A Dragons' Den appearance, kept under wraps
Nunorm is co-owned by Meryl Baker and her husband Michael Baker. Their episode of Dragons' Den airs the week after the announcement, and Baker was mum on whether they secured investment from the show. Whatever happened on set, the couple is now also looking at outside investment separately from that appearance.
The numbers behind the pitch
Baker says Nunorm did about $2 million in revenue last year and is targeting $3 to $4 million this year. The company reports a 15 per cent net profit margin, which Baker called "really great." Nunorm isn't new to raising outside money either: the brand previously raised $90,000 through a Kickstarter campaign to get off the ground.
What the investment would fund
Baker said the outside investment being sought would go toward retail expansion, distribution and marketing, all of which requires capital to accelerate growth. Nunorm is currently distributed in eight markets across Asia, as well as across the U.S. and Canada, so the next round of investment would be about scaling that existing footprint rather than starting from scratch.
The Ottawa connection
Last year, Meryl Baker and her husband occupied the Stackt business accelerator pop-up in Ottawa's ByWard Market, giving the brand a physical presence in the city's downtown retail core. The couple has since relocated personally, now living in Vancouver, but Baker said their businesses will remain Ottawa-based. That means even as Nunorm looks outward for capital and expands into new markets, the company's roots and operations stay tied to the capital.
It's a pattern that's become familiar in Ottawa's small business and startup scene: founders build a brand locally, sometimes through hands-on retail experiments like the Stackt pop-up, then look beyond the city for the capital needed to scale nationally and internationally. Nunorm's jump from a $90,000 Kickstarter to roughly $2 million in annual revenue, and now a push toward $3 to $4 million, tracks that kind of growth curve.
For now, the specifics of any new investment, who it might come from and how much, haven't been announced. Baker's comments leave open whether the Dragons' Den appearance factors into that search or whether the company is pursuing investment through other channels entirely. What is clear is that Nunorm's ownership intends to keep growing the brand's international distribution while keeping its base in Ottawa, even as the Bakers themselves have moved across the country.
Ottawa's retail and startup community will likely be watching to see both how the Dragons' Den episode plays out next week and whether Nunorm lands the outside investment it's after to hit its revenue targets.
Sources: Ottawa Business Journal
