The co-founders of Seattle-based hashish and hemp product firm Well mannered have a number of explanations for his or her startup title.
It’s about self care that features THC- and CBD-containing merchandise that handle particular well being considerations. It’s about changing the “naughty” stereotype of marijuana with the “good” various of their micro-dose merchandise. It contains making science-backed claims concerning the tinctures, oral sprays, topical lotions and vaping gadgets that they’re promoting.
“The spirit of Well mannered is admittedly about treating your self effectively and treating others effectively,” mentioned Sue Tan, Well mannered co-founder and chief inventive officer.
“We use hashish for psychological, bodily, [and] social well being and once we really feel higher as folks,” she mentioned, “in flip that has a knock on impact on our companions, kids, our households, our communities.”
In January 2020, Well mannered launched its hashish merchandise containing THC, the intoxicating ingredient in marijuana. In April 2022 it started promoting non-THC hemp items with CBD. Merchandise from each traces embrace quite a lot of cannabinoids — the biologically energetic parts of hashish and hemp — in addition to different medicinal herbs.
“We put the ‘medical’ again into medical marijuana.”
Well mannered distinguishes itself by its focus is on health-related merchandise, in distinction to purely leisure use.
With the legalization of marijuana, “patient-focused merchandise had been type of ignored and thrown by the wayside,” mentioned Yung Tan, co-founder and CEO. The well being and wellness piece disappeared, he mentioned, so “we put the ‘medical’ again into medical marijuana.”
The corporate is collaborating with physicians who examine the outcomes for sufferers utilizing these kinds of merchandise and it’s making use of this medical data to develop its merchandise. Well mannered companions with Seattle’s Superior Integrative Medical Sciences (AIMS) Institute, a healthcare clinic that includes typical and naturopathic approaches.
Its medical advisory board contains AIMS Institute co-founders Dr. Sunil Aggarwal and Dr. Leanna Standish. Each additionally maintain positions on the UW College of Medication and Bastyr College, a college of different medication in Kenmore, Wash.
The corporate has competitors. CBD merchandise virtually by definition are health-related. Different medically targeted hashish manufacturers embrace Aunt Zelda’s and Mary’s Manufacturers. However the sector does appear to present much less precedence to medical purposes. A search on the hashish platform Leafly, for instance, doesn’t present a transparent path to discovering low-dose THC-containing merchandise for well being wants.
Well mannered founders say their objective is to assist prospects uncover which formulations and doses work finest for assembly their well being wants. That features merchandise to deal with persistent ache and irritation, sleep, stress and anxiousness, digestion and immunity, vitality and focus, and joint and muscle ache.
It focuses on hashish academic outreach to the general public, healthcare employees, and “budtenders” who work in marijuana retail shops and sometimes have solely their private expertise to attract upon when recommending merchandise.
“This concern is, forgive the pun, really grassroots,” mentioned Sue Tan. “You may have sufferers going to their healthcare suppliers and saying, ‘I’m going to do this [cannabis product], whether or not you imagine in it or not, as a result of I’m out of choices. All the pieces else has failed me.’”
Whereas the corporate is engaged in analysis into cannabinoids, it’s not conducting rigorous FDA-approved medical trials and isn’t publishing research in peer-reviewed journals. It does make use of outdoors laboratories to check its merchandise for ingredient concentrations and contaminants akin to pesticides.
The corporate’s aesthetic and title try to stroll the road of respectability — aiming to supply merchandise that individuals can be snug offering to ailing aged dad and mom or leaving out on their nightstand — whereas not showing intimidatingly pharmaceutical.
Well mannered is a model inside a dad or mum firm known as Canvas Therapeutics, which has a second model known as Revida Labs. Along with Sue and Yung Tan, who’re siblings, Canvas’ different co-founders are Mary Brown Szomjassy, Jeffrey Freeman Jr., Adam Melero, Melissa Durkee, Mike Szomjassy and Suan Teo.
Previous to founding hashish firms, Yung Tan was a company lawyer at corporations together with Perkins Coie and a senior funding banker at banks akin to Citigroup and Deutsche Financial institution. Sue Tan has carried out design work internationally and co-authored a e book on innovation. Brown Szomjassy has a background in training and been a guide in hashish well being training for 14 years.
Well mannered’s hashish merchandise can be found in Washington and Arizona, two of the states the place leisure marijuana is authorized. The hemp gadgets are bought nationally.
The corporate, which has roughly 15 workers, has been bootstrapped and never obtained outdoors monetary assist. Because it expands its nationwide and worldwide buyer base, the group shall be pursuing capital from traders, mentioned Yung Tan.