Novir
126 N. Jefferson St., Suite 100, Milwaukee
Neighborhood: Third Ward
Founded: 2020
Owner: Alexander Kempe
Service: Health testing and screening for infections
How was Novir founded?
Peter Klug, vice president of business and program development: “We were born out of the (COVID-19) pandemic. Alexander Kempe is the founder, and I joined very early on. We were sort of commiserating at the beginning of the pandemic in March and April of 2020, saying, ‘Wow, this is crazy.’ … We thought testing was a great opportunity and something that we could contribute. There wasn’t enough access and availability for testing and certainly not enough thought about asymptomatic screening as a risk mitigation factor.”
What kind of services does Novir offer?
Klug: “(Right) now, we’re in about 350 schools between Wisconsin and Colorado and about 50 businesses. There’s a face-to-face offering, a do-it-yourself offering, and we also sell products wrapped around virtual proctoring. If you have to travel or woke up and aren’t sure whether or not you should go to work, you can have an at-home test, but you can’t document the results of an at-home test without some sort of health care professional watching you do it.”
Why did Novir move into a new location?
Klug: “We like the Third Ward. It’s got great proximity to the rest of the city. We do testing as far (west) as Madison, as far south as Racine and Kenosha, and as far north as Appleton and Green Bay. It’s nice to have a hub that’s in the center of the city. The reason we moved from the high-traffic part of the Third Ward to a little bit lower traffic area was so that we could get a bigger space and have good in-and-out access for clinical teams that work on-site.”
