When you think of items sold in the cannabis industry, you might immediately think of pre-rolls, gummies, or flower. For Olivia Sawyer, Co-Founder & CEO of Kush Queen, she thinks of wellness items.
Kush Queen was founded ten years ago by Sawyer and her then-boyfriend (now husband), both of whom had previously worked in the industry as a budtender and grower, respectively. The goal was to create a brand with wellness at the forefront of business.
“I feel like these days with cannabis, we see all sorts of stuff. But wellness, it’s tapped into, but it’s not as tapped into as what you would expect, like joints or vapes,” said Sawyer. “20 years ago, it was nothing.”
Sawyer initially started a business online years ago called The Crystal Cult, selling crystallized vapes, vanity sunglasses, and t-shirts with cannabis-themed phrases. She built a community online and through that, Kush Queen was born.
Sawyer told amNewYork that through Kush Queen, she sought to use her knowledge she gained as a budtender, watching what customers were looking for when buying medical marijuana, as well as her own experiences, to inform what sort of wellness products she was looking to sell.
“When I was a budtender, I started smoking weed and I got into cannabis because I had a sleep disorder. I didn’t sleep from the time I was eight until the time I tried cannabis at 18,” said Sawyer. “Every day I used cannabis, it was about wellness. It was about feeling better.”
The brand sells gummies, flower, tinctures and resin for those looking for a more traditional cannabis experience. However, the wellness items that are Kush Queen’s bread and butter are what set the brand apart.
Among Kush Queen’s most popular items is the bath bomb, which is infused with either CBD or THC. They are available in different levels of THC or CBD to aid in relaxation.
“The bath bomb is what made us in the earliest days of medical cannabis in California. We would get laughed out of the dispensary. People would say a bath bomb, really? And I would say, ‘Take 50 of them, I’m gonna promote them on social media. People are gonna come in here for them, and we’re gonna sell them.’ And that literally is how it happened,” said Sawyer. “I built hundreds and hundreds of accounts that way.”
The bath bombs ended up building a ton of support online, and with the product’s success, Sawyer was able to lean into more wellness and lifestyle products in cannabis, including products such as water-based lubricants and transdermal pain-relief lotions infused with THC or CBD (known as Melt).
“We have built something that we truly love deep in our souls and we love the people who use the products. We’re just doing it differently and the cannabis industry has evolved so much, the markets have evolved so much, CBD has evolved so much,” said Sawyer. “It’s been such a journey to witness, and we just try to like stay true to the story of who we are.”
For Sawyer, that Kush Queen continues to have the impact that it has had on the cannabis community means more than anything.
“If you had told me when I started ‘Oh, you’ll be around in 10 years,’ I probably wouldn’t have even believed you because of the lack of ability for businesses to last and then the lack of ability for small women owned businesses to last in cannabis, but now that it’s happened, I feel like we just invested where it matters most and that’s people at our company,” said Sawyer. “I have employees that have been here for eight years, and that’s because that was the first employee I hired out of my garage, and I’m really proud of that. I think because we came from the community and then we built a community around us, that’s the heart of everything.”
For more information or to purchase online, visit kushqueen.shop.
