As part of the process of trying to transform cannabis into a luxury good, we also needed to reimagine packaging to help shape consumer perception. Practically speaking, this meant eliminating anything like the Ziploc, dime bags I picked up as a teenager in Sheep’s Meadow and developing color-coded, magnetically-sealed, orange boxes with design inspiration from Chanel, Tiffany’s, Tori Burch, Louis Vuitton, and Hermes. Additionally, to improve usability and the product experience, we included rolling papers, crutches, matches, hemp wick, and a vellum welcome letter in each box set. Tying it all together, we developed the tagline, “The Art of Flower” and created aspirational, lifestyle trade ads using an Elle cover girl and an internationally renowned photographer.
No doubt, it is thousands of branding and operating decisions like these that have earned us a price premium of 25 percent above most other top-shelf flower in California. Call us the “Courvoisier of Cannabis.”
Like Starbucks redefined coffee, a commodity product, in the 1980s, team Canndescent similarly hopes to elevate the basic standard of service to ultra-premium and democratize access to “top shelf” product.
As more consumers trade in their glass of Chardonnay for 0-calorie, 0-headache, higher “buzz for the buck” cannabis flower, I suspect we’ll have a more than decent chance of sighting that unicorn sooner or later.
Commentary by Canndescent CEO Adrian Sedlin, a life-long entrepreneur who co-founded his first company at age 20. He has built and sold five companies. Sedlin resides in Santa Barbara with his wife and 3 children and earned his MBA from Harvard.
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Tune in to CNBC on Tuesday, August 8 at 10pm ET/PT for “The Profit: Marijuana Millions,” as “The Profit” host Marcus Lemonis explores California’s marijuana industry boom.