Episode 195: Harrison Bard on Scaling Custom Cones USA and Innovating Pre-Rolls

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Welcome to a special MJ Bizcon edition of Cannabis Tech Talks. My name is Aaron Vaughn, and I I am here with CEO of Custom Cones USA and day savers, Harrison Bard. So great to see you.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Aaron. Appreciate it. Yeah, so why don't you start off by just telling us a little bit about Custom Cones USA

and when you started the business and how you're finding your journey as a young CEO so far. Yeah, so we started Custom Cones USA back in 2017

before purals were really that popular, honestly. They were not nearly as well-selling as they are now. pre-rolls have been the fastest growing category for the past couple years. And now in Canada,

pre-rolls are actually the number one selling category over flower. So yeah, we're starting to see big shifts towards convenience and infused pre-rolls. So we started back in 2017, we originally only sold custom branded cones.

That's why the name is Custom Cones USA. Since then, we've expanded to be a one-stop shop for everything related to pre-rolls. So we have of course like unbranded regular cones, hemp rep cones. We were the first company to launch bulk hemp rep cones.

Now we have the widest variety of filter tips, glass, wood, ceramic, even flavored wooden tips. We do every shape or size from different cone shapes to tube shapes.

Within even the glass and ceramic, there's a ton of different shapes, sizes, ways to do customization options. And then we saw all the machines,

from grinding to sifting to cone filling to infusion, packaging machines, and then all of the packaging as well. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, so what do you attribute the growing demand

for pre-rolls to? So it really comes down to convenience. You know, like the core American consumer is very fast paced, maybe a little bit lazy.

They value convenience, something quick, easy grab and go. You see a lot of that in like food service industry, with fast casual restaurants, ready to serve coffee, beverages, stuff like that.

So consumers want something that they can smoke immediately as soon as they leave the dispensary. And then a lot of people don't know how to roll. You know, it does take a lot of trial and error

to be a good joint roller. And now that people are growing up with pre-rolls they could just go to the dispensary, they're not bothering to learn.

And then with pre-rolled cones, like it's so easy to make your own at home that you don't have to learn. So some people just don't know how to do it

and so they're just going to sort of buy that. And then like infused pre-rolls, even if you are good at rolling, that's difficult to make at home.

It's messy, you need extra tools and it's sticky and yeah, it's just, by frankly, pretty messy. So even if you could make it at home, that type of product would be really difficult

and you might not even want to. And so infused pre-rolls is causing more growth in the Purol space. Right and so you operate in all states right now correct? Yeah so we're non cannabis touching we just sell all the paper products

machines and packaging to the cannabis hemp, THCA, even like botanical herbal operators so we've sold to every single state in the US, Canada, we've shipped to US territories like Guam, the Virgin Islands, a ton of other European countries Southeast Asia where that's starting to become popular so yeah we

work all over the place. That's awesome yeah. So have you looked at expanding more into the European market specifically because I know over there a lot of people like to roll their own. So are you seeing any kind of growth as far as pre-rolls in Europe specifically? Yeah yeah so we're looking to bring the B2B

side over to Europe. I'm gonna be doing more shows in Germany and Spain next year and then we just launched a consumer side of the business. So Custom Cones USA is all bulk for pre-roll manufacturers but then for people who want to roll their own at home, regular consumers that are buying

flour from the store are growing their own. We have filter tips, rolling papers, cones, blunt tubes, all that type of stuff under DaySavers, Phyllis Blunts and Smoke Temple, all on daysavers.com. But we're really looking forward to bringing that across the US, expanding our distribution here. We sell direct

to consumer and then into Europe and South America honestly as you guys growing as well. Alright so I'd like to switch gears a little bit and talk about your personal journey as a young CEO in the cannabis industry. What kind of challenges have you faced and what unique challenges do you face you