Waiting to inhale: Women-owned cannabis accessory brands are putting design first

New laws allow recreational cannabis sales in more than 20 states, but it remains illegal under federal law, making starting a retail cannabis business complicated. This is Part 5 of a series, Spliff & Mortar.

Hollywood’s most famous cannabis connoisseurs—from Cheech & Chong, to Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski, to Harold and Kumar—tend to be men, but the reality today is that women may be just as likely to partake:

• Among adults 19–30, 42.1% of women reported having used marijuana in the last 12 months, just shy of the 43.4% of men who had, according to a 2020 study by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research cited by The Hill.

So, Jeff Spicoli, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

But not just any pipe. While the legal cannabis industry is dominated by men, with a 2021 MJBizDaily report revealing only 19.9% of US cannabis-business owners are women, some women-owned companies are making cannabis accessories that are modern and chic. Here are three that are really smoking:

House of Puff

House of Puff was founded by Kristina Lopez Adduci in 2018 after she decided to try cannabis for anxiety issues—and her boyfriend (now husband) broke out his bong.

“She immediately loved the experience of cannabis as far as how it relieved anxiety and made her feel much better,” Holly Hager, principal and COO at House of Puff, told Retail Brew. “But she hated that bong. It was phallic—it looked like something that a 16-year-old boy would have.”

Le Pipe has an elegant silhouette that would be right at home in Audrey Hepburn’s hand in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, from which Hager said the brand took inspiration. The product line, which is heavy on pastels, also includes rolling trays, ashtrays, and wick holders. It has been called “the Glossier of weed accessories.”

“We target-market women, but really, we target-market stylish people,” said Hager, who came on board in 2020.

House of Puff’s customer base is 60% female, said Hager, who believes that more states legalizing cannabis increased the proportion of female consumers because many were reluctant to buy before legalization.

“That was not comfortable for me,” she said of the prospect of an unlicensed purchase. “Having access to legal cannabis makes all the difference in the world.”

Sackville & Co

Before she and Lana Van Brunt co-founded Sackville & Co in 2018, Hayley Dineen, who has a background as a fashion and accessories designer, was struck at the cannabis culture’s dudeness.

“And so you have a lot of cannabis goods that are designed to be the lowest cost possible and really purely about a very basic utility that fit the demographic of a college boy or a snowboarder or someone who was outwardly seen as an acceptable stoner in culture,” Dineen told Retail Brew.

So, added Van Brunt, “We really had, as women, to redefine—if we’re going to be the ones shopping for it, paying for it, and smoking it without any men present in the room, how do we want that experience to be?”

The result is a line of products—including grinders, pipes, and keychain joint holders—that have a modern design aesthetic that transcends gender, although Van Brunt estimates Sackville’s customers are 70% women.

“We’re not for women, we’re not for men,” she said. “We’re for anyone who finds themselves in these products.”

Tetra

Monica Khemsurov, co-founder and CEO of Tetra, has a background in design journalism and still serves as creative director of Sight Unseen, the online design magazine she co-founded.

Tetra started in 2015, when Khemsurov reached out to designers and artists to make only a few cannabis accessories at a time.

In 2017, Tetra hired product designer Jamie Wolfond to design the first Tetra-branded product, the Balance Pipe. Constructed of borosilicate glass, the pipe looks like a straw has been pushed through a gumdrop at an angle.

Khemsurov told Retail Brew that with some upscale pipes, “there is this very function-oriented part that feels very masculine,” with the products having “to do 12 things and have all these complicated parts.”

But Tetra—which, in contrast, she said “marries form and function”—is not aimed at women.

“We are 100% targeted to all genders,” Khemsurov said. “I love the idea of democratic design and the idea that…good design can speak to anyone.”

Next time: Our series ends where it began, with the opening of Gotham, the store we featured in its planning stage in the first installment.—AAN