Colorado’s green gold rush has its version of pickaxes and denim: businesses that support and service the cannabis industry but don’t get their fingers sticky touching actual marijuana.
Colorado has become a hub for companies that want a piece of the lucrative marijuana market while remaining on the legal side of the green line. Those pot-related businesses run the gamut from specialized services for cleaning marijuana laboratories to dispensary security guards to packaging designers and manufacturers.
Forty-one of the top 150 marijuana ancillary businesses in the U.S. called Colorado home in 2017, according to Cannabis Business Executive, an industry trade publication. That was more than any other state. California was second with 35.
James Eichner , whose company makes eco-friendly consumer packaging for marijuana, shuffles back and forth between Los Angeles and Denver. California has a larger market, but Colorado remains an easier place for him to conduct business because the market is more developed and there’s more experience in the state.
The spark for Sana Packaging came while Eichner and his co-founder Ron Basak-Smith were earning their master of business administration degrees from the University of Colorado Boulder. Their weed would come wrapped under what seemed like unnecessary layers of plastic. But where the two saw waste, they also saw an opportunity.
Read the full story via The Denver Post.