{"id":7176,"date":"2017-01-26T22:53:42","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T22:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/?p=2384877"},"modified":"2017-01-26T22:53:42","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T22:53:42","slug":"new-weed-sellers-want-you-to-swap-chamomile-for-cannabis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/new-weed-sellers-want-you-to-swap-chamomile-for-cannabis\/","title":{"rendered":"New weed sellers want you to swap chamomile for cannabis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0 5px 5px;float:right;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/new-weed-sellers-want-you-to-swap-chamomile-for-cannabis\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p><strong>By Jennifer Kaplan,<\/strong><em>\u00a0Bloomberg News<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Visit a dispensary in one of the 28 states that legally sell marijuana and you\u2019re likely to find products with monikers like God\u2019s Green Crack, Super Lemon Haze, or Skywalker. That\u2019s all about to change as a new breed of \u201cganjapreneurs\u201d swoop into the fledgling industry. In a classic consumer-marketing move, they\u2019re getting rid of stoner slang and replacing it with supermarket-friendly names that purport to help customers live better.<\/p>\n<p>Their message: Weed is no longer just for getting high. It\u2019s to help you through your stress, ease you into sleep and get you in the mood for love. In other words, these marketers want to transform the image of marijuana so that it competes with scores of products already in liquor stores, markets and pharmacies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think of our competition not as other edibles,\u201d says Peter Barsoom, a former Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley manager who\u2019s now chief executive officer of 1906, a company that makes cannabis-infused chocolates. \u201cIt\u2019s that cup of coffee in the morning, it\u2019s the pill of Ambien to help you sleep, it\u2019s that cup of chamomile tea,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p><aside class=\"related right\" \/>Legal marijuana sales are projected to grow to $18 billion in the next four years from $7 billion, according to Arcview Market Research, and a small group of companies are racing to give legitimacy to their products by adopting segmentation techniques to broaden marijuana\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n<p>The first step is lowering potency and classifying weed according to specific mood-enhancing qualities. Then it gets down to good-old fashioned brand segmentation. 1906 \u2014 named for the year U.S. statutes first cracked down on marijuana \u2014 is introducing products with names such as Go (an energy booster), Pause (for kicking back), Midnight (a sleep aid), Present (to focus) and High Love (for arousal).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Altered States<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Whether they actually deliver such altered states is almost beside the point. Barsoom\u2019s reasoning is that a new generation of consumers will flock to stylish cannabis offerings to deal with life\u2019s assorted ailments and annoyances. He\u2019s not alone. A host of entrepreneurs and pot businesses also sell mood-tailored products.<\/p>\n<p>Lowering the amount of drug per hit, bite or swallow is paramount for appealing to new consumers, according to Mike Ray, a former Wall Street trader and founder of Bloom Farms, which makes pre-filled vape pens and pre-rolled joints. \u201cI think micro-dosing is the way of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Matt Seashols, for one, was frustrated that he couldn\u2019t go to a dispensary in Northern California and get something that would give him a specific feeling without getting so high it would knock him out of commission. So Seashols co-founded hmbldt, named for Humboldt Country, the unofficial weed capital of the state. The company makes pre-filled vape pens for specific \u201cneed state solutions\u201d: bliss, calm, relief and sleep. Hmbldt also claims to make highs easier to control, by designing its vape pen to vibrate after the user has inhaled 2.25 milligrams of oil. By comparison, most edible products have 5-milligrams doses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wanted to be able to take care of some of these core needs that I had from a quality-of-life perspective through cannabis,\u201d Seashols says. \u201cI wanted it to help me sleep better, I wanted it to decrease inflammation, I wanted it to help me relax, as opposed to some ulterior methods, and I couldn\u2019t find that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ray\u2019s father bought a property called Bloom Farms in Northern California in the 1970s and hosted a hippie commune there. Now, Ray is using the farm\u2019s name as the masthead for a new kind of cannabis business \u2014 one that makes products that would fit in at a Whole Foods or a suburban boutique. The packaging for its Highlighter, a portable cannabis-oil vapor pen, does not scream stoner. It\u2019s made of recycled paper embossed with black writing and an artfully designed marijuana leaf. The oils come with designations such as daytime, nighttime and anytime.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s the new cocktail: it\u2019s the new ladies\u2019 night out,\u201d Ray says.<\/p>\n<p>Such talk is part of a necessary shift in brand positioning, 1906\u2019s Barsoom says, to make cannabis products more like wine and less like Everclear, the 190-proof grain alcohol brand that\u2019s been a staple of frat-party punch bowls for decades.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor those who have kids, it gives them a chance after they put the kids to bed to take the chocolate and know they\u2019re not going to be blasted,\u201d Barsoom says. \u201cMost of us don\u2019t have six hours to have a date with an edible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Legal marijuana sales are projected to grow to $18 billion in the next four years from $7 billion, according to Arcview Market Research, and a small group of companies are racing to give legitimacy to their products by adopting segmentation techniques to broaden marijuana&#8217;s appeal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5062,77,5577,6853,6886,9,6845,1,3,6941,61,1736],"tags":[5063,2655,5580,6854,6889,6846,6942],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}