Celebrating 4/20 With Cannabis Brand LAX Packs

Tomorrow (Saturday 4/20) is the unofficial party for stoners around the world. However, for companies like Los Angeles' LAX Packs, every day these days is like living in a Cheech and Chong movie.

The company, led by the trio of Joshua Granville, VP of Cultivation/Co-Founder; Jesse Eichenberg, VP of Sales/Co-Founder; started in 2018 and now has two large cultivation sites, one in Long Beach, CA and the most recent one built in Sacramento.

Like many cannabis brands, LAX packs flourished during the COVID pandemic. Although things have leveled off a bit now, the trio tell me that these are still good times for their company.

The secret of their success? Careful cultivation; perfection in its product, design and marketing; a passion not only for weed, but also for culture, and solid business. I caught up with the trio recently, starting at their Long Beach location and then traveling by private jet to their Sacramento location for a quick visit and lunch. What I have found is that LAX Packs has many similarities to the art world in how they create their elite product.

Steve Baltin: Do you see growing weed as an artistic endeavor?

Joshua Granville: I would make the connection between the artistic aspect of making weed, because it's a manufacturing process at the end of the day. It's a controlled environment. So you use these tools and these parameters to express yourself, express what you like, what you want, what you want from the flavor, what you want from the effect and try to give it a unique twist. Using these manufacturing parameters, ag parameters to try to express something more esoteric, more ethereal, more different, unique.

Baltin: I imagine something similar would be cooking. You talk to the chefs and they'll tell you, you start and follow recipes. I imagine that to begin with, you have to be able to be creative, to explore, to see what works.

Granville: Absolutely. I use this analogy quite a bit when someone asks me how to do this job. I say, “I can give you the recipe, but that doesn't mean you can replicate it. That doesn't mean you're ready to go now. You have to do it, experience it. It's experiential, and you have to to put your stamp on it. You have to put your mark on it. You have to do it the way you do it.”

Ben Leaf: Like you said, it's a perfect fusion. It is connected with art, music, culture. Now this is where it gets really fun, you can brand it and put what you think and care about, what you want people to feel and see when you show them this. So it's cool, it's fun.

Baltin: What are your criteria for launching a product into the world?

Granville: It has to tick all the boxes. This is our metric. It must be submitted correctly. It must taste good. Must smoke well. All these things must be, all must be…

Baltin: When you got one that you didn't like the color of, what happens? Do you still put it out?

Granville: No, I can't. It must be all things.

Leaf: And I'm heartbroken because this one ticks all but one of the boxes. It's just that we are perfectionists.

Baltin: cand you do it again with the color, right?

Granville: This is the third or fourth time we've tried it because we're so impressed with it and all the other aspects.

Leaf: He's the chef. He says, “No, it's not the taste I need, cut it.”

Granville: Yes. So, we'll move on to the next one. That's why we're always looking for new things, new genetics, because it's like the lottery. Sooner or later he may hit the lottery. That's a bit more of a possibility, but it's comparable.

Baltin: How does the plant evolve?

Granville: The look can change over time on the first run you do with the seed, you won't get what it ends up being. It actually transforms a bit every time you grow it the first couple of times. So the look isn't ideal, but I have expectations because it ticks the other boxes that the look will follow. This could be wrong. This is a bet. Some of the best strains in the world just don't seem right, we just can't turn them off. Don't look the way we want. We just can't get them out. There is another one there that is very popular and will never look good.

Baltin: Show me an example, for you, of one that looks good.

Jesse Eichenberg: Lighter in color, has a higher frost content, perfect floral structure. It does the things we want it to do. It has a high terpene profile, strong effect. it tastes good The smell translates into the taste when you smoke it. ice cream Presentation is important in the recreational market. If customers can basically only judge what they are buying by what it looks like. Can you press this button? These would be the pitch points and the main points to hit to make the cut. This is how we want it to look. Having a direct consumer expects it to look like this. Must have them all. It can't look good, I think that's what you're saying. And there are endless combinations of the terpenes and the flavor and all that. That's why we keep trying new combinations of things.

Eichenberg: It's finally pre-packaged in our branded jars and into dispensaries. We are in about 200 of them. We're moving up pretty fast. We want to bring the experience down to an eighth level. We've packaged this as an eighth amount that everyone has a good experience is to tick all the boxes we've talked about and try to earn brand loyalty.

Granville: We want them to smoke it and come back for more. We want them to experience what we're experiencing, what we love, and keep coming back for more. We believe that if people smoke it, they will come back.

Leaf: It's like the musicians thing. We will never stop looking for varieties because we will never find the perfect bud. We'll never get there and it's done. So we'll keep looking and we'll keep looking, and then we'll find something that we really like and really love. We'll ride this wave for a couple of months and then we'll say, “Okay, back to the drawing board, guys. We're not there yet.”

Granville: Yes, there is always something new.

Baltin: How many strains would you say you come out with in a year?

Granville: Guardians? From four to six. This is on the high end of what we would actually produce in a year.

Baltin: How many would you say you try in a year?

Granville: Hundreds. The margin of success is very low. It really is a lottery that way. You can control some aspects of it by making the parents something you like, but it's pretty random when it comes to offspring. If you have a hundred children, they will not be alike. I have four children, they are completely different. Each of them is different. You find some characteristics of the parents but not all. And what combination you get, you don't know. But in terms of construction, when you find something that works, to me it's the terp. When you find a specific terp that works and you can see how it came from the parent, look for another combination from another parent, another strain that complements it well. I like this terp, but I don't like how it grows. What if you combine it with this, where I like how it grows and it has this other positive feature that you can increase your probability of success in this way, knowing the parents well. But it's still a lottery. You're still looking for the one in a thousand, easily.

Baltin: When did you start?

Granville: I started growing in 2009. My mom grew and is a horticulturist, so she grew weeds when I was growing up. I started professionally in 2009.

Baltin: When did LAX Packs form?

Eichenberg: The story of how we got together is pretty cool. Ben and I, being from Venice, I feel like it's in our DNA. It's like how we spent time as if we were little children in Venice. There were always weeds, and it was a source of income. If you smoke weed, you fell in love with the plant.

Fulla: And the culture that surrounds it.

Baltin: Since you started in 2018, did your growth explode during that period?

Granville: Yes.

Leaf: Exponentially. It was a booming market during COVID. You're stuck at home, what are you going to do? You're going to drink, smoke, something that takes you out of yourself.

Eichenberg: Everyone had a lot of free time, limited entertainment options. We couldn't do enough during COVID. It was a good time. It was a good time from a weed standpoint.

Baltin: do Do you find that there was still a brand loyalty that was formed during this period?

Granville: Absolutely. It was a great time to enter the market, familiarize people with the brand and continue to this day.

Eichenberg: Interesting things happened. Like, at that time our packaging was in a Mylar bag and you see someone reposting our stuff in London. So we were recognized worldwide at that time. There were not many people traveling. The people who were, were just entrepreneurs and creative individuals. Things happened that were out of our control that really brought great brand awareness.

Baltin: Going back to the story of how you met, you two grew up together in Venice. How did you three meet?

Granville: Business, we had a mutual friend and like-minded people and coming together around a common goal.

Eichenberg: That's how it happened. We've been doing it since we were teenagers. Cultivators are weird, just like musicians. I'm sure the best musicians are very strange. Then when we met Josh, we were like, “Holy **k, this is the best cooler grower that we've met.” Number one. Number two, it was the best grass we've ever seen. Ben and I started buying her flowers wholesale. We approached him, we had an idea, we said, “Let's build a brand around your flower.” We were only concerned about allocation. “Make sure you have that amount for us because we're going to do something.” He said, “Let's do it together.” At that point, all the stars aligned and we said, “Great.” So he was our partner. Then we built a farm together. Then we built a few more. While we were doing this, our brand was in high demand. We merged our background, which is like graffiti art, Venice, this culture, with this cannabis. We had artists make designs on our bags and what would we call the variety. We rolled it out like this. To this day, we still have some basic strains that Josh had when we first met him. This is how the brand began. We meet Josh, thinking he's handsome and cool and having the best flower. We are family now. This is more than a partnership. It really is a family.