There’s no shortage of smoking accessories in the cannabis industry, but one company is working to bring an “exceptional smoking experience” to their customers through premium products.
Hemper was founded in 2015 by Bryan Gerber, who found himself fascinated by the ancillary side of the cannabis industry at the time. He started Hemper with the idea of making a subscription box for cannabis users.
“I thought, what if someone could get all their monthly essentials delivered to their door, discreetly shipped, so whether you were a doctor or a lawyer or a college student or an athlete and you didn’t want anyone to know what you were doing, you didn’t have to walk into a smoke shop,” said Gerber. “That was sort of the nucleus of this whole idea originally for the Hemper brand, which was basically Birchbox or Dollar Shave Club but for stoners.”
Gerber started the website for Hemper during his last semester of college and after a month, the business started to take off. Gerber told amNewYork that the boxes became very popular, and the brand started working with well-known celebrities and YouTubers to showcase their products.
However, in time, Gerber wanted to really focus on creating products that lean into cannabis culture rather than the celebrity side. He wanted to specifically lean into curating a special experience for their customers through the brand’s products.
“Over the last 3-5 years, we’ve really done a great job revitalizing the Hemper image. We were doing a lot of those celebrity-curated boxes — Smoke like Snoop Dogg was the idea, but now we have these more proprietary theme-based products,” said Gerber.
Hemper has since blossomed into a company that sells several different types of cannabis smoking accessories, including specialty bongs, cones, grinders, dab tools, vapes, cleaning supplies and much more, many of which center around themes like food, video games, and other pop culture-inspired classics like “Super Mario,” “Jurassic Park” and “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
They still offer subscription box options as well as one-time purchase themed boxes, which curate a selection of cannabis products, including a bong matching the theme and several cannabis products. However, Gerber says it’s the bongs that are the best-sellers in the company because of all of the unique shapes they are offered in, such as Chinese food containers and balloon dogs, for example.
“Our top products center around food themes. Last year, we launched this bong that looks like a ramen cup. I think a lot of our really popular products just make people smile when you see them, and they’re fun,” said Gerber.
Gerber also noted that the company has started to develop more products for the dispensary market, all of which retail for $10 and under, ranging from rolling paper booklets to their new hemp rolls and herbal rolls with glass tips.
“A lot of our very popular stuff is now morphing more into that lower-tier $10 and under market, but a lot of our kind of core foundation of the brand is still our glass,” said Gerber. “We’ve got bongs that have been out since 2019 that are still some of our top sellers.”
As Hemper continues to grow, Gerber hopes that Hemper can collaborate with more brands to create fun new products, but what’s most important for him is to have Hemper be the go-to source for smoking accessories.
“Our biggest goal for Hemper is when you think of smoking accessories, we want you to think Hemper. It is really difficult for us because we can’t run ads, our pages get shadowbanned every week,” said Gerber. “The goal is really to continue supporting the community with all these local events and a lot of different things. We’ve been trying to drive home that we are products by smokers for smokers.”
For more information, visit hemper.co.
