Grow Sciences: Welcome to Quality
“We are lucky to have the best team in the industry. They’re a bunch of deviant misfits whose stories come right out of a movie and we wouldn’t trade them for anything!” – Matt Blum
In just 21 months, and to plan, Grow Sciences has firmly established itself as the go-to “top shelf” cannabis product company for dispensaries in Arizona. They have cultivated some of Arizona’s best cannabis flowers and extracted some of the best concentrates in the state. This is only the beginning and you will continue to see them cultivate a solid foundation in our industry. Enjoy our conversation with the founders of Grow Sciences.
Michael Cuthriell, CEO Grow Sciences Favorite Food: Pizza Favorite Song: Idioteque by Radiohead
Matt Blum, COO Grow Sciences Favorite Food: Chinese Favorite Song: Out On The Tiles, Led Zeppelin
When did you start working with cannabis, allegedly?
Matt: I was full time in 1997, allegedly. Mike has the business acumen that complimented my vision for something bigger. The barriers to entry in this industry are so hard and I knew how much dedication it would take.
Mike: My background is in business development, sales and marketing. The reason I got into cannabis nine years ago was because I got interested in applying for a dispensary license in Washington D.C. and I won it. That was my first exposure to cannabis as a business. A commercial business.
What is your favorite strain that has disappeared?
Matt: Bull Rider. Years ago, cultivars would enter the market and sometimes vanish in a hot minute. Some of these companies hoarded their genetics way more back then and kept the research secret. When someone would get raided the proprietary strains would disappear. If you were in Cali or Canada back then you remember Bull Rider and Super Bull Rider, which was the hydroponic version. This was back in 2003 and 2004 and many great cuts of cannabis were lost to these raids.
Mike: I don’t remember paying attention to a single strain name until we started Grow Sciences. Before that, I just used cannabis recreationally and never paid attention to the name. A lot of the growing talent in this industry seems to have come more from the West Coast where researching new genetics has been important for so long. We didn’t have that background where I was from on the East Coast. Now I pay attention to it a lot obviously.
How did you two guys meet and start Grow Sciences?
Mike: Initially, we met through a mutual friend and went a couple years just knowing each other casually. Matt, like a lot of growers in the cannabis industry, was confident that he was the best at cultivating cannabis. Many growers tell the same kind of story and convince themselves they are the best already. When I met Matt, he had this confidence x10 (laughs), but he just kept learning and striving to be the best. This is how I knew things would work between us.
Matt: I told him that his weed in D.C. sucked. I would tease him and say, “Let’s go into business and we can do it so much better!” That’s pretty much how it went.
Photo by @erik.nugshots
What are the differences between selling cannabis and other products?
Mike: The main difference is that the level of business sophistication is less prevalent in the cannabis market like it deserves. I don’t want to come across as stiff but I want to strive to give the best type of quality service and products at every level.
What was the first dispensary to sell Grow Sciences flower?
Mike: It was back in April of 2018. We met a guy named Nick at Metro Meds. We visited them for the tour and went over all the numbers. He said, “Okay, I’ll take five pounds right now.” The part we didn’t tell him was that it was all pre-packaged in jars, which was uncommon back then.
Matt: Delivery day was funny when we showed up with all the jars of weed and he was dumbfounded that he couldn’t just buy five pounds of weed. It was a good laugh for all of us. We have made plenty of mistakes as any company would but we learned really fast how things worked.
Mike: All the wrong things are going to make it into this piece!
Matt: As it should. This is Grow Sciences. We don’t fake anything. We will be the first to tell you that we have messed up plenty along the way and will mess up again.
Mike: But we do work the hardest to learn from mistakes. This is important in any kind of business.
How do you decide when to develop new products?
Matt: The Grow Sciences family is just a cult that we love so much. They have stood with us since the beginning, dealing with all of our fuck ups! We test everything out on them and we get brutally honest feedback. Brutally honest, which I mean, thank God! The honesty in this kind of feedback is the best and it’s how we advance together.
Mike: We have great a foundation as a company and staff that are starting to become tenured. They’re not just learning how things work, they’re writing the playbook with us. The idea sessions that happen today are much richer than they were when it was just Matt and I. There is a lot of diversity in our company.
Matt: We are lucky to have the best team in the industry. They’re a bunch of deviant misfits whose stories come right out of a movie. We wouldn’t trade them for anything!
Let’s talk about the new Grow Sciences Rosin Cartridge premiering at the Errl Cup.
Matt: The only reason for solvent carts is for those of us who have to stealth smoke, myself included. I mean there is a time for both but our rosin cartridges are made from freshly pressed flower loaded directly into cartridges. They debut out at the Errl Cup and will be available everyday after.
Do you guys sell more extracts or more flowers?
Mike: Right now it’s more flower but not because of lack of demand. We grow as demand tells us to.
Matt: That’s the internal battle at Grow Sciences, Flower vs. Rosin! Every room is looked at and we have a discussion row by row about what to do with the plants. We have been converting a lot more to concentrates but at the end of the day I’m still a flower person.
Are you guys ready for legalization?
Mike: There are two initiatives out there and we cannot just assume either will pass. One called Safer Arizona will allow only the existing dispensary licenses to open their doors to the entire cannabis consumer population. The other proposed initiative allows for new licenses to start up. We are not sure what kind of situation either will create but we will be ready for whatever the market tells us to do.
Matt: I don’t think anyone is ready for legalization. Not so much as a volume issue but just because not one person really knows what’s going to happen when they open the dispensary doors to millions of people. They say for every patient there is 7x more waiting for legalization. It will be crazy to see who shows up on day one of sales. Maybe it’s huge and maybe it’s not.
“You know how anything in cannabis goes. You put ten cannabis people in a room and you get eleven opinions… and somehow fourteen wrong ones. But I also love that about this business. I like the chaos.”– Matt Blum
What is something you guys want our readers to know about Grow Sciences?
Matt: It keeps us up at night! We want everyone to be happy and don’t ever want to leave anyone behind. We will do our best to stay true to our roots.
Mike: If you have a cool intricate design or something simple that is beautiful we would love to see your art featuring Grow Sciences. We want to make some merchandise and things that feature local artists and our friends in cannabis.
Thank you guys so much for your time today. It means a lot to the community to see how much care and research goes into these new Grow Sciences products.
The Cannabis Cactus Magazine has more great interviews.
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