Bodhi High reboots, rebrands, rejuvenates
Not too long ago, Sam Kannall was seriously considering throwing in the towel on Bodhi High.
The company’s CEO and founder was tired, wholesale cannabis oil prices continued to drop hard and fast, and he wasn’t having much fun anymore running the cannabis producer/processor he started in Spokane in 2015.
Sure, those early years were enjoyable and there was a lot of interest in Bodhi High’s products, including topical lotions created by Sam and his wife Erica that blended cannabis and essential oils. As an early licensed medical marijuana grower, he also had great knowledge of the local cannabis market.
But a variety of challenges, including declining prices and quality concerns about one of the company’s flower suppliers, led Kannall to start questioning his path, his commitment to cannabis, and his future in the state’s evolving industry.
Today, all that turbulence is behind him. Washington cannabis companies have been declared essential, and Kannall is loving life again. He’s even gotten back into glassblowing, an early passion.
His enthusiasm is tied into Bodhi High’s own reboot, which Chief Operating Officer Stephanie Lamb said they’ve been calling “Bodhi High 2.0.” This substantial effort involved releasing new products, upgrading packaging, and reformulating internal processes and operations from the ground up.
“What started as a fun catch-phrase for us has turned into a new mission statement,” she said. “It has involved a re-imagining, a re-branding and a re-envisioning of the whole company.”
Bodhi High’s newest and most popular products are now Platinum Pure Live Resin and their line of Platinum Pure live resin cartridges.
The majority of the cannabis material used in the live resin vapes is organically grown at the company’s Tier 2 farm in Airway Heights which includes greenhouses and an outdoor growing area.
Plants are grown using light deprivation methods. When they’re ready for harvest, they’re bucked, trimmed, and flash-frozen using dry ice, then taken to the company’s processing facility in Spokane Valley where they are turned into live resin using a closed-loop hydrocarbon extraction system.
A total of 13 employees are employed by Bodhi High, and everyone helps out wherever they’re needed.
“We move as a unit: with a small crew of employees, we are running more efficiently and leaner than we ever have,” Lamb said. “We harvest as a team, we package as a team, we’re a family. Everyone pitches in where they can.”
The company continues to produce the original line of topicals called Bodhi Elements Skin and Body Care. At the beginning of 2021, this entire line was reformulated and relaunched. These products blend traditional herbal remedies with carefully-selected cannabinoids to hopefully focus on helping certain medical needs.
Another product that was recently upgraded was Odd Duck, an edibles brand under the Bodhi High umbrella. Consumers can choose from four flavors of Belgian chocolate and five flavors of Fruit Jellies, a product with a texture similar to a Gummi bear.
This summer, the Fruit Jellies line was reformulated to be softer and include more flavor. Next year, look for a sour version of Fruit Jellies.
Lamb joined Bodhi High in fall 2020 as production manager, originally tasked with helping restructure and refine processes. She stepped in at the beginning of the year to help reformulate the edibles and topicals lines.
Kannall is enthusiastic about the response being shown to the new products, especially the live resin.
“Consciously-minded, intentionally-driven high-end products is really where we shine, and we hope to bring more products to market in 2022,” he said. “Right now, we’re just trying to keep up with demand – we knew what we had to offer has always been unique, but the growth we’ve been seeing has been crazy.”
Bodhi High products can be found at licensed cannabis retailers throughout Washington.
For more info, visit bodhihigh.com.