Aurora - The place was a grease pit. Now look at it: Wall panels made of reclaimed pine beetle-kill wood. Empty glass cases ready to be filled. An ATM just delivered. And $100,000 worth of bulletproof windows, frosted to shield prying eyes from the product.
On the late November day before the opening of Medicine Man's second recreational marijuana store, Andy Williams is on the phone with a guy trying to sell him a sound system. Someone is always trying to sell him something.
He puts down the phone to welcome a would-be customer, the third to stop by in the last 15 minutes wanting to make a purchase.
The man is uninterested in the cut-rate deals available at the flagship store, in Denver, or waiting a day for the Aurora grand opening.
"It's a today thing," the guy says, shuffling out.
This is full circle, in a way, for the family behind a company that wants to be the Costco of weed, delivering high quality at low prices.
A year earlier, co-owners and brothers Andy and Pete Williams were rushing to convert their Denver medical marijuana operation into one that also sold recreational marijuana – essentially the same product at higher prices and taxes to a large number of out-of-state tourists.
That gambit succeeded beyond expectations. The Williams family's bet on their business plan, tolerance for risk and willingness to be open about their financial books and personal lives have paid off.
Nearly a year into the first legal recreational marijuana retail sales on the planet, Medicine Man is one of the names that is talked about when people talk about Colorado's grand experiment in legalization.
There have been ups and downs: For every five minutes of fame on national TV, an employee's bank account closed without explanation. For every new consulting gig, another stress-induced fainting spell.
Some dreams fast-tracked, others delayed.
Even as Andy prepared to open his new recreational store in a building that used to house a fast-food joint at a prime Aurora intersection, bigger things weighed on his mind.
He and his relatives are deep in negotiations to give up a majority stake in the company.
One of the pioneering families of Colorado pot is ready to sell out.
Unused for years
The abandoned truck stop north of Pueblo has a whiff of decay. On a mid-May morning, Andy Williams tours a broken-down building that has sat unused for years off Interstate 25.
He walks past the remains of a pie rack, a tipped-over miniature Christmas tree and a Gideon Bible open on a table.
The ceiling tiles are yellow and water-damaged. Up a staircase are 24 motel rooms and two suites, if bigger motel rooms can be called that.
"You can't see how it is," Andy says. "You have to see it for what it's going to be."
What Andy Williams sees is the Medicine Man Truck Stop, a bustling center of marijuana commerce with a recreational store, a motel crash pad for truckers and pot tourists, and possibly a new edibles-manufacturing arm operating out of the industrial kitchen.
If all goes as planned, Pueblo County will become Medicine Man's next flag in the ground in Colorado.
After opening Jan. 1 for recreational sales at its sole location in Denver, the Williams family is in the market for another.
It's a 20-minute drive from the truck stop to a 5-acre parcel with views of the Sangre de Cristo range. The location is top secret.
Andy is traveling with a prospective business partner, Len Toews, who found the land. Toews developed an expertise in high-tech tomato farming in Vancouver, B.C., and now he plans to bring the same principles to Colorado's new cash crop.
"I told them, 'Guys, where do we grow lilies and roses and greenhouse tomatoes and peppers?' " says Toews, who lives on a Weld County farm. " 'Do we grow them in a greenhouse or a warehouse?' We grow them in greenhouses, and there's a reason for that."
To Colorado pot entrepreneurs who have made a science out of growing indoors under lights, greenhouses are the future, a cheaper and greener vehicle for growing more and better marijuana plants.
With sunshine, cool nights and receptive politicians, Pueblo County is shaping up to be the marijuana belt of Colorado.
As of last month, an estimated 140,000 square feet had been dedicated to greenhouses, putting greenhouse cultivations on the cusp of overtaking warehouse grows there, county records show.
This site – empty but for scrub oak, yucca and grasshoppers – has it all, Toews explains: flat land and access to water and natural gas.
"I'm almost jumping-out-of-my-skin excited," he tells Andy.
All told, Medicine Man Farms and Truck Stop would employ 60 to 70 people. At the greenhouse site, there would be heavy security, armored cars transporting product daily to Denver and an outdoor fire pit for employee parties.
All did not go as planned.
As Medicine Man considered Pueblo County, the city of Aurora was laying the groundwork for recreational sales in Colorado's third-largest city.
It doesn't take a business degree to know which market is more lucrative. And by summer, Medicine Man was sitting on 7,000 pounds of excess marijuana after doubling the size of its grow warehouse in Denver.
Selling it wholesale is not as profitable and – as Andy points out – helps supply Medicine Man's competitors.
The business needed a second store.
Aurora would be the next frontier.
The truck stop idea was abandoned. The greenhouse was put on hold. Medicine Man is no longer working with Toews.
"He got impatient," Andy says, "which I understand."
Toews says he purchased the Pueblo County land and is moving forward with another partner on a wholesale greenhouse grow.
"I see (Medicine Man) as one of the top-tier companies in this thing, and we've always had a great relationship with those guys," Toews says. "It's just they are prioritizing and we need to keep going."
There were no guarantees in Aurora. The city said it would accept 21 recreational stores. Competition would be fierce to gain a toehold in a city that prohibits medical marijuana dispensaries. To even get consideration, Medicine Man would need to lock up property.
The Williamses hired three real estate agents to hunt for a location. None succeeded. So Andy and Sally Vander Meer – Medicine Man's controller and Pete and Andy's sister – started cold-calling property owners.
They reached one, the owner of a building that housed an Arby's, then a Mexican restaurant, at South Havana Street and East Jewell Avenue.
"I've told 30 of you guys no," the owner said, according to Andy.
But the owner admitted that he had been thinking about it. Andy says there was no doubt the limited liability company that, records show, bought the property last year was well-positioned to extract handsome terms.
"God bless him for wanting to make money," Andy says.
On the last possible day, Medicine Man signed a lease, beating out others vying for the property. Then it applied to the city.
"We thought, 'Are we being so cocky that we think we are going to get this license?' " Sally says. "What's our backup plan?' We had no backup plan."
In late August, Medicine Man learned it was among the chosen.
Andy says the company has since spent $650,000 on the property, including repairing the parking lot, replacing a sewer line, decking out the exterior in reclaimed barn wood and installing that bulletproof glass. The alternative was bars on the windows.
The glass is frosted for now – blinds are on order – because, under city rules, marijuana cannot be visible from the street.
"There are going to be 21 beautiful buildings in the city of Aurora," Andy says. "And they're all going to be selling marijuana."
Revenue projections
For running a company that looks to Costco as its model, you can't get much less corporate than disclosing revenue projections and sharing details about your divorce, hospitalizations due to stress-related fainting spells and family fights, as Andy has.
Tripp Keber, the owner of marijuana-infused products company Dixie Elixirs, said he admires the family bonds that hold Medicine Man together but can't believe they talk so much.
"It's his business," Keber said. "But on the front page of The Denver Post, you had your photographer taking pictures of duffel bags full of cash at their business. I have concern that someone is not knocking on that door but knocking that door down."
The Williamses had a goal in mind – to show the lengths marijuana companies must go to find banks willing to take their business.
After paying state taxes and contractors with cash over the past few months, Sally says Medicine Man is close to opening a new account with a banker in Pueblo willing to take the risk.
A willingness to bare all, financially and personally, has worked for Medicine Man, said Troy Dayton, CEO of the ArcView Group. Dayton's firm, which connects investors with marijuana startups, has spotlighted Medicine Man in materials touting the industry.
"I consider it to be a great asset, to be that vulnerable," Dayton said. "Especially for an industry that is coming out of the shadows and into the light, we need leaders who are really willing to be fully transparent."
Few Colorado marijuana companies court publicity as Medicine Man does. And no one is a bigger believer in the power of exposure than Pete Williams, a high school dropout turned master marijuana grower who dresses up like Willy Wonka to hand out joints at the Cannabis Cup.
Along with a role in the MSNBC series "Pot Barons," Medicine Man is to star in a planned reality show on the truTV cable network.
"Everyone else is hush-hush," Pete says. "We scream from the top of the building. That is what has gotten us called the biggest and the best. There may be people out there way bigger and way better than us. But they are being so secretive, they are going to miss the train when it comes."
The train may have arrived.
Three investment groups recently approached Medicine Man seeking to buy a majority stake. The Williamses settled on one – they won't say who is involved – and are closing in on a deal. Another investor expressed interest in a buyout earlier this year, but negotiations broke down.
The plan calls for Andy and Pete retaining minority ownership and staying on for at least a year to help shape the company.
"We are the biggest golden egg right now," Pete says. "If we don't sell, they'll buy our biggest competitor and put the power of that company behind our competitor and then we'll be outpaced. So it's a matter of you've got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them."
Some advisers, including Keber of Dixie Elixirs, believe the family should wait until the company is worth more.
"I don't need my company to be worth $1 billion before I sell it," Andy says. "I'm fine taking money that will supply me with a good living for the rest of my life. I don't need enough to last three or four lives."
Andy continues to build Medicine Man's consulting business, Medicine Man Technologies. The company has done work in Illinois, New York, Florida, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona. By summer, Andy plans to take the business public as an over-the-counter stock.
Selling the main business is attractive for a number of reasons. Andy and Pete would give up control but retain influence, at least initially. The greater investment would, in theory, drive production costs and customer prices down while keeping profits high.
There would be no more hustling for investments, no more mortgaging the future, not as many never-ending days and long nights. This would mark the beginning of a new chapter in Colorado's marijuana story – the original risk-takers giving way to deeper-pocketed investors who may or may not be of like mind.
"We really are pioneers," Sally says. "I knew that was true. But then you see the number of people reaching out to me as an expert in this area, and it's like, 'Wait a minute, I am an expert.' This is the great American industry, and we are at the forefront with a lot of cool people."
News Moderator: Shandar @ 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: Colorado Breaking News, Sports, Weather, Traffic, Jobs - The Denver Post
Author: Eric Gorski
Contact: Contact Us - The Denver Post
Website: Medicine Man in Denver opens new Aurora store and weighs selling out - The Denver Post
On the late November day before the opening of Medicine Man's second recreational marijuana store, Andy Williams is on the phone with a guy trying to sell him a sound system. Someone is always trying to sell him something.
He puts down the phone to welcome a would-be customer, the third to stop by in the last 15 minutes wanting to make a purchase.
The man is uninterested in the cut-rate deals available at the flagship store, in Denver, or waiting a day for the Aurora grand opening.
"It's a today thing," the guy says, shuffling out.
This is full circle, in a way, for the family behind a company that wants to be the Costco of weed, delivering high quality at low prices.
A year earlier, co-owners and brothers Andy and Pete Williams were rushing to convert their Denver medical marijuana operation into one that also sold recreational marijuana – essentially the same product at higher prices and taxes to a large number of out-of-state tourists.
That gambit succeeded beyond expectations. The Williams family's bet on their business plan, tolerance for risk and willingness to be open about their financial books and personal lives have paid off.
Nearly a year into the first legal recreational marijuana retail sales on the planet, Medicine Man is one of the names that is talked about when people talk about Colorado's grand experiment in legalization.
There have been ups and downs: For every five minutes of fame on national TV, an employee's bank account closed without explanation. For every new consulting gig, another stress-induced fainting spell.
Some dreams fast-tracked, others delayed.
Even as Andy prepared to open his new recreational store in a building that used to house a fast-food joint at a prime Aurora intersection, bigger things weighed on his mind.
He and his relatives are deep in negotiations to give up a majority stake in the company.
One of the pioneering families of Colorado pot is ready to sell out.
Unused for years
The abandoned truck stop north of Pueblo has a whiff of decay. On a mid-May morning, Andy Williams tours a broken-down building that has sat unused for years off Interstate 25.
He walks past the remains of a pie rack, a tipped-over miniature Christmas tree and a Gideon Bible open on a table.
The ceiling tiles are yellow and water-damaged. Up a staircase are 24 motel rooms and two suites, if bigger motel rooms can be called that.
"You can't see how it is," Andy says. "You have to see it for what it's going to be."
What Andy Williams sees is the Medicine Man Truck Stop, a bustling center of marijuana commerce with a recreational store, a motel crash pad for truckers and pot tourists, and possibly a new edibles-manufacturing arm operating out of the industrial kitchen.
If all goes as planned, Pueblo County will become Medicine Man's next flag in the ground in Colorado.
After opening Jan. 1 for recreational sales at its sole location in Denver, the Williams family is in the market for another.
It's a 20-minute drive from the truck stop to a 5-acre parcel with views of the Sangre de Cristo range. The location is top secret.
Andy is traveling with a prospective business partner, Len Toews, who found the land. Toews developed an expertise in high-tech tomato farming in Vancouver, B.C., and now he plans to bring the same principles to Colorado's new cash crop.
"I told them, 'Guys, where do we grow lilies and roses and greenhouse tomatoes and peppers?' " says Toews, who lives on a Weld County farm. " 'Do we grow them in a greenhouse or a warehouse?' We grow them in greenhouses, and there's a reason for that."
To Colorado pot entrepreneurs who have made a science out of growing indoors under lights, greenhouses are the future, a cheaper and greener vehicle for growing more and better marijuana plants.
With sunshine, cool nights and receptive politicians, Pueblo County is shaping up to be the marijuana belt of Colorado.
As of last month, an estimated 140,000 square feet had been dedicated to greenhouses, putting greenhouse cultivations on the cusp of overtaking warehouse grows there, county records show.
This site – empty but for scrub oak, yucca and grasshoppers – has it all, Toews explains: flat land and access to water and natural gas.
"I'm almost jumping-out-of-my-skin excited," he tells Andy.
All told, Medicine Man Farms and Truck Stop would employ 60 to 70 people. At the greenhouse site, there would be heavy security, armored cars transporting product daily to Denver and an outdoor fire pit for employee parties.
All did not go as planned.
As Medicine Man considered Pueblo County, the city of Aurora was laying the groundwork for recreational sales in Colorado's third-largest city.
It doesn't take a business degree to know which market is more lucrative. And by summer, Medicine Man was sitting on 7,000 pounds of excess marijuana after doubling the size of its grow warehouse in Denver.
Selling it wholesale is not as profitable and – as Andy points out – helps supply Medicine Man's competitors.
The business needed a second store.
Aurora would be the next frontier.
The truck stop idea was abandoned. The greenhouse was put on hold. Medicine Man is no longer working with Toews.
"He got impatient," Andy says, "which I understand."
Toews says he purchased the Pueblo County land and is moving forward with another partner on a wholesale greenhouse grow.
"I see (Medicine Man) as one of the top-tier companies in this thing, and we've always had a great relationship with those guys," Toews says. "It's just they are prioritizing and we need to keep going."
There were no guarantees in Aurora. The city said it would accept 21 recreational stores. Competition would be fierce to gain a toehold in a city that prohibits medical marijuana dispensaries. To even get consideration, Medicine Man would need to lock up property.
The Williamses hired three real estate agents to hunt for a location. None succeeded. So Andy and Sally Vander Meer – Medicine Man's controller and Pete and Andy's sister – started cold-calling property owners.
They reached one, the owner of a building that housed an Arby's, then a Mexican restaurant, at South Havana Street and East Jewell Avenue.
"I've told 30 of you guys no," the owner said, according to Andy.
But the owner admitted that he had been thinking about it. Andy says there was no doubt the limited liability company that, records show, bought the property last year was well-positioned to extract handsome terms.
"God bless him for wanting to make money," Andy says.
On the last possible day, Medicine Man signed a lease, beating out others vying for the property. Then it applied to the city.
"We thought, 'Are we being so cocky that we think we are going to get this license?' " Sally says. "What's our backup plan?' We had no backup plan."
In late August, Medicine Man learned it was among the chosen.
Andy says the company has since spent $650,000 on the property, including repairing the parking lot, replacing a sewer line, decking out the exterior in reclaimed barn wood and installing that bulletproof glass. The alternative was bars on the windows.
The glass is frosted for now – blinds are on order – because, under city rules, marijuana cannot be visible from the street.
"There are going to be 21 beautiful buildings in the city of Aurora," Andy says. "And they're all going to be selling marijuana."
Revenue projections
For running a company that looks to Costco as its model, you can't get much less corporate than disclosing revenue projections and sharing details about your divorce, hospitalizations due to stress-related fainting spells and family fights, as Andy has.
Tripp Keber, the owner of marijuana-infused products company Dixie Elixirs, said he admires the family bonds that hold Medicine Man together but can't believe they talk so much.
"It's his business," Keber said. "But on the front page of The Denver Post, you had your photographer taking pictures of duffel bags full of cash at their business. I have concern that someone is not knocking on that door but knocking that door down."
The Williamses had a goal in mind – to show the lengths marijuana companies must go to find banks willing to take their business.
After paying state taxes and contractors with cash over the past few months, Sally says Medicine Man is close to opening a new account with a banker in Pueblo willing to take the risk.
A willingness to bare all, financially and personally, has worked for Medicine Man, said Troy Dayton, CEO of the ArcView Group. Dayton's firm, which connects investors with marijuana startups, has spotlighted Medicine Man in materials touting the industry.
"I consider it to be a great asset, to be that vulnerable," Dayton said. "Especially for an industry that is coming out of the shadows and into the light, we need leaders who are really willing to be fully transparent."
Few Colorado marijuana companies court publicity as Medicine Man does. And no one is a bigger believer in the power of exposure than Pete Williams, a high school dropout turned master marijuana grower who dresses up like Willy Wonka to hand out joints at the Cannabis Cup.
Along with a role in the MSNBC series "Pot Barons," Medicine Man is to star in a planned reality show on the truTV cable network.
"Everyone else is hush-hush," Pete says. "We scream from the top of the building. That is what has gotten us called the biggest and the best. There may be people out there way bigger and way better than us. But they are being so secretive, they are going to miss the train when it comes."
The train may have arrived.
Three investment groups recently approached Medicine Man seeking to buy a majority stake. The Williamses settled on one – they won't say who is involved – and are closing in on a deal. Another investor expressed interest in a buyout earlier this year, but negotiations broke down.
The plan calls for Andy and Pete retaining minority ownership and staying on for at least a year to help shape the company.
"We are the biggest golden egg right now," Pete says. "If we don't sell, they'll buy our biggest competitor and put the power of that company behind our competitor and then we'll be outpaced. So it's a matter of you've got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them."
Some advisers, including Keber of Dixie Elixirs, believe the family should wait until the company is worth more.
"I don't need my company to be worth $1 billion before I sell it," Andy says. "I'm fine taking money that will supply me with a good living for the rest of my life. I don't need enough to last three or four lives."
Andy continues to build Medicine Man's consulting business, Medicine Man Technologies. The company has done work in Illinois, New York, Florida, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona. By summer, Andy plans to take the business public as an over-the-counter stock.
Selling the main business is attractive for a number of reasons. Andy and Pete would give up control but retain influence, at least initially. The greater investment would, in theory, drive production costs and customer prices down while keeping profits high.
There would be no more hustling for investments, no more mortgaging the future, not as many never-ending days and long nights. This would mark the beginning of a new chapter in Colorado's marijuana story – the original risk-takers giving way to deeper-pocketed investors who may or may not be of like mind.
"We really are pioneers," Sally says. "I knew that was true. But then you see the number of people reaching out to me as an expert in this area, and it's like, 'Wait a minute, I am an expert.' This is the great American industry, and we are at the forefront with a lot of cool people."
News Moderator: Shandar @ 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: Colorado Breaking News, Sports, Weather, Traffic, Jobs - The Denver Post
Author: Eric Gorski
Contact: Contact Us - The Denver Post
Website: Medicine Man in Denver opens new Aurora store and weighs selling out - The Denver Post
