Identical to drinkers reward bottles of wine or six-packs of beer, stoners have lengthy proven their appreciation for each other by gifting hashish. Within the days earlier than legalization, baggies of weed, pipes and different smoking equipment had been usually put in mock containers or disguised as one thing else — the rest — to keep away from being acknowledged for what they honestly had been.
However it’s now been 10 years since Colorado legalized leisure marijuana. Ought to hashish gift-giving nonetheless be hiding within the shadows?
Denver resident Lauren Miele doesn’t suppose so, and as founder and CEO of greeting card firm KushKards, she’s actively working to dismantle the stigma that usually surrounds leisure use.
KushKards embraces hashish tradition with punny salutations like “gentle up the vacations” and “joint to the world.” Playing cards ($7-$10) include both a one-hitter hooked up or a slot the place a pre-rolled joint may be inserted. The corporate additionally sells reward luggage with tissue paper ($12) that includes what Miele calls a “polka pot” design — suppose polka dots, however with weed leaves as a substitute of circles.
They’re not solely intelligent, however they’re additionally extremely cute. Furthermore, they’re authorized to mail to associates far and extensive, so long as you don’t connect marijuana. As somebody who just lately harvested a number of homegrown crops, KushKards are the highest merchandise on my want checklist as I plan gift-giving to associates in Colorado this 12 months.
The thought for KushKards began merely, based on Miele. Again in 2013, she needed to reward a good friend hashish for Christmas and was bored with stuffing a dime bag in a very irrelevant Hallmark card. As an alternative, the Style Institute of Know-how grad determined to print her personal greeting card and hand-sew some blunts on it to type her good friend’s initials.
“Ever since then, I knew I had one thing,” Miele stated. “No person was doing it, so I stated ‘Blunt playing cards it's.’ “
And so the concept was born in 2013, and Miele spent 2014 perfecting her blunt-rolling abilities. KushKards didn’t take off, nonetheless, till 2015 when the native New Yorker got here to Denver for the Hashish Cup with “a backpack filled with goals,” she stated. A few dispensaries confirmed curiosity within the merchandise and shortly thereafter Miele moved to the Mile Excessive Metropolis in hopes her enterprise would spark up.
KushKards are actually out there in 4,000 retail areas within the U.S. and Canada, together with smoke outlets, dispensaries, reward and residential shops, and intercourse outlets. Buyers can discover all types of themed playing cards, from “dank yous” to birthday and congratulations playing cards, that include one-hitters. And the curiosity from grownup shops additionally helped spawn a brand new line of merchandise known as NaughtyKards.
KushKards even just lately landed a product placement within the film “Senior 12 months” starring Insurgent Wilson. The polka pot reward field that’s seen throughout a scene when Wilson is reward wrapping will quickly be out there on KushKards’ web site, Miele stated. She’s including polka pot wrapping paper, too.
Regardless of her successes, Miele stated they didn’t come simply. Hashish has lengthy been a male-dominated business, and breaking into the scene with an ancillary product perceived as “girlie” proved tough.
“I look again and really feel like these guys didn’t take me critically. They positioned an preliminary order and by no means known as me again for a reorder,” Miele stated.
The greeting card business, too, has but to catch up. Miele usually goes to commerce reveals the place her merchandise catch the curiosity of big-box retailers; nonetheless, she has but to ink a cope with a retailer that’s not thought-about area of interest.
“Hustler Hollywood is my closest big-box chain retailer,” Miele stated. “The folks waking the tradeshows love KushKards when searching for new prime sellers for his or her outlets, however after they convey it again to the fellows upstairs, they all the time deny and say they’re not prepared for weed merchandise simply but.”
Nonetheless, Miele believes as hashish use turns into extra normalized, so will merchandise like hers. KushKards already helped push pot outlets to supply merchandise past the everyday instruments to get excessive, she stated.
“Greeting playing cards weren’t a norm for the hashish business,” Miele stated of when she first began out. “I need to share how innovation in one other space of the hashish business is actually making an impression.”
Discover KushKards on the market on Etsy and at kushkards.com.