Sculpture, like a bar piece. And in fact, we actually just got, and I wanna say this is the first, we actually just got our rubber monkey balm. I registered as a sculpture from the USPTO office. And I believe it's actually the first time the USPTO office actually granted a product paraphernalia, a balm, a sculpture.
And this is actually allowing us to get IP now for our products. From the Podkinex Studios, high in the Rockies at the beautiful Beaver Creek Resort, it's the Raising Cannabis Capital Show. Today on People's, we are joined by Brian Gerber, the CEO of Hemper. Brian, welcome back to the show.
Thanks, Dan. I appreciate you having me back so soon. Well, I'm glad you could come back because after your last time, some of our listeners had some follow-up questions that I thought we could tackle today. And for those of you who missed Brian's previous interview, Hemper is an online smoking accessory store.
However, what makes Hemper unique and what it's most known for, or really known for, is the subscription boxes, which we talked a lot about last time. Unfortunately, some of our listeners were not familiar with Hemper and didn't realize that they did not need a subscription to purchase smoking accessories. So I asked Brian to come back on to take a little deeper dive into the accessories that they have to offer. And Brian, I think that's a great place to start.
Can you give our listeners a sense of what type of products are available on Hemper site? For sure. Yeah, so I would love to also touch on our product development ethos and how we move through all of that. And so the original Hemper product was obviously the subscription box, which was curated by myself and a couple of other partners.
And originally we were sourcing third party products. And obviously we wanted to keep the subscription box fresh and taking it from a couple of the other subscription box companies that I felt just didn't really put enough emphasis on product development. And so what we do here, that's different. And why you don't have to subscribe to Hemper to get our products is, we take apart all these different like seven figure markets.
So there's like glass, there's cleaning, there's storage, there's odor eliminating, there's preparation goods, vaporization, so on and so forth. And so what we started doing was basically dissecting the top five to 10 products in those categories and really understanding what are they lacking? You know, what are they missing? Where do they do well?
Where do they miss? And what we really do is we just innovate on those categories. And how we do it is we basically have a full product development team in house. We have 3D printers, we have a couple of them actually.
We have plotters, printers, you name it. We like to get the product to about 90% of the way there before we ship it off to wherever we have to manufacture it. And so what we do is choose a category that we want to tackle. We come up with an ideation, we start for rapid prototyping.
And then once we have the finished product, what we do is we actually release it through the subscription box first. So if you want the latest and greatest, right, and you're not trying to keep up on it yourself, as long as you subscribe to the box, you'll always get the newest gadget that we put in there. And then if you're not interested in the subscription, it's available 30 days after that month on the Hember website. And we also release certain like colorways in the box that would be exclusive to the box that would then come out later potentially.
There's always that one friend who wants the iPhone the day it comes out. That's the subscription box. But you don't have to subscribe. And one of the cool things about Hemper is that you don't have to even get the box at all.
You can just buy the products all the cart from the website. Or if you love something that's actually replenishable, so let's say like our Hemper tech fresh wipes or something like that, you can actually subscribe to those products individual. OK. Yeah.
So that's really cool. We have a ton of people who do that. They buy into the box to get like an array of assortment of things. They identify what they really love.
And then they go subscribe to it individually after the month, if it's a replenishable. So like cleaning gear, odor-liminating stuff, a lot of people subscribe to. But then this year, we really want to dive into more products that live outside the box. And so we actually launched an Excel box, which is $150 a month.
And now we're able to basically put in a little bit more budget into those products and release it through the Excel version. And so a lot of folks who got a couple of Hemper boxes, my seven inch pieces, really want to take into one of their Excel pieces, and some of their higher end work expensive accessories. And so now we've been releasing new products through that as well. But one of our new products that we just released is called the Hemper Isoplex.
It's basically like an all-in-one storage ISO cleaning station for concentrate users. And it's got a funnel on the bottom to get the ISO in really neat. And we released that through the Excel box. And we actually, it's one of our top selling products on Amazon right now.
We're selling over 50 units a day, something like that. If you're into concentrate and you have a setup that needs a little bit more organization, and you're looking for something that's really cool and compact, that doesn't just stand out on your coffee table. It's really awesome looking. That would be a great way to go about it.
And then also, we release more expensive third-party products as well through that. Yeah, I'm on your website right now. And I'm just looking at, I mean, there's just so many products. How many SKUs do you actually have on here?
So on the website, we have about 1, 1, 1,600 SKUs. Our Hemper branded, we have about 250 of those. And we're constantly coming out with new products. We want to be known for creating true, real functional, useful products, right?
When people look at it, we want them to think, no brainer. Like, oh, I didn't even know I needed that. That's the reaction we're trying to evoke out of everybody. And especially on the B2B side of our business, where we take a lot of the initial feedback from our customers on the subscription side.
And we go to our distribution partners and basically say, hey guys, look, we sold thousands of these units within a 30-day span. Here's our reviews on our website. People are raving about it. You should put this through to your distribution channel.
And that was one of the first data-driven approaches to product development. As opposed to like, hey, we have this one idea. Please put my product in store. Please put it through your distribution channel.
I'm telling you, you're going to make money. Well, that's not how we go. You can't sell hope. The data-driven approach really puts a lot of confidence back into the distributors and the retail stores, because all these retail stores, they have a finite amount of space.
So every store in CHASP be monetized. And if they're not putting products that move, you're not doing them any service. It's Cluffing Dust and they're not in storage business. I'm on these Best Bongs for sale page.
And I see the Happer Cactus, Jack Bong, and the Gamer Bong, and the Ripper. Now, these are all custom that you guys designed in the Happer brand. Yes. We have a three-person product development team that basically sits there and does ideation for different glass pieces.
And really, what separates Hemper from a lot of the other glass companies out there, and I really want to make this apparent, is that our glass has the same exact, if not more, function, than every other brand out there. But our products are more fun. Well, I get a ton of questions all the time. Like, how many bonds do people really need?
And I agree with that statement, right? Where if you have 10 beaker-style bonds on your shelf, you don't need another beaker-style bond, right? But the way we do it, where we curate these themes, and we really create them into more of a sculpture, like an art piece. And in fact, we actually just got, and I want to say, this is the first, we actually just got our rubber ducky bond, I registered as a sculpture from the USPTO office.
And I believe it's actually the first time the USPTO office actually granted a product paraphernalia, a bond, a sculpture. And this is actually allowing us to get IP now for our products, where a ton of other companies are knocking them off. Because a lot of people think we just buy these from China and call it a day. No, that's not what's happening.
We designed it in-house completely, years in advance. We try to make it as fun as possible. And the themes are what really people died into. They don't need another beaker bond or a straight-two bond or a generic little clear bond, right?
They want something that's fun, right? And I think a lot of people are missing the boat where when they ask the question, how many bonds do people really need? Well, let's change the light. Let's talk about how many sneakers do people need.
You really only need one pair of shoes. But Monday you want to wear the Nike's Tuesday, you want to wear the Adidas Wednesday, you want to wear the Jordan's. And that's what the community is right now. It's Monday I want to smoke the rubber ducky bond, Thursday I want the cactus jack bond.
And they have their rotation. And that's how people live. Yeah. Well, and also you can theme it, like you said, for Halloween, you can use the, the, yeah, the Gavs Bong, or looking at the Ripper Bong.
It'd be fun if you had a Halloween party. Let's just talk real quickly. You mentioned on the boxes, there are set boxes, but you can also customize the boxes too. Is that correct?
Yeah, so you can't customize a subscription box per se, but you can customize what you would like to subscribe to individually. So for example, let's say you're really into like an odor eliminating spray, right? And you go through that every month or a couple times a month. If you go to the product page on our website, there will be a little widget where you can actually subscribe to those individual products.
So we will just send you that odor eliminating spray as opposed to anything else that you would buy out the site. That makes sense. So you can kind of tailor your ritual to whatever you need. And we're on the back and creating those off.
So boxes, the subscribing to anything products, creating new products monthly. And one of our latest greatest ones, we actually just launched is called the Humber Quick Hitter's actually. It's the first disposable multi-use flavored one hitter. Okay.
And it's completely eco-friendly. We designed it out of a paper straw actually. And we were kind of tasked with what is an apparatus look like if 7-11 was selling one. And we really took to this because a ton of the flavor bands are coming into effect, especially at the convenience store level, where all the tobacco products are basically going to disappear over the next couple of years.
And so all these retailers are looking for new products that can tailor to that flavor market without violating any of the PMT stuff and still giving them that margin that they're looking for. And a lot of companies are used to like 10, 15, 20% on the shelf at the convenience store. But the products that we come out with are usually keystones. So they're doubling their money, which is really attractive as they kind of phase out these 10, 15% margin products.
And we kind of come in with these new age gadgets. That's really clever. That's really clever. Wow.
I had an older idea that I was going to talk about, but that is going to make a big difference, especially like you said, as the world changes and tobacco products get phased out, that's going to make a huge difference. That gets me really excited. The other thing that got me excited was the potential IP that you have for other products that you're inventing. You have an established customer base, a reoccurring customer base, which is really exciting.
I know a lot of investors love this idea, love your business. Moving forward, will there be opportunities for investors to invest in Humber? Where do you see that as an option? Eventually.
So right now, we are actually entertaining a few different options. Back in 2019, we were attempting to raise a series B right before all the craziness went down with COVID. And we pumped the brakes on that just because it wasn't the right time. We didn't know what was happening.
And I know a lot of companies were going out there raising funds with this as the outlook when this was going down in the world. And so fortunately, through COVID, we went very cashflow positive and we actually didn't even need to raise around. And we're probably one of the few companies right now that, I sleep fine at night. I know a lot of founders out there right now are struggling a lot of our markets.
So they think we hit the bottom last month. But the money's dried up right now. A lot of companies and VCs are focusing on their portfolio codes right now. And the sentiment is cut, cut, save, save, save, save, and ride this wave out.
And for us, fortunately, we're in a great position. We're at a great cash position. We just made the Inc 500 again this year for the fourth time in a row. And so we're entertaining, potentially doing another round.
But as of right now, we are nothing as open. Sure. Just gobbling up market share with all that cash coming in. Good for you.
Good for you. We'll have all of Humber's information and Brian's information in the show notes. So if you're tired of having a run to the convenience store in the middle of the night because you ran out of supplies, just click the link in the show notes and get on the subscription with the box. As Brian, I enjoy talking to you.
You're an inspiration for everyone, for all the new ideas that you constantly are coming up with. Keep going. I understand. I really appreciate it.