Episode 120
An Essential Hemp Story: Ron Alcalay Reveals the Vital Hemp Journey
Welcome to another episode of HempAware Podcasts!
In this episode, our host Tyler Hemp interviews Ron Alcalay, the creator of Vital Hemp, a Southern California-based lifestyle and hemp clothing brand.
Who is Ron Alcalay?
Ron Alcalay, of VitalHemp Clothing Company, is the eldest son of Jewish immigrants and grew up in LA.
He got into trouble during his teenage years, but his parents sent him to a prestigious prep school to straighten him out.
He went on to attend Brown and followed the path expected of him as the eldest son.
Ron shares his journey as a hemp entrepreneur, discussing the challenges, successes, and epiphanies that have shaped his path.
From overcoming stereotypes and misconceptions to creating eco-friendly, high-quality hemp clothing, Ron's insights and experiences offer a fascinating look into hemp entrepreneurship.
Join us as we explore the vital role of hemp in creating a sustainable future, the unique features of Vital Hemp products, and the critical message Ron has for the world.
Tuned in for a thought-provoking and inspiring conversation!
Overview of the show (Timestamps)
00:00 Ronnie creates eco-friendly hemp clothing brand. Influential.
05:41 Taught writing and film at Berkeley and beyond.
10:46 First time experience at a hemp store.
17:25 Successful cross-country journey leads to new connections.
26:19 Promoting hemp education and its benefits globally.
28:58 Transitioned from sales to becoming a designer.
33:10 Hemp vs. cotton: Sustainable, pesticide-free, water-efficient.
39:10 Missed opportunities in marketing, facing hiring challenges.
43:58 Transitioning from business leadership, low inventory.
53:15 Stylish, affordable, USA-made hemp clothing brand.
54:16 Chose LA for quality and durability.
01:02:59 Hemp's uses and benefits surprise and impress.
01:08:21 Protect and respect the planet for all.
01:12:15 Gratitude for teaching and sharing love legacy.
Transcript
Greetings, hempster. Thank you for listening in to another hemp episode of
Speaker:Hempel Ware Radio. This is Tyler Hemp, your hemptrepreneurial
Speaker:host, here to hemp power your hemposphere because it's hemp
Speaker:portant. Hemp entrepreneurs and hemp companies around the
Speaker:world struggle to market and sell their products effectively,
Speaker:but it doesn't have to be that way. At HempAware, we
Speaker:provide strategic marketing and branding services so
Speaker:that hemp entrepreneurs just like you can transform the world
Speaker:with your hemp products and services and transform the planet
Speaker:in a way that supports all of life. So if you're struggling to get
Speaker:traffic to your site or convert that traffic into ongoing
Speaker:sales or if you're needing help with your website, marketing,
Speaker:or branding in any way, visit hempawaredot com and check
Speaker:out some of the valuable resources that we've put together for hemp
Speaker:entrepreneurs and companies just like yours. On
Speaker:today's show, I'm honored to have a long time buddy and
Speaker:one of the OG Hemsters. His name is Ron
Speaker:Alcalay. I like to call him Rony. And he is the
Speaker:creator of a lifestyle and hemp clothing brand called Vital
Speaker:Hemp based out of Southern California. And their
Speaker:mission is to introduce people to the superior
Speaker:qualities of hemp by producing the most comfortable,
Speaker:healthy, and truly eco friendly clothing on the planet.
Speaker:As a vital member of the sustainable business community, they
Speaker:were part of the ground swell that changed the antiquated
Speaker:laws re legalizing the cultivation of industrial hemp in
Speaker:the USA so that we can all benefit from the
Speaker:myriad uses of this amazing plant. From food,
Speaker:plastics, clothing, paper, energy, fuel,
Speaker:medicine, and so much more. Vital Hemp introduces
Speaker:people to the superior qualities of hemp by producing
Speaker:the most comfortable, healthy, and sustainable hemp
Speaker:clothes possible. Hemp has come a long way and so has
Speaker:Vital Hemp. From their 1st weekend stand on the Venice
Speaker:Boardwalk in 2003 to their journeys up and down the
Speaker:West Coast to green festivals in Denver and DC
Speaker:and back to Sedona, Joshua Tree, and their old shop
Speaker:on Main Street in Santa Monica. All I can say is
Speaker:wow and express my gratitude for Ronnie
Speaker:for being such a an inspiration for so many people and for
Speaker:making this world a greener, more sustainable, and hempy place.
Speaker:So, Hempster, as you very well know, it's been far too
Speaker:long since hemp was known for what it really is, an
Speaker:essential solution for food, homes, clothing, plastics,
Speaker:energy, medicine, and fuel, and so much more. So if you're ready to take your
Speaker:hemp game to the next level and learn some things about how you can
Speaker:do better with your hemp business, then you're gonna love this hemp
Speaker:episode. So with that said, I'd like to welcome my good buddy and long
Speaker:time hempster, Ronnie Aukule, to the show. Thank you so much for
Speaker:joining me on this hemp episode. I appreciate you being here, brothers.
Speaker:Thank you, Tyler. Thanks so much. It's always good to see your
Speaker:face. It warms my heart. Right on. And, you know, we've known
Speaker:each other, gosh, I think probably close to 18 years. You've
Speaker:been doing this over 20 years now. But I don't
Speaker:think I have ever asked you, what did you do
Speaker:before you got into hemp and before you created your
Speaker:own hemp company with Vital Hemp? What what is your background? What is your
Speaker:expertise? Sure. Well,
Speaker:I was the eldest son of 2
Speaker:Jewish immigrants. My father from Bulgaria, he was a
Speaker:quantum physicist. My mother from Mexico,
Speaker:from Polish ancestry, and they met on a blind date here in
Speaker:LA. I was kind of the
Speaker:A straight son until I started smoking weed in
Speaker:the summer between 7th and 3th grade and threw
Speaker:little plants just beyond the backyard,
Speaker:which my brother saw me doing and ratted me out to my
Speaker:mom. Even though I told them it was a science experiment
Speaker:and she'd like, she'd like, mom, what's mommy's
Speaker:science experiment? But anyway, so they weren't too pleased.
Speaker:And they basically sent me to an all boys prep school called the
Speaker:Harvard School, now Harvard Westlake. And from there, I went to
Speaker:Brown and I did all the things that, you know, the eldest
Speaker:son is supposed to do. I graduated magna cum laude,
Speaker:double degree, and then I went to graduate school.
Speaker:Well, I thought I'd be a lawyer, but I ended up working in a law
Speaker:firm and realizing that wasn't for me, and that it would kill my
Speaker:soul. I knew I was a writer from probably 8th grade.
Speaker:I decided to go into a master's
Speaker:and PhD program at Berkeley with master's in
Speaker:creative writing and PhD in English and American literature. My
Speaker:idea was that I hadn't really even though I was one of my majors
Speaker:in college was top line, I felt like I hadn't read enough
Speaker:novels, and I really wanted to
Speaker:become an expert in writing stories. And I felt that the
Speaker:only way to do that was to consume more stories.
Speaker:So I did my master's in creative writing, my
Speaker:PhD in English and American literature. It took 10
Speaker:years. Along the way, I taught 6 of those years at
Speaker:Berkeley. I developed I developed an expertise in
Speaker:teaching writing and also in the literature
Speaker:of the 19th 20th century in America and the US.
Speaker:So I focused on post World War
Speaker:2, fiction and film. I also taught film history
Speaker:for many years. So at Berkeley, at San
Speaker:Francisco State, I lectured in the film industry department there
Speaker:and in the film department, and then I moved out here. I worked in the
Speaker:film industry, and my idea was to help the industry tell better stories.
Speaker:I worked with Steve Jobs around the entertainment
Speaker:world until I got hired to, like, some screen clothes.
Speaker:And then went back to teaching again at AFI, later at
Speaker:Loyola, with 3a half year stint working as
Speaker:a brand writer for the Children's Nature Institute with the nonprofit
Speaker:that served about 20,000 kids and
Speaker:parents and teachers everywhere, bringing them out to
Speaker:from the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles, landlocked neighborhoods. We
Speaker:would rent buses. We had trained walk leaders who went through a week
Speaker:long training program on how to
Speaker:provide interactive multi sensory nature
Speaker:experiences to the youngest children from
Speaker:pre k to 3rd grade when kids' minds
Speaker:are really developing and when their attitudes are
Speaker:forming. And I learned so much about how
Speaker:important being exposed to nature can be.
Speaker:I took it for granted because I grew up on the wild edge of LA.
Speaker:So the call says that a lot of these kids have never even seen the
Speaker:beach or walked on uneven ground. And those experiences
Speaker:form neural networks in to brains as kids'
Speaker:nature. Super important. We also combined with
Speaker:the lesson plans where we pretended we were trees
Speaker:or birds and sang songs and smelled things and
Speaker:interacted with nature. You know, their their impulse is if they see
Speaker:ants, they just wanna kill them. And we would say, no. You know, this is
Speaker:their home. I would be like it if a big giant spayed and
Speaker:stomped on you in your home. And so, you know, keep
Speaker:developing the apathy for these kids so that they started to see
Speaker:that every species are placed and
Speaker:functions in this world, and
Speaker:to to have developed feelings of respect and responsibility
Speaker:for the natural world because we're intertwined.
Speaker:And the the state of humans isn't
Speaker:intertwined with the state of other species. So,
Speaker:my expertise, I did teach students to the
Speaker:professional writers, writing screenplays, music video
Speaker:treatments, treatments, commercial treatments.
Speaker:You name it, I wrote it. And I'm still doing that. I just, this morning,
Speaker:wrote a holiday newsletter for the largest postproduction
Speaker:company in town, and I really enjoy
Speaker:using my skills of the wordsmith to
Speaker:help other companies, particularly allied companies,
Speaker:achieve their goals, whether internally or externally.
Speaker:I'm doing more of that. Vital Hemp is still going.
Speaker:Ideals for how to for new products that I wanna bring
Speaker:to market. And that's that's my background.
Speaker:That's beautiful. I mean, you you have done a lot in your life,
Speaker:and I I didn't realize you had a a PhD in American literature
Speaker:and taught at Berkeley. I mean, that's super
Speaker:pertinent information that all these years I didn't know about you.
Speaker:And it totally makes sense with, you know, the kindhearted
Speaker:human being that you are, that you worked with kids and taught them
Speaker:empathy, connecting with nature. It's totally on point with with
Speaker:who you need to be. So tell me,
Speaker:like, the moment or the the revelation that you had,
Speaker:like, I'm gonna create a hemp company. I mean, you could have been a lawyer.
Speaker:You could have gone into, you know, other fields like you
Speaker:said. But for some reason, you're like, I gotta create this hemp
Speaker:clothing company. Why did you what was that moment like for
Speaker:you? When did you have that epiphany? Yeah.
Speaker:Well, I think there were several epiphanies along the way. The
Speaker:first was on a road trip north to bid farewell
Speaker:to my friend, Lincoln Shlensky, who finally got his PhD at Firpo
Speaker:After 13 years, I had bought him a swatch as a going
Speaker:away present. He was going to the University of Alabama in Mobile
Speaker:to teach English and Dubreich studies. I always think
Speaker:that's kind of funny. Dubreich studies and in
Speaker:Mobile, Alabama. And I bought him a swatch to remind
Speaker:him of the value of time. But but on the
Speaker:way up north, I stopped in San Luis Obispo to get a bite
Speaker:and saw this place called The Hemp Shack. And it was the first
Speaker:time I'd ever seen a hemp store before. I went in
Speaker:and there were some beautiful clothes. And I remember
Speaker:feeling the hemp linen shirts and
Speaker:thinking, you know, this feels like it was made
Speaker:from plants. And it was the first time in my
Speaker:mind that I connected the idea that clothes
Speaker:can be made from plants. That when we're walking even that when we're
Speaker:walking around in our cotton, it's actually comes from the
Speaker:earth, which plant matter. But the with the
Speaker:hemp, because of the nature of the linen and the longs
Speaker:long fibers, it was really clear to me that this was
Speaker:like walking around wearing plants. And when I tried it on,
Speaker:it felt that there was this kind of instead of being a
Speaker:barrier between me and the world, I felt that it was a
Speaker:permeable barrier. Like, that my my skin could breathe
Speaker:through the fabrics. The world could breathe through the fabric
Speaker:into me. And it felt much more
Speaker:natural, and I felt more alive wearing it. So that was
Speaker:maybe my first experience. I bought the Lincoln a
Speaker:a sea salt gray banded collared shirt by a company called
Speaker:Juice Naturale. And but by the time I got to Berkeley, I had
Speaker:fallen so in love with the shirt, but I ended up giving him the swatch
Speaker:and keeping the shirt for myself. So, maybe
Speaker:a month a month later, I'm down in LA. I went to a
Speaker:yoga expo in in the expo center, and I
Speaker:see a guy selling some closeout merchandise of clothing
Speaker:and things. And so there's some hemp feasters, and I said,
Speaker:hey. Do you know where I can get any more clothes by this company called
Speaker:Juice Naturale? He said, oh, yeah. It's a long story, but they
Speaker:were the leaders of the high end hemp clothing business in the nineties,
Speaker:and they divorced and they dissolved the company. I said, well, well, do you know
Speaker:where I might get some closeouts? And so, yeah. You know, there's this guy
Speaker:named Jeff. He opened the hemp store on the just off the
Speaker:Windward Circle, and I think he bought all their closed out
Speaker:stuff. I said, oh, well, that's cool. That's not far from where I
Speaker:live. So and I at the time, I was in Louisville Street at
Speaker:Loyola, Maryknuff. So I went down there after after
Speaker:lecture, and I saw
Speaker:this parody of a hemp story, you know, with the plastic marijuana
Speaker:leaves around the perimeter and the obligatory picture of
Speaker:Bob Marley, and it smelled thick with
Speaker:No. Chocolate. Smoke with with smoke. No.
Speaker:No. With with cannabis smoke. And Oh, okay. The the stoned owner
Speaker:the stoned owner was behind their glass case with the walls,
Speaker:and and yet there were these beautiful clothes.
Speaker:All these different colors of just natural clothing all around
Speaker:stores. So I bought some things and
Speaker:returned the next day, very excited and bought more things. And
Speaker:I signed his guest with email list, and I made some
Speaker:comment like, this stuff's so great. I just have this fantasy of sharing it
Speaker:with the world. So about a week later, I'm in my
Speaker:flat in Los Feliz, and I'm preparing a lecture on, you know, Francois Truffaut
Speaker:or Italian Neo Reeler. You might forget which ones. On my Zenith
Speaker:laptop with the green little letters tell you how
Speaker:old, how what when it was. It was 2,000 and true, actually. And
Speaker:I get this email, and it's just like a one line email
Speaker:from this guy. It says, I'd like to discuss the possibility of going
Speaker:into the Hemp business with you. So here I was in academics,
Speaker:and suddenly I get this email. And I remember going into one of those
Speaker:moments where I just looked up into the right, and I think
Speaker:my eyes were open, but this full potential future
Speaker:sort of unrolled like a movie in front of me,
Speaker:one that I had never seen before. And it was interesting. I was like, wow.
Speaker:Could I do this? This is at the time I was lecturing,
Speaker:I just felt I'd seen an inconvenient truth. And
Speaker:I I felt like there's more that this world
Speaker:wants from me than to be standing on a podium in front of a
Speaker:podium, in front of a 125 film majors and lecturing
Speaker:about the, you know, creative achievements of mostly dead
Speaker:white men. I think that this world needs me to
Speaker:to do more and to fight for healthy
Speaker:environments and healthy ecosystem. And so in this
Speaker:moment, they kinda had a vision that that could be possible
Speaker:to have clothing. So I said, I wrote back and I said, yeah. Let's
Speaker:move. And so we met. He said, I wanna start a hemp clothing
Speaker:wholesale hemp clothing company with us. He said, what do you think we'd need? I
Speaker:said, well, I think we need a name and and a website. We
Speaker:might need a partnership agreement to figure out our roles
Speaker:and responsibilities. I I might like a an LLC
Speaker:to protect my meager assets. And he says, oh, you know
Speaker:so much, I'll give you half. And I said, well, I don't know about let
Speaker:me think about this. So I talked with a couple friends who had gone to
Speaker:Brown and got on to Wharton Business School and were, you know, successful
Speaker:business people. And I said, what do you think about this? They said, well, be
Speaker:careful who you get into partnership with because the partnership's like a marriage.
Speaker:And you gotta know that you can trust the person and then you
Speaker:communicate the with the person and then you like them. So you're
Speaker:gonna be spending a lot of time with them. I said, well, how do I
Speaker:do that? I just met with them. Well, they said, well, do something small with
Speaker:them first just to test test the waters. And I said, oh, that's a good
Speaker:idea. So I went back to him and I said, look. I spoke with my
Speaker:friends. They gave me some good advice. We're very small. Anything
Speaker:small that we can do together is to see if we try to get
Speaker:along. And he said, well, there's this dream festival up in San Francisco. I said,
Speaker:perfect. San Francisco, we could stay with my friends in Oakland.
Speaker:I'll work the booth with you. I don't even wanna get paid. I just
Speaker:wanna see if I like it. And so we met up there. He
Speaker:showed up showed up smelling like a homeless guy. My my friend
Speaker:gives me the bottle of doctor Broders and says, hey. Please give this to
Speaker:your friend, ask him to take a shower. Alright.
Speaker:Like, Jeff, you smell like you've been marinating in your own urine for
Speaker:hours. Oh, sorry. Sorry. So he took a shower. The next morning, we get
Speaker:up. We drive the U Haul across the Bay Bridge towards San
Speaker:Francisco. Francisco. Literally
Speaker:runs out of gas. He's like, oh, I forgot to fill up. Like,
Speaker:dude, quit putting the neutral. Roll up the windows.
Speaker:Turn off the radio. Get in the right ways. And we, like, screwed over
Speaker:that last bump on the Bay Bridge, and I knew where to get off on
Speaker:that first, Texas. And I knew where the 76 station was, so
Speaker:we, like, put I ran there. We got one of those gas tanks. We made
Speaker:it. And we sold. We set up the booth and I worked the
Speaker:booth and we sold a couple of $1,000 stuff. And I
Speaker:felt great because I met the green the members of the green
Speaker:business community, the, you know, fair trade
Speaker:chocolatiers and solar nuts and the
Speaker:health, the superfood yeets and all in all of these
Speaker:people who later became my close friends. And
Speaker:I thought I felt more at home in their company than I
Speaker:ever had among my supremely intelligent academic
Speaker:sons because they were on mission that it was
Speaker:more than just Hetty. It was really from the heart, and it was more than
Speaker:just ivory tower who was really in the world and
Speaker:here to be a service for the future of life on Earth. And
Speaker:that was what that was what I how I saw myself.
Speaker:So did you go into business with Jeff? I did. I
Speaker:we drove home together. We talked about our vision for for
Speaker:our company. We both wanted to to bring hemp back to the
Speaker:masses. And I said, yeah, like like the gaff of
Speaker:hemp. And, you know, we wanted we wanted to do stylish basic.
Speaker:So we came home, I copied a 2 page partnership agreement from
Speaker:the back of a Nolo press cook I found at the library. And we were
Speaker:partners for about 3 months until he kinda at the time I met
Speaker:him, I learned he had a seaway notice for his shop. I
Speaker:talked to his landlord. I kinda got him out of a jam. I invested some
Speaker:money. I started opening accounts in Northern California and the desert
Speaker:on Melrose. And, you know, he kinda got back on his feet, and then
Speaker:we ordered a second ship. We sold through the first shipment,
Speaker:and then he ordered a second shipment. And I learned that he
Speaker:had ordered some fabric without telling me, and the second shipment came with a
Speaker:name that we hadn't discussed. And I'm like, what's this forehead thing?
Speaker:And he said, oh, well, I just had some extra labels. I'm like, what about,
Speaker:Lord, I thought we were gonna do vital temptations.
Speaker:He says, oh, no. Well, I had these extra like, yeah.
Speaker:So he said, well and then he's kind of he wasn't
Speaker:communicating well, and I said, look. Just tell me what's going on. And we said,
Speaker:well, I wanna do 4 halves separately. And he said, well, listen. I don't have
Speaker:our agreements in front of me, but I think there's something called a non compete
Speaker:clause. Why would I be in business with you if you if you're gonna be
Speaker:running a competing business? And he said, well, then I'll buy you out. I said,
Speaker:I don't wanna be bought out. I'm in this. And he
Speaker:said, well, then let's just divide up the flows and and
Speaker:terminate the partnership. Like, really? Can we just do different brands
Speaker:for different sectors? Like, you know, the gap has Old
Speaker:Navy and Banana Republic. And so, no, I wanna do this. I'm like, alright.
Speaker:So it was like, one for you, one for me, one for me, one for
Speaker:me, one for me, one for you. And I had 40 boxes of PEM clothes
Speaker:in my garage. And most dealers, no experience
Speaker:in the in the clothing business. And I was like, what am I going to
Speaker:do? What am I doing? So I called my friend Greg
Speaker:Went, who was a sustainable guy. And I said, what do I do?
Speaker:He said, well, why don't you talk to my friend Clayson? She's producing the 1st
Speaker:birthday on the promenade. And I think it's going on in about a week. This
Speaker:was an an equals. I said, great. I called Casey. She said,
Speaker:yes, sir. Just bring a check for a $125. This was
Speaker:in April of 2003. Just goes to show you how much booths bought
Speaker:back loans. A $125 for a 10 by 10. I mean,
Speaker:later I would spend, you know, $8,000 or more at the natural
Speaker:products next up for the same size foods and for
Speaker:not making that much more. But anyway, so I I I was like, okay, I
Speaker:got a week. So I put an ad for a man with a van to
Speaker:help me, stop take the stuff down.
Speaker:I painted a a sign of the logo
Speaker:on some hemp cloth. I went downtown. I bought
Speaker:some used racks and used hangers
Speaker:and basically set up booth. It was a one day event.
Speaker:And, you know, I sold about a $1,000
Speaker:bad guy from the closeout piece that the name was
Speaker:Howard. He had had a store on the on the boardwalk in the 90.
Speaker:He he walks by and he says, oh, look at you. What are you doing?
Speaker:I I I thought you were partners with Jeff. He said, I said, yeah. We
Speaker:terminated. He said, oh, so what are you gonna do now? I said, I have
Speaker:no idea. He said, oh, well, why don't you
Speaker:come down to the boardwalk? I'll help you out. I know a guy, and he
Speaker:can rent you a spot. So I went down the next day, and I
Speaker:met this guy, and he shows me this little closet, you
Speaker:know, in a terrible part of the boardwalk. And he says, and you could put
Speaker:all your inventory here under under this building. And,
Speaker:I'm thinking, like, yeah. And it'll be gone the next morning.
Speaker:And so I just said to him, I'll I'll I'll get
Speaker:back to you. So I called him I literally called him back 10 minutes later.
Speaker:I said, I think I'm gonna pass. I walked to the top end of the
Speaker:boardwalk, turned around, started walking really slowly, just vibing,
Speaker:like, I'm gonna set up on the free side of the boardwalk. And I got
Speaker:to this place just south of Fig Trees, and it just
Speaker:felt right. And I look up, and there's a guy named Dave, and he's
Speaker:straddling a bike. And he's like, hey, Ron. And
Speaker:then Dave had worked for Jeff. And I said, hey, Dave. What are you doing?
Speaker:And he's standing underneath an empty half of a 10 by 20 foot
Speaker:booth. And I said I said, I'm just looking for a place to set
Speaker:up my, you know, cell hemp clothing. And he says, oh,
Speaker:yeah. I heard you and Jeff parted. Guy's a
Speaker:jerk. He borrowed my van and blew out the transmission and and he, you
Speaker:know, not pay me back. So I'm I'm
Speaker:leaving town. I'm going back to Vegas. He's like, you wanna buy my half of
Speaker:the booth? I said, how much? He said, $50.
Speaker:I said, oh, well, let me check. And I I looked to my wallet. I
Speaker:actually had a $50 bill. I handed it to him, and he he took it.
Speaker:And he said, well, wait. Hold on a minute. I shared the book with Mary
Speaker:Anne, who was in the other 10 by 10. And there's this, like, white
Speaker:Rastafarian woman, like, with selling white e Ethiopian
Speaker:clothes. And she looks up, and he says, hey, Mary Anne. This is Ron.
Speaker:He's a cool guy. He wants to sell hemp clothing out of this side of
Speaker:the booth. Is that okay with you? And she looks up at me, and she
Speaker:goes, yeah. He looks pretty cool. Oh, okay. So
Speaker:so I say he takes the 50. He says, and I'll come back tomorrow
Speaker:and help you set up. So that's began my, you know, 2
Speaker:year adventure on weekends on Venice on the
Speaker:Venice board. That's awesome. Yeah.
Speaker:Man, so you've been doing this. I mean, that was way back
Speaker:in 2003. So that's, you know, 20 years ago.
Speaker:What has the transformation been like for you in
Speaker:terms of people being open and receptive to
Speaker:hemp? I mean, obviously, being in Venice, I'm sure from the very beginning,
Speaker:you had people that were gung ho about what you had to offer.
Speaker:But I'm sure you've encountered the people asking if they can smoke your
Speaker:clothing and just the overall the negative
Speaker:perception of hemp being cannabis. What has your
Speaker:experience been seeing the transformation over these years? Well,
Speaker:yeah, I haven't experienced too much outright negativity.
Speaker:I've experienced a bunch of stereotypes. You know, I
Speaker:created the term hemp education. And on the back of all
Speaker:my hang tags and business cards, I have several
Speaker:backs of amputation mostly gleaned from the
Speaker:emperor wears no clout no clothes. And anyway,
Speaker:I you know, so when people would say, hey,
Speaker:if if I wear out my clothes, can I smoke them? I would
Speaker:say, well, hemp won't get you high, but wearing the clothes
Speaker:will raise your spirits. And I came up
Speaker:with little slogans that were designed to sort of
Speaker:counteract some of the Stigma. Negative negative
Speaker:stereotypes. Mhmm. Yeah. You were a big inspiration
Speaker:for me in that way because like you, I'm I consider
Speaker:myself a wordsmith, and I love the power of words
Speaker:and the, and so I created something called
Speaker:the the HempSecon, which is a Hemp Lexicon.
Speaker:And so over the years, we've just been adding, you know, as
Speaker:you very well heard at the beginning of the show, all my little I
Speaker:loved that. Yeah. It was so much fun. So overall these
Speaker:years, when it comes to the products that you've you've developed,
Speaker:tell me a little bit about the the spread of, you
Speaker:know, shirts and hoodies and pants? Like, what what
Speaker:are the different products that you've developed and and offered through Vital Hemp?
Speaker:And what are you focused on offering these days?
Speaker:Well, you know, I just wanna finish up the the last point a little bit
Speaker:and to say Sure. That that the project of Hemp
Speaker:Education was always a big part
Speaker:of vital hemp through my new, through, one
Speaker:of the things that I really enjoyed doing was writing the newsletters,
Speaker:But I really enjoyed it when people, the Venice
Speaker:Boardwalk drew a lot of people from all over the world and so did my
Speaker:store in Santa Monica. And a lot of people were just curious. They didn't
Speaker:really know what hemp was. And so because I knew a
Speaker:lot more and continued to learn, I was able to tell them
Speaker:everything from the difference between hemp and marijuana in terms
Speaker:of how it grows, in terms of the THC content, in terms of the
Speaker:different uses. I was able to tell them about all the different
Speaker:uses of hemp, both historically and and currently,
Speaker:turn them on to the ideas of hemp bioplastic
Speaker:and building materials, and then put them in a hemp
Speaker:shirt and tell them about the benefits of
Speaker:hemp fabrics, both from the antimicrobial perspective and
Speaker:the breathing, the durability, the way it wears
Speaker:in. You know, it was fun coming up with metaphors, like people that
Speaker:I told you about the hemp won't get you high, but these colossal rager spirits.
Speaker:I would I had another one that I came up which would which is like
Speaker:hemp is like you know, it's like canines. Not not all
Speaker:canines are the same. You know, the golden retriever can be your best
Speaker:friend, and the wolf, which also has a a valuable place
Speaker:in in in the ecosystem. But if you encounter it, it could
Speaker:it could bite you. And so in the same way, you know, you you might
Speaker:if you were to just discover marijuana for the first time
Speaker:and ingest a bunch of it, you might get really, you know, way
Speaker:too stoned. But hemp t shirt could be your favorite t shirt
Speaker:in your wardrobe. Anyway, good luck. Now that's just
Speaker:on that. Now in terms of what we've made in the
Speaker:past, when I first started on the boardwalk,
Speaker:I was buying t shirts that that Barbara
Speaker:Fillipone designed and had
Speaker:made in her fact in one of the factories she worked with in
Speaker:China. And they were very standard cuts. They
Speaker:were pretty standard colors, you know, black, white.
Speaker:I believe there was a navy blue and possibly a
Speaker:burgundy and maybe an olive. And, you
Speaker:know, those were good. I was selling them for $30 a piece. I think I
Speaker:bought them for 15 or something like that. And, you know,
Speaker:it was an okay business. It was challenging. It wasn't I
Speaker:wasn't getting rich on it at all. I I don't even know if I was
Speaker:making a profit after all, but didn't really pay myself much in those days
Speaker:or ever. But, eventually,
Speaker:I used the contact that
Speaker:I had through my short lived partnership with
Speaker:Jeff to travel to China and to well,
Speaker:even before I traveled there, to just just
Speaker:just start becoming a designer of things that I wanted to make.
Speaker:So if I wanted to make a long sleeve, I would buy a Patagonia long
Speaker:sleeve and send it to China and say, please make this in this
Speaker:specific hemp tencel knit that I was using. And
Speaker:they would make it. And then I would, you know, work with a pattern maker
Speaker:here and say, okay. I want the sleeves a little bit narrower than
Speaker:than how they came out, and I want the body a little narrower and
Speaker:or a little longer. Or you know, and I would send notes back with
Speaker:drawings to China, and then they'd say, okay. We got it.
Speaker:And then I would cry I'd wire $20,000 or
Speaker:whatever it was as the first payment, and then another
Speaker:20 later. And then cross my fingers, and then all these boxes
Speaker:would come in, you know, filled with hemp clothing, whether it was T
Speaker:shirts or hoodies or long sleeves or later pants or
Speaker:skirts. And I would, you know, unfurl the
Speaker:boxes. And they and they were all colors that I had chose from, you
Speaker:know, Pantone chart based on things that I wanted to
Speaker:to see in the world and, you know, usually inspired by nature.
Speaker:And I had a lot of fun with contrast stitching and back in
Speaker:those days. And, you know, I I experiment. Like, this shirt that I'm
Speaker:wearing, it's probably from that old time. I mean, can you believe it? I this
Speaker:shirt's probably 10 years old than these. It's an aqua shirt
Speaker:within the contrast. It's, you know, flatlock stitch. I mean, this one was made
Speaker:in LA, but, yeah, this is one of my aqua shirts I love it.
Speaker:Wearing. So my idea was to
Speaker:still to create fashionable basics so that we could
Speaker:replace the polluting cotton that was really
Speaker:polluting ecosystems and leading to
Speaker:farmers and places like India killing themselves
Speaker:because they couldn't maintain their livelihoods with the
Speaker:expenses of the of the pesticides, and then the pesticides
Speaker:would blow off into the rivers. And there would be health problems
Speaker:among their wives, birth defects, and the fish would be born
Speaker:with 3 eyes and all sorts of problems. I remember listening
Speaker:to a presentation by the head of women's health organization,
Speaker:International Women's Health Organization at one of the business
Speaker:conferences up in San Francisco, and it brought tears to my eyes. And I thought,
Speaker:you know, if if hemp can alleviate some of the suffering
Speaker:and help clear up some of these polluted ecosystems that are
Speaker:being polluted because of cotton, then then we're doing a good job.
Speaker:Which actually ties into my my next question. And you already kinda
Speaker:touched upon it, which is, you know, why is hemp so much
Speaker:better than other fabrics? Why why should more people
Speaker:be wearing hemp fabric clothing? Well, I think
Speaker:it's better on a micro level and on a macro level.
Speaker:On the micro level, I've touched on the fact that, you know, it it's it's
Speaker:the most breathable natural fiber. Really well. I
Speaker:wear it as a base layer when I'm skiing. I also wear it
Speaker:as when I'm in the hot, humid tropics.
Speaker:And I've had people from mountain
Speaker:climbers to surfers give me, you know, phenomenal
Speaker:feedback. Like, hey. I love this. I was down in Ecuador. It performed
Speaker:so well. Or I'm in Bali. I wear your stuff all the time. Or I've
Speaker:had, you know, rock climbers say I was in Joshua Tree
Speaker:in winter stuck up on a face overnight, and I was so happy that I
Speaker:was wearing your Vital Hem hoodie. Or, you know, things like that.
Speaker:Or people coming back from Tibet saying, like, I was holed up in
Speaker:a cave, and all I had given away, all my belongings, and all one of
Speaker:the only pieces I had was your vital ham booty, and I was so
Speaker:happy. Oh, you know, I mean, these stories sometimes bring
Speaker:tears to my own eyes. But so that's the micro level. The
Speaker:macro level is that unlike cotton, that
Speaker:is pesticide intensive, except for organic cotton, but
Speaker:that accounts for such a tiny little one
Speaker:part overall cotton production of the world. Hemp,
Speaker:is largely grown all over the world without pesticides because it's just
Speaker:naturally pest resistant. It also
Speaker:uses a lot less water than cotton cultivation, both
Speaker:in the growing of it, but also and more importantly
Speaker:in the care of the garments. For example, when I wear
Speaker:a pair of of pants, if it's a pair of cotton pants,
Speaker:typically, I'll wash that pair of pants, you know, after I wear it because it
Speaker:will have absorbed a bunch of sweat, and it just doesn't feel
Speaker:clean anymore. I can wear my hemp anywhere. My my
Speaker:that's which I think you've probably had a pair or 2 in your
Speaker:lifetime. I can wear those 3, 4
Speaker:times before putting them in the in the laundry. They're made out of
Speaker:a 100% hemp linen. They're they breathe.
Speaker:They don't absorb perspiration. They wick moisture away from the
Speaker:skin, and they stay fresh longer. So,
Speaker:you know, I'm saving 3 to 4 washes
Speaker:every time I wear that. Same with t shirts. I thought I was wearing a
Speaker:cotton t shirt. Every day, I would have to wash that or
Speaker:put it in the laundry. I can wear a a hemp t shirt two times.
Speaker:It's second day, it's still fresh. I mean, unless I'm, like, running up a hillside.
Speaker:But for the for everyday use, yeah, you can wear a t
Speaker:shirt earlier. Afting it having the water
Speaker:usage of that. Mhmm. The life of the garment, that adds up. Over the
Speaker:over millions of people, that adds up. So there's that. Then I learned
Speaker:about the most important thing with respect to
Speaker:global warming, which is the way in which the hemp crop
Speaker:sequesters atmospheric carbon. For every
Speaker:ton that we've harvested, sequesters 1.62
Speaker:tons of atmospheric carbon, which means it's a carbon
Speaker:from that carbon that it brings out of the atmosphere goes into
Speaker:the soil, into the fibers of plant the roots
Speaker:root systems and the actual matter of the plant. So it gets turned
Speaker:into products, whether it's clothing, food,
Speaker:building materials, etcetera. And I felt really, really
Speaker:good about that Actually, Patagonia, actually.
Speaker:Mhmm. Those are a couple of reasons. How how's that? Oh, more
Speaker:than enough. Yeah. I mean, it's very clear to me that there's
Speaker:far more reasons to wear hemp than any other type of fiber.
Speaker:So to kinda shift gears here and get more into the
Speaker:hemptrepreneurial aspects of your life. It's not
Speaker:easy being an entrepreneur, let alone a hemptrepreneur.
Speaker:There's more challenges. There's more struggles.
Speaker:There's more things I think that get in the way for somebody to be
Speaker:delving into a hemp business. And so in your
Speaker:experience, what what would you say are some of the biggest challenges
Speaker:that you've had to face as a hempsterpreneur and how have you
Speaker:been able to overcome some of those things?
Speaker:Well, I think like many people, we
Speaker:go in from because we're idealists and because we care
Speaker:about this world and we wanna do something tangible. We don't
Speaker:just wanna go, I would have never gone into apparel
Speaker:if it wasn't. I would have I I really didn't care
Speaker:that much about clothing. At work, I was still wearing God's
Speaker:for Ross dress for less or from my from an estate
Speaker:sale on the side of the road or stuff that I was still wearing in
Speaker:college because my body hadn't changed that much. So, you know,
Speaker:to me, as long as it was comfortable, I didn't need it
Speaker:to be fashionable. And I I really didn't care about fashion. I
Speaker:never went to fashion magazines. I still don't. It
Speaker:it was because of hemp that I got into it. And I think that's
Speaker:what draws a lot of entrepreneurs or people in to
Speaker:become entrepreneurs, to become hemp hemp preternures
Speaker:in in the hemp world. So what is it that that's that
Speaker:are the unique challenges? I think for a lot I think that one of
Speaker:the unique challenges is that it draws a lot of people who don't
Speaker:have necessarily a lot of business business experience. I did
Speaker:not have business experience. I did not go to business school. I've
Speaker:never taken a business class. I didn't even know
Speaker:how important marketing was until probably 10
Speaker:years in no, probably 7 years to
Speaker:running my business when I opened my store on main street.
Speaker:Okay. So of all your years
Speaker:marketing your products in the hemp industry, what
Speaker:would you say are some of the biggest challenges that
Speaker:you've had in this industry and and marketing and
Speaker:selling hemp products, and how have you been able to overcome some of those challenges?
Speaker:Right. So as I think I said before,
Speaker:the the challenges were at the
Speaker:beginning largely because of my background,
Speaker:or or I should say lack of background in business, I
Speaker:didn't even realize until probably 6 years
Speaker:into the business that it made sense for me to
Speaker:put money into marketing. I was just putting
Speaker:money into product and refining product and
Speaker:and, you know, occasionally, I would go to a festival or a
Speaker:show. And I in my mind, I didn't even think of those places as
Speaker:marketing opportunities. I was just there to sell. And
Speaker:I I mean, I did eventually create a website, and
Speaker:I I did start my newsletters a long time
Speaker:ago. So in some sense, that was marketing. It was marketing.
Speaker:Had I back in, let's say, 2,005
Speaker:or even 2010, had I decided to put
Speaker:more money in into such things as Facebook ads
Speaker:and understand that world, I think or even
Speaker:Google AdWords, which later I discovered maybe
Speaker:2015 around then I started to put somebody into
Speaker:Facebook ads, somebody into Google AdWords.
Speaker:I I also never really understood or
Speaker:devoted myself to affiliate marketing, which would have been
Speaker:another really good opportunity for Vital Hemp because I have lots of
Speaker:allies in the world, and I think that they would have been happy
Speaker:to make a little money by turning other people on to
Speaker:Vital Hemp stuff. So in a way, I think it just had to do
Speaker:with inertia and just going with where I was strong, which
Speaker:and where I wanted to spend my time, which was working
Speaker:with the designer other designers, cutters,
Speaker:sewers, bit models, pattern makers, dye houses, all of
Speaker:that, you know, all of the people associated with production,
Speaker:and then writing my newsletters, which I can do and love
Speaker:to do just because it's that's my strength, And
Speaker:being out on the road, being either being in the shop or being out on
Speaker:the road at festivals or expos and so forth, where I'm actually
Speaker:meeting with and interacting with my customers
Speaker:and helping them out. So I think that was my biggest
Speaker:challenge, was when I did eventually understand that my
Speaker:understand that my business could really flourish
Speaker:much better. If I were to devote some qualified
Speaker:resources towards marketing. I ended up hiring
Speaker:a series over the years of, you know, probably starting in
Speaker:2,000 15 or so till 2020,
Speaker:a series of digital marketing agencies
Speaker:who just let me down one after another. They would get
Speaker:me on a monthly retainer. You know, the the salesperson who initially
Speaker:I spoke with knew his stuff impeccably. And I thought,
Speaker:okay. Finally, someone who gets what I wanna do. They're saying all the right things.
Speaker:I've asked them all the right questions. They're telling me all the right answers. And
Speaker:then I sign up, and then I pay, you
Speaker:know, whatever, $3,000 a month and getting
Speaker:some college 19 year old college graduate
Speaker:in Florida or Mexico who's, like, writing these stupid,
Speaker:thank god it's Friday, you know, memes, which
Speaker:are ridiculous and full of grammatical errors. And
Speaker:and anyway, I I can times
Speaker:I went through that stuff and no accountability,
Speaker:no increase in sales, just money out the door over
Speaker:and over again. Not entirely true with the
Speaker:one foray I did into Google AdWords. I did get some
Speaker:some benefit from that. I may have gotten some benefit from the
Speaker:few times that I myself paid for some
Speaker:Facebook ads, but it would have been really good,
Speaker:I think, to have someone trustworthy and knowledgeable
Speaker:me or to maybe bring someone in house to
Speaker:do that. I just never found the right people to do it for
Speaker:me. Well, what what did you find to be some of the most,
Speaker:like, effective ways of getting sales? I know we
Speaker:from what you've shared with me and from who I know you to be and
Speaker:how you operate, word-of-mouth is, like, probably
Speaker:foundational. People wear your clothing and are pretty much walking
Speaker:billboards for Vital Hemp, and then they tell their friends and
Speaker:then it kind of spreads. But is there anything beyond that that you're I
Speaker:don't even know if word-of-mouth is number 1. I think it's
Speaker:repeat business. I think that Mhmm. I have a, you know, I have a
Speaker:email list of 75100 people or so. And
Speaker:I venture to guess that every single one of those people well, no, not every
Speaker:single one, but probably 6,000 out of those 75100
Speaker:are actually customers who've bought something at one time or another over the
Speaker:last 20 years. Yeah. And so when I send a newsletter
Speaker:marketing is a big thing for you. When I send a newsletter out,
Speaker:there's a I usually get a flurry of orders. Nice.
Speaker:For whatever reason, I had it in my mind that I should send out a
Speaker:monthly newsletter. So I've really only been sending out monthly newsletters. Some other
Speaker:companies I see, they're sending out 2 to 3 newsletters.
Speaker:They're maybe not newsletter, but 2 to 3 email marketing
Speaker:this or that a week. Yeah. So they're really
Speaker:benefiting from that. I, for whatever reason, didn't do
Speaker:that even though that would have been a smart move. Yeah. And it's not
Speaker:too late. And it's not too late. And, you know, I'm I'm in a I'm
Speaker:in a point of transition in a way because I'm
Speaker:not sure how VitalHab's been a bit of hibernation
Speaker:since we closed the store at the beginning of the pandemic.
Speaker:And I've not really produced anything since the beginning of the pandemic.
Speaker:I've just been selling off existing inventory and
Speaker:inventory levels are very low right now. I mean,
Speaker:and I I I I just got very tired of running
Speaker:the business all by myself. When I say that, I I mean, I've always had
Speaker:people working with me, but I've always been the one in
Speaker:the c level making those decisions,
Speaker:whether it was CEO,
Speaker:CTO, CFO, CMO,
Speaker:blah blah blah, technology. Mark, I've been making decisions that I
Speaker:wasn't actually that qualified to make. And a few times when I
Speaker:did hire someone to take over those
Speaker:hats, they might work for a while and makes help me make some good
Speaker:decisions. And then, you know, for whatever reason, they might leave
Speaker:or I might let them go. And then I would
Speaker:be left with sometimes with systems I didn't understand,
Speaker:sometimes with systems that were half made, sometimes with systems that didn't
Speaker:integrate with other systems, and so forth. So you're saying marketing
Speaker:for you has has at the core been repeat business,
Speaker:sending out your monthly newsletter, word-of-mouth. Showing
Speaker:up. I mean, showing up at at events. I mean Live events. And also,
Speaker:what's interesting is that I had a pretty decent business. Part of my
Speaker:business was making custom orders for other
Speaker:companies. So whether that was early on,
Speaker:raw food restaurant called Leaf Cuisine. My friend Rod loved my
Speaker:shirts. He's like, hey. We need shirts for our for our team and our customers,
Speaker:and so I made I think he might have been my first custom order customer.
Speaker:He chose the color. He had a new logo. I made it.
Speaker:I took it downtown. I had it printed, blah blah blah. That was first
Speaker:one. Next one might have been early one was John
Speaker:Rulak from Nutiva, and that was a big order. A 1,000
Speaker:shirts, men's and women's, and in two colors
Speaker:with his logos and even a little side patch here, logo on the backside
Speaker:patch here. Those turned out great. He loved them. His people loved
Speaker:them. And when you have a 1,000 people getting shirts,
Speaker:right, that's a 1,000 people going, oh, I love this
Speaker:shirt. Wow. Vinyl hip? Okay. Yeah. Let me go
Speaker:online. Oh, okay. I'm gonna order another one. So now that's kinda like I
Speaker:don't know how long it would take me to sell a 1,000 pieces
Speaker:if I was at a booth. Mhmm. So you don't know how long it would
Speaker:take you to sell a 1000 pieces long it would take me. If you've been
Speaker:in the store, it might just to sell a 1000 pieces, it might have taken
Speaker:3 months to sell a 1,000 pieces Mhmm. Or or a month or
Speaker:2 months. I don't know exactly. I I don't have had. But to to
Speaker:get a single order where it's a 1,000 pieces or maybe you have a 1,000
Speaker:customers who bought each of them will likely fall in love with that
Speaker:piece and then maybe might wanna get more. So it's kind of
Speaker:a very good model, I think, for me to grow the business if
Speaker:I wanna jump back in and grow it
Speaker:with the middle bound. B to b wholesale focus.
Speaker:Yeah. Especially, like, cut to border. Not even wholesale
Speaker:because those customers have you know, wholesale
Speaker:owners, especially of boutiques, they're they're operating with
Speaker:limited budgets. They wanna place limited
Speaker:orders targeted to their customers, and they're very
Speaker:finicky. Like, you get they get something and it does, oh, can I return this?
Speaker:Can I just, Okay? I would like they want what they want everything at
Speaker:wholesale. So you're not making the margins. Plus, you're dealing
Speaker:with someone who's as finicky, if not more finicky, than your
Speaker:average retail customer. So it just didn't me. I mean, I
Speaker:did it for many, many years. I I love Yeah. My wholesale
Speaker:customers, and I love the fact that there was someone in from
Speaker:Mexico to Seattle, there were stores
Speaker:telling my stuff. And, you know, on the East Coast
Speaker:and all over. I love that. And I I love visiting
Speaker:those stores and meeting the owners and and and supporting them as
Speaker:best I could. From a business perspective, it wasn't the easiest for
Speaker:me to do. And then sometimes, a lot of times, I wasn't just able
Speaker:to satisfy them. It's like they'd be like, oh, we want
Speaker:more men's long sleeves. And I'd be like, well, I don't
Speaker:have enough men's long sleeves to give you a full size run-in the colors you
Speaker:want. All I have is enough maybe for my store, and even then, I'm running
Speaker:low. Mhmm. So Hard to keep up with it
Speaker:all. Yeah. So I do I I think it would have been better had I
Speaker:got had gotten into had maybe a wholesale sales manager
Speaker:who was really good. And I did, at times, have people
Speaker:who were devoted to wholesale. And I had at one time, I had
Speaker:road reps, and I had people who were supposedly representing the
Speaker:brand. And the idea was to create
Speaker:enough preorders and aggregate those
Speaker:preorders so that and even get deposits on the preorders so that then
Speaker:and I did this successfully kind of near the beginning. Starting in
Speaker:around 2005. I was doing that even when I was getting
Speaker:Chinese goods because it was allowing me to fund the
Speaker:production. I would take 50% deposit. I'd let people know
Speaker:what I was ordering. They'd order. I'd take 50% deposit. Then this stuff
Speaker:would come in. I would ship it out and and collect the
Speaker:second 50% before shipping, actually, including Mhmm. That was a
Speaker:good model. And I just you know? Anyway, with this
Speaker:I think at a certain point, I was probably doing too many things. I was
Speaker:doing the store, wholesale, custom orders, and ecommerce, and
Speaker:festivals. And so it was just too
Speaker:many things. I was one guy. I was self funding it.
Speaker:And yeah, it was sort of a recipe for a little bit of
Speaker:It it burnout. Yeah. A little burnout and also just
Speaker:not being able to look at all of these
Speaker:activities that I was doing and be with a very cold analytical
Speaker:eye. Mhmm. Hit the numbers and go, okay. Does it
Speaker:really make sense to be doing wholesale? Does it really
Speaker:make sense to be going to this festival considering
Speaker:the costs? Yeah. You think maybe as as, like, a word of
Speaker:of advice to other hemp entrepreneurs, you would say
Speaker:maybe pick one area of a business and hone
Speaker:in and focus your energy so that you can really ignite that one
Speaker:aspect of it rather than trying to do 10 different things? Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah. Absolutely. For sure. I mean, it's very
Speaker:tempting because, you know, you wanna be able to serve people
Speaker:online. You wanna be able to serve people if they're going to a store. You
Speaker:wanna be able to serve people if they're going to an expo
Speaker:or if they want custom orders. But unless you have the
Speaker:the staff to help you manage
Speaker:and integrate all of those different sectors of
Speaker:your business into one model
Speaker:and to coldly assess, like, what's performing,
Speaker:what's not, and then to make decisions based on those things. Same
Speaker:with I mean, I'm an optimist. Right? So I and I like to try
Speaker:new things. So I always thought, well, maybe doing the wholesale
Speaker:will eventually grow their business too, and then they'll
Speaker:order more the next time. Mhmm. More in terms of
Speaker:production. Maybe it would have been better for me to stick to t shirts and
Speaker:hoodies and pants for a while before venturing into
Speaker:long dresses and short dresses and, you know,
Speaker:whatever, beanies and hempkins and everything else
Speaker:that I did. Yeah. What I I call it chasing all the Henleys,
Speaker:button downs, long sleeve, short sleeve, shorts.
Speaker:I mean, you name it. Right? Yeah. And there were many, many,
Speaker:many more things that I wanted to do that customers were asking
Speaker:for, any one of which could have been a success. But the
Speaker:problem is that when you spread yourself too thin, as I did,
Speaker:and you don't have the resources to thicken the
Speaker:ice, so to speak, to support you, you can fall
Speaker:through. There's some thin areas, and then they become kind of dangerous
Speaker:areas. Like, oh, well, is this whole thing just gonna cave in? Or
Speaker:what do I do now? I gotta, you know, I can't really support this area
Speaker:anymore because it's too thin. I can't support that area anymore. It's too thin.
Speaker:So gotta skate over to the thick areas.
Speaker:Yeah. I call it the the for hemptrepreneurs, it's
Speaker:the curse of too many hemportunities. That's there you
Speaker:go. There you go. To kind of shift gears here, I I
Speaker:just have a few more questions. Sure. So I, first of all,
Speaker:really appreciate you and everything that you've done in the industry. And
Speaker:I wanna kinda focus in specifically on
Speaker:vital hemp products and what makes them unique, what makes
Speaker:them different from other hemp
Speaker:clothing products on the market? What what it what is different about your
Speaker:products, and what makes them unique? Initially,
Speaker:my my vision for the brand was to
Speaker:create stylish, comfortable,
Speaker:affordable hemp clothing and ultimately made in the
Speaker:USA. So I think that the first distinguishing
Speaker:feature from some brands is that some
Speaker:brands are still made overseas. Many have returned home, and
Speaker:I'm happy about that. But we've, ever since 2010,
Speaker:we've been manufacturing here in LA. And I'm
Speaker:a designer in in effect, and I have been since the
Speaker:beginning. I'm told I mean, since the beginning when I started designing,
Speaker:not in the 1st couple years when I was just selling other
Speaker:people's stuff. But for the last 18 years, I've been the designer,
Speaker:and I've worked with family owned businesses in Los
Speaker:Angeles, and I've always attempted to source the very,
Speaker:very best quality materials and to work with the very,
Speaker:very best contractors. And and it took me a
Speaker:while to find those.
Speaker:For example, if the knits that I
Speaker:was getting were shrinking too much or would develop holes
Speaker:or whatever it was, I would switch and I would find a different manufacturer.
Speaker:And, ultimately, I ended up making my knits
Speaker:in LA, like, actually from yarn. I found someone
Speaker:somewhere that could just import the yarn, we'd make the fabric in LA.
Speaker:And it's a really, really and so it's so stable and so
Speaker:good. I took a, you know, probably like a 4 mile hike today.
Speaker:I'm still wearing the shirt, and it doesn't even smell because it
Speaker:was wicking the whole time, and hemp has these great ant
Speaker:antimicrobial qualities. So there's that. Best
Speaker:best sewer, best dye house, best cutters, finishing,
Speaker:all of that. I really have. When I made my Anywhere pants,
Speaker:I used American made thread. Who uses American made thread?
Speaker:No one, I guarantee you, uses American made thread because
Speaker:it's so much more expensive than the Chinese made thread or
Speaker:thread made anywhere else in the world. I wasn't I tried to minimize
Speaker:the use of plastic. Like, I never went into the
Speaker:recycled plastic blends. I just think plastic. There's a
Speaker:myth that plastic is recyclable. Most of it, above
Speaker:90% of it, never gets recycled. And because
Speaker:people think that it can be recycled, it just give permission
Speaker:to make more and more things out of plastic. Oh, I'll just recycle these bottles.
Speaker:I'll recycle these containers. I'll recycle. And it just ends up going into
Speaker:landfill, eventually gets into the ocean, but everywhere else. It's horrible.
Speaker:It's clogging up the arteries of the planet
Speaker:and the lungs of the planet and the ocean being one of the
Speaker:major ones and very harmful. So I never
Speaker:wanted to participate in the plastic thing. I
Speaker:don't even think recycled plastic's a good solution at all. You know,
Speaker:maybe if they're taking stuff out of the oceans and then
Speaker:recycling that, fine. But any new product,
Speaker:recycling, forget it. Just let's not make let's go to a
Speaker:0 plastic model Mhmm. Manufacturer. Mhmm. When
Speaker:that plastic is made with biomass. Mhmm.
Speaker:And or polymers. I know that's not right on
Speaker:the horizon, but it we're we're there. We're getting close. Okay.
Speaker:Second thing is I was one of the first people
Speaker:to just really invest in 100% hemp stuff.
Speaker:I'm not saying I'm the first. I mean, the company that came before me, Juice
Speaker:Naturale, they had a lot of heavier, 100%
Speaker:shirts and some 100% pants made in
Speaker:China. I I really liked using the 100%
Speaker:hemp linen fabric for my shirting and
Speaker:pants, and I just think it's such a great fabric.
Speaker:And people have loved my Anywear pants, both
Speaker:men's Anywhere pants and the women's Anywhere pants for decades
Speaker:now. So I just keep making them when I can all totally out of the
Speaker:men's ones except for small and double extra large. But I have
Speaker:women's still in most size runs in most in
Speaker:most of the sizes, in most of the colors, not all, at this point.
Speaker:But, yeah, and I would use YKK zippers because I knew they're
Speaker:the best. I would use either coconut or Coroso buttons
Speaker:because coconut's a natural
Speaker:product and Coroso is a shell. Or is Coroso a nut? I
Speaker:think Coroso is a nut, actually. So, again, just reducing
Speaker:plastic, using the best quality. What else? I I
Speaker:know one thing. What? Oh, the colors. Yeah. The colors
Speaker:is definitely unique. You're using hemp and
Speaker:TENCEL. You're blending with before. No. No. I used anymore.
Speaker:I used hemp. I was one of the early ones. I mean, Barber developed
Speaker:that that fabric. Like, your your knit
Speaker:fabrics, the jersey knit, is that a hemp and organic cotton, or what is
Speaker:it? Hemp and organic cotton. Okay. Nice.
Speaker:It's a hemp and organic cotton. It's a 5545. It's a really
Speaker:nice weight. I garment dye everything rather than piece
Speaker:dyeing. So Oh. So everything is preshrunk. Yeah.
Speaker:And I spend a lot of time with fit. You know, people
Speaker:really like my fits, whether it's I mean, I can't tell you what I what
Speaker:I meant wanted to make a wrap dress. I probably went through so
Speaker:many iterations of that wrap dress till I got it just right. And then I
Speaker:you know, and then people loved it, and I sold out. I maybe made it
Speaker:one more time after that. I don't know why I didn't continue making it.
Speaker:I guess it's just bandwidth. Maybe I didn't have enough money to fund production at
Speaker:that point for more. But, yeah, I really, really concentrate on fit. I
Speaker:mean, my background, as I had mentioned to you, is in writing and literature,
Speaker:and and in this I I get I put as much care
Speaker:into the fit into sort of nailing the fit of things as I
Speaker:do with making sure that, you know, I've
Speaker:proofread an essay that I'm gonna put in the world or or something like that.
Speaker:You know, there are times when things where there are surprises and, you
Speaker:know, maybe the sleeves come out too long because the fit, the
Speaker:shrink test was different than what ultimately happened in
Speaker:production. And, you know, I've had to adjust. Sometimes I've had
Speaker:to shorten sleeves, or sometimes I've had to somehow make things
Speaker:work or size down or do something. Rarely, but it
Speaker:happens. Not not everything is perfect. Yeah. I'm more
Speaker:proud of certain styles than I am of others. I made a hemp
Speaker:Henley couple years ago, and I thought, oh, this is
Speaker:gonna be so cool. It's a Henley hoodie, and it's got buttons.
Speaker:It ended up a little boxier than I would have liked and a little shorter
Speaker:than I would have liked. I still wear it. There's still people who love
Speaker:it and buy it, But it wasn't like one of those,
Speaker:like, the regular hoodie where people just where I sell
Speaker:out very quickly because that's a staple that people didn't want.
Speaker:Yeah. You know, and they wanted it every color. They want I mean, I
Speaker:have people who are constantly saying, oh, can you bring this back? Oh,
Speaker:can you bring that back? Oh, can you make more of these? And let me
Speaker:know when this is available again. And, you know, on the one hand, I really
Speaker:want to make more. On the other hand, I
Speaker:just am at a point where unless someone wants to come
Speaker:in with resources and know
Speaker:how, particularly maybe marketing know how, ecommerce know
Speaker:how to build the business. I'm just not
Speaker:inclined to jump in by myself again.
Speaker:Those are all unique, you know, differentiators with your
Speaker:products. That was, you know, what I was looking for. I mean, I think people
Speaker:have over the years told me that the colors are
Speaker:so unique and and really make them feel good. And I think it's because I
Speaker:choose the colors both with my eyes
Speaker:and, like, with my whole my heart and my whole body. Like,
Speaker:I literally will just look at colors and
Speaker:say, how does this make me feel? And then I'll just,
Speaker:like, let it let the color allow
Speaker:let the vibration of the color create a feeling in me.
Speaker:Yeah. And when I have the feeling that I
Speaker:feel good about, then I'll choose that color. That's
Speaker:awesome. Yeah. Well, man, we're I'm just coming up to the kind of
Speaker:the end here, but I have a couple questions left for you. Sure.
Speaker:Okay. And this one is more related to hemp in
Speaker:general and the history of hemp. I'm curious. Do you have,
Speaker:like, a couple of hemp fun facts that you keep in the
Speaker:back of your pocket when anybody doesn't know the
Speaker:history of hemp and and how
Speaker:embedded and woven into the fabric of our of our history it is? Is
Speaker:is there a couple like, a handful of hemp fun facts that you
Speaker:like to share? Yeah. Many, many, many. I bet.
Speaker:Of the fact that hemp has been
Speaker:used for paper for 1000 of years
Speaker:and that the Gutenberg Bible was written
Speaker:on hemp, and the Mark Twain were
Speaker:published in on hemp. Abraham
Speaker:Lincoln wrote his speeches on hemp. The
Speaker:constitute the early drafts of the constitution, all drafts except
Speaker:the final one, were written on hemp paper. Benjamin
Speaker:Franklin, with the works of Lewis Carroll, also hemp.
Speaker:Benjamin Franklin's first printing press employed hemp
Speaker:paper. And I just feel like hemp is
Speaker:so inter intertwined with our history and the history of
Speaker:the world. And people, you know, who don't know much
Speaker:about it think, oh, hemp is marijuana. But once you start
Speaker:to introduce them to the many
Speaker:varieties and features, not varieties, but the many many uses of
Speaker:hemp, they kinda go, oh, wow. Really? I never knew that. I
Speaker:love also talking about
Speaker:hempcrete and, you know, Dion Margraf
Speaker:and his work and that that that moment when he was
Speaker:at Earth Day down in San Diego with that little demonstration
Speaker:hemp house and his blowtorch and, like, you know, 3 inches away
Speaker:from a hemp house with a blowtorch, and the thing would not ignite.
Speaker:And it all it might do is just a little bit of a little little
Speaker:circle of carbon that was, you know, not even burning
Speaker:but just getting hot. And and and knowing from
Speaker:documentaries I've watched and from reading that this is the
Speaker:healthiest possible building material,
Speaker:fire resistant, mold resistant,
Speaker:super insulative in terms of
Speaker:regulating temperature. And I remember learning
Speaker:about this beer holding facility in, like, Scotland
Speaker:or somewhere that reduced its annual electricity
Speaker:bill for cooling the beer, keeping the beer cool by something
Speaker:like 40% when they change one of the buildings to
Speaker:hemp. And then how versatile it versatile it is
Speaker:from building a small structure on your own property to building
Speaker:the 2nd largest Marks and Spencer department store in all of the
Speaker:UK in in modern curves and
Speaker:with, like, stucco smooth stucco exterior
Speaker:to the point where you're like, wow. I I had no idea this was hemp
Speaker:trees. So that's another one. The other is that
Speaker:hemp bioplastic is being used by the
Speaker:many of the major car manufacturers for the interior body
Speaker:panels of their cars, whether it's BMW,
Speaker:Porsche, Mercedes Benz. They're all
Speaker:using hemp bioplastic, especially in their high end cars
Speaker:because it's stronger, lighter,
Speaker:more durable, more flame resistant, more
Speaker:mold resistant, and it doesn't off gas the way that
Speaker:petroleum based plastics do. It doesn't get misshapen
Speaker:with heat. And at the end of its useful life, it can be
Speaker:composted. So, I mean, it's just such a win on so many
Speaker:levels. And I'm I'm buoyed by the fact that
Speaker:the car industry is recognizing hemp as a useful
Speaker:material for body panels. I I wish that
Speaker:we had never stopped using hemp bioplastic
Speaker:for the exterior body panels as well Yeah. As
Speaker:as Henry Ford did and Mhmm.
Speaker:See if they're interested in that YouTube video, hemp, Henry
Speaker:Ford hemp car and watch him use a sledgehammer on
Speaker:the back fender of a of a of one of his models and watch the
Speaker:sledgehammer literally bounce off the the, the
Speaker:body the exterior body panel of the car. I mean, can you imagine how
Speaker:much money we would have saved in
Speaker:auto body costs by having lightweight,
Speaker:super dead resistant hemp bioplastic be the shell
Speaker:of our cars. But then our companies wouldn't have
Speaker:made money and sold more vehicles. And, you know, the the
Speaker:whole auto in this body shop industry probably would have just
Speaker:been something else. Mhmm. So those are
Speaker:some fun facts that I like to trot out here at the Those are
Speaker:awesome. Yeah. Those are that's, more robust, I
Speaker:think, than any other hemptrepreneur I've had on the show. You you
Speaker:definitely know your know your hempstery as as we
Speaker:say. Yeah. So my my last two questions
Speaker:are, number 1, how can people learn more about Vital
Speaker:Hemp? Where can they find you? I know you said you're not you don't have
Speaker:your physical store, but you definitely have your website. How can people order some of
Speaker:your products and learn more about what you're up to on the socials and all
Speaker:of that? Yeah. Vitalhemp.com is the website. If
Speaker:they wanna keep up with what's happening with the company, just sign up for the
Speaker:newsletter. And at least once a month, I hope to let
Speaker:you know what's going on. If there are any potential
Speaker:investors or partners out there who want
Speaker:to resources and know how and believe in the mission
Speaker:and the and believe they can help scale
Speaker:it, I'm I'm open to having conversations. And you
Speaker:can just find me shoot me an email through the website. We do have
Speaker:an Instagram page. I don't think it's super active. Well, I think we
Speaker:post a little bit more on Facebook. Those are basically the ways
Speaker:people can find me. But if they wanna buy something from what we have
Speaker:left at this point, find us on, vitalhemp.com.
Speaker:Any more? So my my final question is,
Speaker:imagine you were standing on a world stage and
Speaker:you were literally addressing every human being on the
Speaker:planet, and you could, within 60 seconds,
Speaker:share one message with them, and it could be about hemp or
Speaker:it could be about anything at all. What would you want every human
Speaker:being on in in the world to know? I would
Speaker:want everybody to know that we live
Speaker:on an absolute miracle jewel
Speaker:of a planet that is abundant,
Speaker:resourceful, marvelous beyond our imagination
Speaker:to even comprehend, and it has
Speaker:everything here for us to live
Speaker:fruitfully, to live in peace
Speaker:and abundance, in harmony with all the
Speaker:other species with whom we share
Speaker:this planet. And I would like everybody
Speaker:to know that as a goal for
Speaker:humanity to continue to keep this planet
Speaker:vital, not just for us, but for all of the species that have
Speaker:as much right to be here as we do, that we
Speaker:think about how we can support
Speaker:these other species in their native ecosystems.
Speaker:Whether that's hemp as a crop
Speaker:that serves beyond humans, birds
Speaker:and and enormous amount amounts of other
Speaker:species. Or whether it's dolphins or
Speaker:or insects or you name it.
Speaker:They are all or or algae or plankton or
Speaker:coral. They they are all part of this
Speaker:interconnected world in which we live
Speaker:and that we, as stewards, as sort
Speaker:of high on the totem pole of consciousness and also high on the
Speaker:toad totem pole of potential and
Speaker:real destruction that we're causing, we I believe we
Speaker:have a responsibility to respect the other life
Speaker:forms, to better understand how
Speaker:we are all related, and to learn how we can
Speaker:support the myriad life forms to work
Speaker:together in holistic ways to create abundance and
Speaker:peace and harmony for all the
Speaker:living beings on earth. And this will require some
Speaker:people earning less money perhaps, exploiting people less,
Speaker:But it will ultimately be a much, much happier future
Speaker:and and one that is around for our
Speaker:children and grandchildren and for many generations,
Speaker:as at least 7, as the our our Native
Speaker:American brothers and sisters remind us, is to try to
Speaker:keep that vision in mind. And it's it's a
Speaker:so I would say that's my message, Tyler. Amen.
Speaker:Well, I appreciate that. It's it's right in alignment with a
Speaker:book that I'm looking to publish early 2024.
Speaker:It's a working title, but the title is something
Speaker:like how hemp pays for peace
Speaker:and using this as our vehicle for creating more peace
Speaker:on earth. And I I get that we may never get to a
Speaker:point where there's no wars and there's no destruction and
Speaker:fighting. Like, there's probably always gonna be some level of that. But if we can
Speaker:create a deeper sense of of health
Speaker:and wealth and and true harmonious abundance
Speaker:with hemp as our vehicle, I do believe that we all,
Speaker:as a human family, and all species, like you were saying,
Speaker:can experience more harmony and more
Speaker:peace as a result of hemp being at the center of what
Speaker:we're doing. So that's why you and I do what we do, and
Speaker:I really appreciate your insights and your wisdom and the
Speaker:experience that you've brought to this industry and appreciate you being on this
Speaker:hemp episode of Hempel Ware Radio. Yeah. Tyler, thank you so
Speaker:much for hosting me. And it's always good to hear from
Speaker:you and see you and to just witness
Speaker:your evolution from the
Speaker:kid in the, alley who was helping
Speaker:me unload my van after a hard day's work and
Speaker:teaching me about heart to heart hugs. And a lesson
Speaker:that I've that I decided to adopt probably
Speaker:18 or so years ago and have
Speaker:given 1,000, heart to heart hugs since then.
Speaker:And I owe that to you. And I think it's a Testament to
Speaker:your big heart. You shared that with me
Speaker:and, but just know that that legacy continues through
Speaker:me into the world. So thanks for bringing the love
Speaker:brother. It's an honor and a privilege. Thank you so
Speaker:much. I appreciate you all tuning into hemp episode of Hempel Ware Radio.
Speaker:This is your hemp entrepreneurial host, Tyler Hemp, here at Hemp Power and
Speaker:hemp educate your hemposphere. We'll see you on the next Hempisode.
Speaker:Thanks everyone for tuning in.
