How to start a successful cannabis brand in a down market

(This story first appeared in the November-December issue of MJBizMagazine.)

Ryan Clark was 19 years old with a baby on the way when the Tulare County (California) Sheriff’s office raided the hobbyist grower’s first small-scale commercial cannabis grow: a lone plant in a house he and a few friends rented.

After that setback, Clark set out on “a mission,” he recalled in a recent interview, to acquire the brightest light he could find, by any means necessary.

And so it was that Clark grew four plants underneath the glare of a 400-watt, high-pressure sodium wall pack that previously had been affixed to the outside of a building in an alleyway.

The profit from that operation funded a proper setup.

One thing led to another over the next two decades, and after stints running a hydroponics store and overseeing construction and cultivation for the first large, regulated operator in California’s Central Valley, Clark launched his own flower business in 2021, which was considered by many a down market for cultivators.

Lean startup operations

Today, Clark is a co-owner and head cultivator of upscale (and profitable) flower brand Bosky Genetics in Woodlake, California, in the same county policed by the sheriffs who raided his house as a teenager.

Bosky operates from a 10,000-square-foot building with 5,000 square feet of plant canopy.

Clark launched the company with a $2.6 million startup budget, cash secured via a five-year loan at 5% interest from a private investor.

That investment got Bosky only as far as the first harvest, so Clark cut costs until he could generate revenue.

Clark, his wife and two of his growers “hung lights, built benches, installed ducting, sealed floors and plumbed all our grow rooms to help save on the build cost,” he recalled.

Pandemic-era supply-chain problems and price fluctuations for materials inflated costs by as much as 25%, making efficiencies a necessity.

With the cutthroat efficiency of the leanest startup, Bosky Genetics went from “nothing but bare dirt” to “plants growing” and fully licensed in 11 months, Clark said.

Less than two years later, Clark said, the brand is making enough profit to pay off that initial loan within five years.

Long-time cannabis grower

If that two years sounds like quick success, consider the lifelong investment of time.

There were the summers Clark spent as a teenager with his father, a pest-control adviser for Big Ag in California’s Central Valley, seeking out and stamping out bugs in massive plantings of cotton and wheat.

There were the countless hours in high school and immediately after that Clark spent poring over the cultivation section in High Times magazine and online bulletin boards, seeking the wisdom needed to eke out a few more grams from the light stashed in a closet.

Then there’s the success he found at cannabis competitions starting in the 2010s.

A third-place finish in the hybrid event at the 2017 High Times Cup in San Bernardino – one of the last competitions in California – helped build Clark’s organic buzz.

A skilled macro photographer, Clark used his flower photography to populate social media channels, which he ran with the legacy-era passion and authenticity that resonates with the flower-buying public.

Word spread, and that hype encouraged Clark to build a brand.

The name, Bosky, which Clark discovered via the magic of Google, is an obscure literary term for abundance or woody, as in “attractively covered with trees.”

Clark and a good friend who does graphic design conceived and created the company’s simple but distinct design motif: a letter “B” stylized to resemble a bolt of lightning as well as a black-and-white skull that pops out on the brand’s jars and mylar bags.

But it was a chance meeting with a licensed cultivator, at a coffee shop before a cannabis competition, that propelled Clark out of the legacy market and into the regulated one, via a job as the grower’s operations manager.

Extensive cannabis business experience

If you ask Clark why Bosky is retailing flower in 32 stores and counting as well as fetching $1,300 a pound wholesale in California’s saturated market – meaning consumers pay $37-$50 for an eighth at retail, pre-tax – he would say it’s because he knows exactly what he and his 12 employees are doing.

Those 12 employees include five people running the grow rooms, another six doing the processing, including hand-trimming and, only recently, a statewide sales director.

Clark knows this because he’s done it all himself before, and he’s been doing it for a very long time.

He sat at the trimming table for three months.

Most of the 32 stores where Bosky is sold were introduced to the brand via personal connections made at events, existing friend networks or the old-fashioned way: word of mouth.

He also deliberately limited Bosky to stores able to pay cash on delivery – thereby ensuring the brand wasn’t held hostage by net-45 payment cycles that became months-old unpaid invoices.

And, until very recently, when a retailer met the guy delivering Bosky flower, they were pleasantly surprised to discover it was the brand’s owner.

Clark’s wife, Jenn, is similarly involved with Bosky across a range of responsibilities, from HR and compliance to running the budget and building grow benches during the construction phase.

“I’ve watched other people in business fail – including my father, unfortunately,” Ryan Clark said.

“And the one reason he failed is he could not do every part of his business himself.”

Staying positive

Clark had to defy logic and ignore the “sky-is-falling” prophecies elsewhere in legal marijuana to launch his own brand.

He’d worked as a head grower for other, much larger commercial operations before setting off on his own in December 2020.

At the big operations that went bust, Clark saw firsthand how outlandishly sized grows, unrealistic projections and unnecessary expenses compounded with general ignorance of market realities can thwart large-scale dreams.

“One of the biggest lessons I have learned in all of my years of cultivation is to design and build your grow right the first time around and not to waste money on luxury items that are not needed to grow amazing cannabis,” he said.

So, Clark kept things lean.

The marijuana industry’s COVID-19 sales spike came and went and was replaced by severe supply-chain issues and material shortages, with equipment prices so volatile a day’s hesitation before finalizing a purchase could cost tens of thousands of dollars.

“It was insane,” Clark said, adding that by that point, he was too far along to quit.

“It was just one of those things where we’d already gotten this started and, you know, let’s go.”

Staying fresh

To build a successful flower brand in California’s ultracompetitive regulated market, which involves rampant illicit-market competition as well as tight margins for those playing it by the book, Clark has stayed relatively small, maintained strict efficiencies with his labor costs and stayed fresh – in a literal sense.

“It really boils down to what are your metrics in the grow: How many grams per square foot can you hit, and can you maintain quality at that footage?” he said.

Clark said Bosky has been able to average between 60 and 70 grams per square foot.

Staying fresh means harvesting 22.8 times per year, keeping strict, 64-day cycles – plus another 32 days post-harvest for curing and trimming before flower is ready for sale.

All the strains Bosky grows are developed in-house, with favorites including Grip Tape, a proprietary blend with strong Headband/OG notes.

He is constantly experimenting with strains – he recently added a sour cross – and selects a couple of cuts out of experimental rooms ranging from 25 to 50 plants a very old-fashioned way: If it’s fire, it stays.

Part of Bosky’s reputation is owed to the fact that everything is fresh, often sold out via preorder before the plants are cut and hung.

“Our average preorder turnaround time from finished and tested flower to the store is 10 days or less from package date,” he said.

Anything that doesn’t sell is sold at bulk rates or destroyed.

“I’d rather do that than sell someone old weed,” he said.

Reach Chris Roberts at ch***********@mj********.com.