At CES in January, amid the robotic armoire that folds clothing and thesuitcase that doubles asa go-kart, there were only two cannabiscompanies.Vapium, a Canadian manufacturer, was thereto debutit* new medical marijuana vaporizer. The other company, Puffco, had spent the prior two years rebuilding itself from the brink of failure. Its founder, Roger Volodarsky, hadnot only managed to resurrect hisBrooklyn-basedstartup, but his team would be unveilingwhat theybelieve to becannabis tech's biggest breakthrough yet: a "smart" bong.
CES denied Puffco a booth, Volodarsky says, but that wasn't going to stop him from his company's coming out party. The 34-year-oldflew to Vegas and booked a suite at the Mirage Hotel overlooking the Strip. The night before CES started, during a media eventfor tech companies to demo their gadgets for journalists, he revealed the Puffco Peak, a high-end electric water pipe for vaporizing THC concentrates. At the after-partyin his 28th-floor suite, Volodarskythen hosted a live demo with a smaller group of reporters, leading to rave reviews everywhere from EngadgettoCNET.
CNET described the Peak's functionality as "easy to work as a Keurig coffee maker" and noted that Puffco "ambitiously domesticated the dab rig through refined design." It was hardly faint praise, considering dabrigs (a particular type of bongusedto vaporize a potent, sticky marijuana extract that contains THC) typically resemblesan oversize crack pipe. Among Puffco's other high-tech tweaks,the Peak managed to redesign the most unsavory part of thesmoking device'suser interface: Instead of requiring an actualblowtorch to heat it (like the ones chefs use on a creme brulee), the Peak is activated by a simpledouble click of a button. By the end of the massive Vegas trade show,the Peak was nominated for the "most unexpected" tech product to debut, according to Engadget.
The competition in the vape tech industry is cutthroat. At the top of the food chain are the originators of innovative cannabis vaporizers like Pax,founded by two Stanford grads; Firefly, founded by a former Apple designer;and the Volcano, created by a graphic designer and civil engineer from Germany. At the bottom end, there are counterfeiters and rip-off artists who buy other companies'products,ask factories in China to make a few tweaks to the branding, resulting inlow-costvaporizers. Somewhere in the middle is Puffco, a small hardware startup that has had to fight for space and recognition.
Volodarsky, a Coney Island native, isn't your typical cannabis startup founder. Withsleeve-length tattoos and the ability to smoke any self-respecting cannabis aficionado under the table, he doesn't botherportraying a squeaky cleanimage. (In 2012, he was arrested for marijuana possession in Fort Lee, New Jersey.) He also didn't set out to raise a bunch of money like other green rush entrepreneurs. Instead, in 2013, Volodarsky bootstrapped Puffco after being disappointed with the existing vape pens on the market. Since then, he'shadone simple vision: To make the indiscreet act of dabbing more socially acceptable through smarter technology and greatdesign.
His company didn't start gaining traction until 2015, when Volodarsky launched the Puffco Pro, a small pen-size vaporizer made to consume concentrates on the go. That summer, the Pro won one of the industry's highest honors--thebest portable concentrate pen vaporizer at the High Times Cannabis Cup. SuddenlyPuffco was on the map, and orders were flying in.
In 2016,fromPuffco's former headquarters in a Brooklyn basem*nt, Volodarksy and his team of two engineers and industrial designers came up with a new product, the Puffco Plus. The vape pen, which features a ceramic bowl,went on to win a string of awards from High Times. But Puffco's success and attention came with increased competition and supply chain issues.
The commercial launch of the Plus faltered because the first 2,000 units delivered from its factory in Shenzen, China, were defective.A competitor seized the moment, and posted on social media that all Puffco customers were welcome to send themtheir broken Puffcos,in return, receivinga free vape from their brand. To make matters worse, Puffco's factory in Shenzhen then went out of business.
The prior year,Puffco had made $5 million in sales, but now it had zero product to sell and hundreds of angry customers. For the first three quarters of 2016, Puffco stayed afloat by selling replacement parts to existing customers. Without a functioning product and no factory, Volodarsky decided to discontinue his products and fly to Shenzhen to try andbuild a new supply chain.
"We were on the brink of failure and didn't know how to become a well-oiled consumer product company," says Volodarsky.
Volodarskydecided to builda supply chain that was purposely fragmented, to make it harder for competitors to steal his partners. "We did it with boots on the ground. We visited every assembly house and manufacturing partner in Shenzhen," he says. Healso worked with his lawyer to write stronger contracts with manufacturers to stem counterfeiters. With the supply chain in place, Puffco started taking new orders by November; during the last 60 days of 2016, the startup brought in more money than they hadthe prior year.
While the experience was challenging, it also helped Volodarskyrefocus his priorities on the one thing competitors couldn't commoditize: great design. He decided to channelall the company's resources to what he believed was his secret sauce--a killer in-house engineering and design team, led by Avi Bajpai, the former senior design engineer at Ben Kaufman's Quirky. "Innovation grows old fast, so you only have one option--make products that are hard to copy," says Volodarsky.
For one year, Volodarsky and Bajpaihad a singularfocus--creating a smart dab rig that did not require a blowtorch and wasn't embarrassingto leave on the coffee table.If the dab rig wasever going to make it to the mass market, it would have to look more like an Apple product than something fit for a college dorm. The result was the Peak, a sleek electric bong that uses "intelligent" temperature calibration to heat up in 20 seconds. The Peak retails from $379.99on Puffco'swebsite.
Puffco'snext big move will be a literal one, across the country to a new headquarters in Los Angeles. Volodarskysays California, which just legalized adult-use sales in January, will be a more welcoming business environmentfor a weed tech company. New York has a strict medical program that allows only edibles, tinctures, and pre-filled vape pens. Patients in New York could not legally buy THC concentrates and use Puffco'sproducts.
"It's going to be hard to leave New York, but I sacrificed a lot, all of us at Puffcosacrificed a lot," says Volodarsky, explaining that there was, and still is, a level of risk running acannabis-related business in certainstates. "There weren't many believers, or supporters, when we started."
