RETAIL HIGH

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RETAIL HIGH
Miss Grass founders Anna Duckworth

Next month, luxury department store Barneys New York Inc. will open the High End on the fifth floor of its Beverly Hills location.

One might reasonably expect a collection of Hermes Birkin handbags or Patek Philippe watches to line the shelves, but customers instead will find $13,000 gold pipes, $950 blown-glass bongs, a $798 lighter and a $4,850 rolling papers gift set.

The offerings are part of a push by Barneys to capitalize on the luxury cannabis market, which is rapidly expanding in regions like Los Angeles where recreational marijuana is legal – at least in some form – under state and local law.

“The industry is in a frenzy right now,” said Will Htun, co-founder of Beverly Hills-based Elysian Group & Knoll Agency, which operates Sherbinskis – a cannabis grower that markets itself as a top choice of rap star Wiz Khalifa and singer John Mayer – as well as a newly launched delivery service, Emjay. “It’s essentially a land grab for clientele.”

In addition to ancillary smoking products, High End will offer a selection of intoxicating buds for delivery, done by Htun’s firm, which will also offer product from downtown-based Beboe.

Scott Campbell, co-founder of Beboe – a cannabis retailer the New York Times called the “Hermes of marijuana” – sees the Barneys opening as part of a broader embrace of cannabis by mainstream society.

He compares the company’s products, which will be featured at Barneys, to wine.

“It’s focused on dinner partying culture,” Campbell said.

Barneys President and Chief Executive Daniella Vitale said she wanted the renowned store on the forefront of the cultural shift because so many customers were already consuming marijuana.

The turn from low-brow, stoner marketing to glossy upscale branding reflects a pot renaissance that now includes marijuana-infused chocolates, invitation-only tea parties, hand-blown bongs and boutique flowers – all part of marketers, entrepreneurs and national retailers’ push to sell a polished cannabis lifestyle to affluent consumers.

The flood of upscale marijuana brands coming online is part of broader market growth that helped drive up global consumer spending on legal cannabis, which jumped by 28 percent last year to $12.2 billion, according to Colorado-based BDS Analytics and Oakland-based Arcview Market Research. That number is projected to jump another 38 percent this year. In California alone, the market is forecasted to reach $5.6 billion by 2022, making it the second largest legal market behind Canada.

And that’s just for the actual bud. Chicago-based Brightfield Group projects the market for hemp and CBD, the nonpsychoactive cannabinoid that is often used in wellness products, could hit $20 billion by 2022.

New frontier

The legal marijuana market’s rapid growth is bringing new players into the industry who are creating high-end cannabis products for demographics that have been overlooked in the past by the industry.

Kate Miller and Anna Duckworth, the founders of the Venice-based Miss Grass Inc., have created an operation dedicated to cannabis products and curated editorial content for women. The pair’s website, labeled the “‘Goop’ of Cannabis” by W Magazine, sells $200 ceramic pipes and $26 matchstick jars – alongside advice on creativity, wellness and how to read cannabis labels.

Miss Grass’ first Instagram post showed their followers they aren’t selling marijuana, but a lifestyle. The image is of a long-haired woman at an outdoor festival reminiscent of Coachella, her back turned, “Miss Grass” emblazoned in green neon over her denim jacket. We can – wink, wink – guess what’s she’s doing.

Since the 2017 post Miller, 31, and Duckworth, 34, have planted themselves firmly in the Instagram-fueled cannabis economy, carving out a space for what they see as an underrepresented – and potentially lucrative – demographic.

“It was a stoner culture,” Duckworth said. “There was no representation of people like us in the zeitgeist.”

Miss Grass, which has five employees and churns out wellness content from an old airplane hangar, is in the process of developing its own product line and working on another round of seed funding. Miller and Duckworth declined to provide funding details.

Olivia Mannix founder and chief executive of Cannabrand, a Denver-based marketing agency dedicated to marijuana, said a lot of entrepreneurs are looking to be the first big thing in luxury cannabis.

“They want to be the Apple or Chanel brand,” she said.

But with the industry still in its infancy and a patchwork of laws and regulations governing marijuana sales and advertising, many businesses opt for mass appeal instead.

“When it comes down to it, they want to be accessible,” Mannix added.

Miller, who formerly worked on brand partnerships for “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels’ company Broadway Video Entertainment Inc., said Miss Grass is positioning itself as a leading brand for women and one at the forefront of a cultural shift. She said the company has already done collaborations with Apple Inc.-owned audio firm Beats by Dre and Commerce-based Alo Yoga.

Legal challenges

Despite the strides the industry has made, there remain legal and logistical challenges for producers and retailers.

Recreational use of marijuana became legal in California in 2018, but the retail sale of it is prohibited in many local jurisdictions, including Beverly Hills where Barneys is located. The store was able to get around the retail ban by offering a delivery service, which is allowed in the posh West L.A. enclave.

Htun raised $10 million for his delivery service, which will now operate out of Barneys. He said it took years to build the business because he didn’t want to launch it until the state’s regulations fully took effect.

“People understand it’s the end of prohibition, and the green rush is absolutely real,” Htun said.

Caleb Siemon, the 43-year-old creator of the $950 bong available at Barneys’ High End, said the store carrying the piece had a certain symmetry – he’s made a career of selling high-end vases and other glassware through the retailer but got his start making drug paraphernalia.

“It’s not like some druggie thing now. It’s regular culture and high-end culture,” Siemon said.

The bong is modeled after a vase, his best-selling Barneys piece.

“We wanted them to be sculptural and beautiful pieces of art that wouldn’t necessarily scream paraphernalia,” he said. “It’s so poetic that Barney’s brought me back into it.”

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