CBD skin-care brand Cannuka's Michael Bumgarner: "The floodgates opened"

Michael Bumgarner was not an avid beauty consumer before launching his CBD skin-care brand Cannuka in 2017, but he did have a history in rural farming that led him to see the power of cannabis. "Because of my background in farming, I got really interested in industrial hemp, and I wanted to create a brand that was very much approachable to the canna-curious consumer," he said. "Looking at the cannabis industry, we saw a big gap in products being developed specifically for that consumer, and so we looked at it as an opportunity to reintroduce cannabis in a different way." Shortly after the Farm Bill passed in December 2018, Cannuka ramped up distribution in nearly all Ulta stores, as well as at Free People, Anthropologie, Riley Rose and Neiman Marcus. On this week’s episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Bumgarner sits down with Glossy’s Priya Rao to discuss why betting on a direct-to-consumer strategy was not viable, why retailers are taking a risk on cannabis and how making a splash in skin care will open the door for cannabis wellness products and ingestibles.