Ron Strider
Well-Known Member
Organa Brands can't be faulted for ambition: its goal is to be America's biggest and best cannabis company. The maker of vaping products and edibles posted top line sales of approximately $100 million in 2016 and says it sells a product every nine seconds. Its busy lab creates over 1 million grams of concentrated cannabis oil a year and it buys 10 tons of marijuana a year. Organa Brands is the only cannabis company with products on the market in 10 states, including at 1,200 dispensaries.
This privately owned company is focused on achieving market domination before big tobacco or alcohol companies muscle in, and they are staking out their territory aggressively. The company has achieved this success by working closely with dispensaries and creating a customer friendly product with slick, professional packaging.
In an industry where a slacker mentality is common, the company is run in the style of a tech startup. President Chris Driessen says he gets to the office most days at 7 a.m. -- job applicants who want to roll in at 11 and get stoned all day are not in the right place.
Its O.penVAPE products are the No. 1 seller at many dispensaries, beating out competitors like Evo Vapor. Over a 12-month period between May 2016 and April 2017, O.penVAPE sold $34 million worth of vape pens compared to runner-up Evolab, which sold $7.5 million, according to BDS Analytics. Of the top ten selling vape products, nine were from O.penVAPE, commanding a market share of 41.9%.
How has Organa achieved this? One key ingredient is canny marketing. Co-founder Jeremy Heidl said the company's advertising, sponsorships and promotions are designed to target customers where they are only two steps away from buying a product. Sponsoring a concert at Red Rocks in Denver might be splashy, but does it really get someone to buy a vape pen? Instead, Organa concentrates on things like pop-up displays at dispensaries and a rewards app for customers. The company educates bud tenders about its products and incentivizes these key dispensary workers to sell them.
Cannabis analyst and founder of New Cannabis Ventures Alan Brochstein is impressed with the evolution of Organa Brands from a pioneer in the vape pen industry into a company in multiple categories. "Organa Brands is about as close one can get to being a national brand, successfully navigating the many challenges of expanding across the country," he said, "and it is well positioned to capitalize on the growing popularity of cannabis extracts and derivative products."
Some may think that Organa Brands was just lucky to ride the green rush as Colorado legalized the recreational market. That wasn't the case. With O.penVAPE it had gone all in on cannabis oil and vape delivery at the beginning of the legalization era in Colorado. Vape sales started well and then dropped as unhappy consumers returned to flower, the traditional form of marijuana used for smoking in joints or pipes. This shift caused the company's founders to wonder if they had made the wrong choice. They really believed that consumers would choose vaping over smoking.
But consumers started to reverse course as the product improved. According to BDS Analytics, cannabis concentrate's market share grew from 7.8% to 9.8% from 2015 to 2016, while traditional marijuana flowers' market share fell 72.7% to 67.3% for the same time period. Convenience and discretion proved to be the turning point for many cannabis customers.
Recreational users found that with flower they couldn't light up anywhere they wanted. However, a vape pen could be tossed in a purse or shirt pocket. Consumers can take a puff outside a restaurant and no one knows if it is an e-cigarette or marijuana. Comedian and actress Sarah Silverman even walked the Oscar's red carpet happily puffing away on an O.penVAPE.
Heidl and Ralph Morgan, who had befriended each other years before as ski bums along with Driessen, went into business together in 2010. Heidl had run a construction company in Atlanta before he headed to Colorado to join in the legalization boom. He opened a dispensary and heard firsthand from his customers that the vape pens on the market were inconsistent and of poor quality, which is why sales dropped. He and Morgan, who owned Organa Labs, which he started with the aim of producing healthier cannabis products, talked about the problems with vape pens and Morgan believed he had a solution.
He opted for a method of cannabis extraction that didn't use butane, a common solvent used at the time. It was cheaper, but Morgan didn't like using butane in a product that cancer patients used. Morgan turned to Waters extraction machines, which use supercritical carbon dioxide to extract CBD oil. Chief Technology Officer and horticulture expert Chris McElvany now runs the lab, which they employs a number of PhDs.
The company had plans on being more than just a vape pen business in Colorado and that brought a new set of challenges. Expansion in the cannabis industry is a difficult puzzle to solve because of the many variations in state laws, but Organa Brands, the parent company, that owns O.penVAPE, has managed to unlock the code. It owns businesses in Colorado and California and licenses or has a minority stake in companies in another nine states, with seven more planned for 2017 and 2018.
In addition to O.penVAPE, Organa Brands also owns Bakked, a company that specializes in dabbing products, Magic Buzz, a cannabis beverage product, and gummies by District Edibles. It also has a separate company NCG that handles packaging and doesn't "touch the plant" at all, which helps with banking. The principals say they bootstrapped the company themselves and have grown it organically. "We said no to capital for years," said Driessen. "But we will close on our first round of funding in the third quarter."
Prior to joining Organa, Driessen worked in sales for Konica Minolta. Morgan and Heidl had been pressuring him to join and he finally did in 2014 as Director of Sales before being named President last July.
The company has 96 employees (250 if you count licensees) and according to Dreissen the company pays generous salaries with benefits that include healthcare and a 401K. He also said employee turnover is low and the percentage of female employees to men was an impressive 50%. Heidl, the chief operating officer and is on the road 200 days a year and on track to log 300,000 miles of travel by the end of the year. Public relations head Jackson Tilley said they take "work-ations" because they have little time for vacations.
"It's a monster undertaking to coexist in different states," said Driessen. "There are cultural differences and packaging differences." Organa Brands prides itself on its slick packaging, but in some states it all gets thrown out. For example, Connecticut insists on all white containers. Driessen was partly brought into the company to create a structure that could grow the business efficiently. He knew scaling up is one of the biggest challenges a company can face. The other co-founder Ralph Morgan is often called the moral compass by the other top executives and sets the company strategy.
O.penVAPE differentiates its cannabis oil by producing specific strains or creating its own hybrid formulas. They've opted to not go the direction of mood based vaping like some newer entrants that sell cannabis oil with names like "Relax" or "Hustle." They also do a brisk business in private labeling vape pens. For example, a farm or a dispensary could have O.penVAPE create a vape pen specific to their brand.
As a result of getting its products into 1,200 dispensaries, Organa Brands has created a tight distribution network and for a hefty price it will distribute other companies' products. Some in the cannabis industry disdain Organa's attempts to run its business like a mainstream corporation with plans to grow across the country. To the critics, Dreissen says, "I don't see how we're selling out. We still sell cannabis. It's still federally illegal. Besides, at a certain point you have to grow up as an industry and run a company professionally."
News Moderator: Ron Strider 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Meet Organa, The Company That Wants To Dominate The U.S. Cannabis Market
Author: Debra Borchardt
Contact: Contact Information
Photo Credit: Nam Y Huh
Website: {{meta.title}}
This privately owned company is focused on achieving market domination before big tobacco or alcohol companies muscle in, and they are staking out their territory aggressively. The company has achieved this success by working closely with dispensaries and creating a customer friendly product with slick, professional packaging.
In an industry where a slacker mentality is common, the company is run in the style of a tech startup. President Chris Driessen says he gets to the office most days at 7 a.m. -- job applicants who want to roll in at 11 and get stoned all day are not in the right place.
Its O.penVAPE products are the No. 1 seller at many dispensaries, beating out competitors like Evo Vapor. Over a 12-month period between May 2016 and April 2017, O.penVAPE sold $34 million worth of vape pens compared to runner-up Evolab, which sold $7.5 million, according to BDS Analytics. Of the top ten selling vape products, nine were from O.penVAPE, commanding a market share of 41.9%.
How has Organa achieved this? One key ingredient is canny marketing. Co-founder Jeremy Heidl said the company's advertising, sponsorships and promotions are designed to target customers where they are only two steps away from buying a product. Sponsoring a concert at Red Rocks in Denver might be splashy, but does it really get someone to buy a vape pen? Instead, Organa concentrates on things like pop-up displays at dispensaries and a rewards app for customers. The company educates bud tenders about its products and incentivizes these key dispensary workers to sell them.
Cannabis analyst and founder of New Cannabis Ventures Alan Brochstein is impressed with the evolution of Organa Brands from a pioneer in the vape pen industry into a company in multiple categories. "Organa Brands is about as close one can get to being a national brand, successfully navigating the many challenges of expanding across the country," he said, "and it is well positioned to capitalize on the growing popularity of cannabis extracts and derivative products."
Some may think that Organa Brands was just lucky to ride the green rush as Colorado legalized the recreational market. That wasn't the case. With O.penVAPE it had gone all in on cannabis oil and vape delivery at the beginning of the legalization era in Colorado. Vape sales started well and then dropped as unhappy consumers returned to flower, the traditional form of marijuana used for smoking in joints or pipes. This shift caused the company's founders to wonder if they had made the wrong choice. They really believed that consumers would choose vaping over smoking.
But consumers started to reverse course as the product improved. According to BDS Analytics, cannabis concentrate's market share grew from 7.8% to 9.8% from 2015 to 2016, while traditional marijuana flowers' market share fell 72.7% to 67.3% for the same time period. Convenience and discretion proved to be the turning point for many cannabis customers.
Recreational users found that with flower they couldn't light up anywhere they wanted. However, a vape pen could be tossed in a purse or shirt pocket. Consumers can take a puff outside a restaurant and no one knows if it is an e-cigarette or marijuana. Comedian and actress Sarah Silverman even walked the Oscar's red carpet happily puffing away on an O.penVAPE.
Heidl and Ralph Morgan, who had befriended each other years before as ski bums along with Driessen, went into business together in 2010. Heidl had run a construction company in Atlanta before he headed to Colorado to join in the legalization boom. He opened a dispensary and heard firsthand from his customers that the vape pens on the market were inconsistent and of poor quality, which is why sales dropped. He and Morgan, who owned Organa Labs, which he started with the aim of producing healthier cannabis products, talked about the problems with vape pens and Morgan believed he had a solution.
He opted for a method of cannabis extraction that didn't use butane, a common solvent used at the time. It was cheaper, but Morgan didn't like using butane in a product that cancer patients used. Morgan turned to Waters extraction machines, which use supercritical carbon dioxide to extract CBD oil. Chief Technology Officer and horticulture expert Chris McElvany now runs the lab, which they employs a number of PhDs.
The company had plans on being more than just a vape pen business in Colorado and that brought a new set of challenges. Expansion in the cannabis industry is a difficult puzzle to solve because of the many variations in state laws, but Organa Brands, the parent company, that owns O.penVAPE, has managed to unlock the code. It owns businesses in Colorado and California and licenses or has a minority stake in companies in another nine states, with seven more planned for 2017 and 2018.
In addition to O.penVAPE, Organa Brands also owns Bakked, a company that specializes in dabbing products, Magic Buzz, a cannabis beverage product, and gummies by District Edibles. It also has a separate company NCG that handles packaging and doesn't "touch the plant" at all, which helps with banking. The principals say they bootstrapped the company themselves and have grown it organically. "We said no to capital for years," said Driessen. "But we will close on our first round of funding in the third quarter."
Prior to joining Organa, Driessen worked in sales for Konica Minolta. Morgan and Heidl had been pressuring him to join and he finally did in 2014 as Director of Sales before being named President last July.
The company has 96 employees (250 if you count licensees) and according to Dreissen the company pays generous salaries with benefits that include healthcare and a 401K. He also said employee turnover is low and the percentage of female employees to men was an impressive 50%. Heidl, the chief operating officer and is on the road 200 days a year and on track to log 300,000 miles of travel by the end of the year. Public relations head Jackson Tilley said they take "work-ations" because they have little time for vacations.
"It's a monster undertaking to coexist in different states," said Driessen. "There are cultural differences and packaging differences." Organa Brands prides itself on its slick packaging, but in some states it all gets thrown out. For example, Connecticut insists on all white containers. Driessen was partly brought into the company to create a structure that could grow the business efficiently. He knew scaling up is one of the biggest challenges a company can face. The other co-founder Ralph Morgan is often called the moral compass by the other top executives and sets the company strategy.
O.penVAPE differentiates its cannabis oil by producing specific strains or creating its own hybrid formulas. They've opted to not go the direction of mood based vaping like some newer entrants that sell cannabis oil with names like "Relax" or "Hustle." They also do a brisk business in private labeling vape pens. For example, a farm or a dispensary could have O.penVAPE create a vape pen specific to their brand.
As a result of getting its products into 1,200 dispensaries, Organa Brands has created a tight distribution network and for a hefty price it will distribute other companies' products. Some in the cannabis industry disdain Organa's attempts to run its business like a mainstream corporation with plans to grow across the country. To the critics, Dreissen says, "I don't see how we're selling out. We still sell cannabis. It's still federally illegal. Besides, at a certain point you have to grow up as an industry and run a company professionally."
News Moderator: Ron Strider 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Meet Organa, The Company That Wants To Dominate The U.S. Cannabis Market
Author: Debra Borchardt
Contact: Contact Information
Photo Credit: Nam Y Huh
Website: {{meta.title}}
