants to reach $100 million in sales by 2015 and $1 billion by 2025.
As it moves toward those ambitious goals, Nutiva continues to expand its product offerings in retail stores and online and will move its headquarters and warehouse to a new 18,000-square-foot location in Oxnard next month to house a growing team of employees and pallets of products.
Selling hemp products has meant becoming an advocate and working to build a domestic hemp industry.
Wearing a shirt of hemp fabric, Nutiva founder and CEO John Roulac quickly sorted through a display of everything that can be done with hemp — from Nutiva’s food products to insulation for cars, pressboard for construction, even the random Frisbee made of hemp “plastic.”
“We’re not just selling a product, but also educating,” Roulac said.
Because of its relation to marijuana, industrial hemp has had a spotty reception in the United States, although the plant doesn’t have the narcotic qualities of its cousin.
Nutiva garnered a lot of press early in its existence. After government officials seized a shipment of Nutiva hemp bars from Canada in 1999, the company became a central figure in the push to get hemp food products on store shelves and keep them there.
“It’s changed a lot, but it has a long ways to go,” Roulac said of the current perception of hemp.
He shakes his head that medicinal marijuana can be grown in California, but industrial hemp is still illegal. [click to continue…]
{ 0 comments }
