How Hemper went from ‘Birchbox for stoners’ to a retail juggernaut

When Bryan Gerber started at George Washington University, he was a pre-med major, and hoped to one day take over his father’s OBGYN practice. But during his senior year Gerber, who by then had switched to a business major, told his roommates, Ravjot “RJ” Bhasin and Henry Kochhar, that he had an idea.

“I said, ‘Hey guys: Birchbox for stoners—what do you think?’” Gerber told Retail Brew. “And they were like, ‘You’re an idiot. There’s no way that’s gonna work.’”

But he ended up winning over his roommates, who signed on as business partners for the venture, Hemper.

A couple weeks after Gerber graduated, in June 2015, the business officially started, albeit modestly, as they shipped out their first monthly subscription of cannabis products they curated from other companies, including rolling papers and pipes, to about 30 subscribers.

Nearly a decade later, Hemper is thriving, with headquarters in Las Vegas with nearly 60 employees and a 40,000-square-foot warehouse. And one reason is that while one of its inspirations may have been Birchbox, which has undergone massive layoffs and been sold twice since 2021, Hemper steered its own course and didn’t put all its eggs in one subscription box.

In the pipe line: About two years after launching its subscription boxes, Hemper started manufacturing its own accessories, with a focus on whimsical designs. These days, for instance, its pipes include one shaped like a cartoon blue whale, a balloon art dog, and a dreidel; its bongs include one that looks like a Chinese takeout carton, a rocket, and a lava lamp.

Hemper steers away from familiar cannabis imagery like tie-dye.=

“We don’t use Rasta colors, we don’t use weed leaves, we don’t use drip logos, we don’t use any of that stuff because it’s not really what consumers are looking for anymore,” Gerber said. “The whole ethos behind Hemper was you could have [the products] on your bookshelf, your coffee table, and whether it was your girlfriend, your mother, or your grandmother, you wouldn’t be embarrassed.”

Today, Hemper has more than 30,000 monthly subscribers, but as the brand has gained popularity, it has bolstered its e-commerce store, which sells products à la carte, and which now accounts for 60% of its revenue, Gerber said. It also has a brisk wholesale business, accounting for 25% of revenue, with the products available in more than 10,000 stores.

As for subscriptions, which put Hemper on the map, today, they account for just 15% of its revenue. But far from being a weak link, Gerber sees the boxes as a springboard for its products—and integral to its success.

The bong and winding road: Subscription boxes are what Gerber calls a “paid test market,” with the twist being that it is the market itself, in the form of subscribers, rather than the brand, that is doing the paying.

When Hemper launches a product in its subscription boxes, which it does for about 80% of its new designs, “we get feedback from like tens of thousands of consumers overnight, and then we go to our distribution retail partners,” Gerber explained. “They can see exactly…how much we’ve sold, what the customer ratings look like, and they can actually make an educated decision whether they want to distribute the product.”

Reminiscent of Peak Design, which launches products on Kickstarter not because it needs capital but rather because it considers the crowdfunding site an essential marketing channel, Hemper uses its subscription box as a launching pad and proof of concept.

The subscription box is “our Trojan horse marketing outlet,” Gerber said.

Flying high: Hemper also owns a manufacturing company, Hara Supply, which makes products, primarily the popular pre-rolled cones that are simpler to twist joints with than flat papers, for other brands. Between Hemper and Hara, the company now boasts annual revenues in the low “nine figures” (more than $100 million), said Gerber, who declined to be more specific.

Not a bad haul for a company Gerber dreamed up in college a decade ago, and about which his own mother was dubious in its earliest days.

“My mother called me every week for about a year and a half,” after Hemper launched, Gerber recalled. “She said, ‘What are you doing? You’re an idiot. You need to sign up for grad school.’”

Gerber’s response may have elicited an eye-roll from his mother at the time, but turned out to be prescient.

“I said, ‘Mom, this is better than an MBA. Just trust me.’”