Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Harrison Bard. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Harrison, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

The rolling paper industry is exposed to a lot of ambiguity, untruths, and marketing gimmicks that many people don’t know about. For instance, rose petal papers and palm leaf blunt wraps are very popular products but are not safe at all. Rose petal papers carry extremely high contamination risks, as roses are typically grown with pesticides which are unsafe to consumers who inhale and smoke them. Palm leaf blunts are found to also frequently fail tests for heavy metals, pesticides, and microbials, and they are not even made with palm leaves! In fact, there was a recall in Colorado for these palm leaf products. Similar to rose papers, the soil that palm leaves are grown in are also sprayed with pesticides.

There are many hidden dangers in the rolling paper industry, something that our company strives to shed light on so customers and companies know what is in the products that they are buying. We want to emphasize that these products are not a safe alternative to your usual smoking accessories.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Before starting Custom Cones USA, I was working with Amazon in the e-commerce sector. I am originally from Florida, but I moved out to Washington when I accepted the job with Amazon right after college. I always knew that Amazon was not a forever job, and that I eventually wanted to enter the cannabis space, I just wasn’t sure how, when, or in what aspect.

Luckily, in 2017 my Co-Founder and I did make the jump and we started Custom Cones USA, a leading B2B pre-roll resource in the cannabis industry. Our entire company is a team of pre-roll experts, offering custom branded pre-rolled cones, wholesale bulk cones, customized pre-roll packaging, and pre-roll machines. We hold a heavy focus on compliance and thoroughly test every product for heavy metals, pesticides, and microbials, ensuring the customer is receiving the highest quality product. We believe to be the most innovative pre-roll company on the B2B side, and we are inspired to continue introducing more innovative products. Our latest venture included the launch of our B2C company called, DaySavers, a smoking accessories brand that specializes in pre-rolled cones, tubes, blunts, and other innovative pre-roll products. Just like Custom Cones USA, all DaySavers products are strictly tested.

As a person, I am extremely honest and transparent, and I strive to put these values at the core of our businesses and products. We are a customer-centric company, filled with individuals who are always trying to do right by the customer, and I am extremely proud of the strong and cohesive team we have built. Custom Cones USA started in our living room, and we now have over 35 people on our team who are all tight-knit with the same mission – to deliver high quality products to our customers.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I met my co-founder, Fredrik, when we were both working our first job out of college at Amazon. During the onboarding process, we were asked a few ice breaker questions, and Fredrik discussed how he started an app that worked by scraping eBay data. He eventually received a cease & desist letter from eBay about his app, but he explained to the group that he was very entrepreneurial (and also liked to smoke weed!). Through our two similarities, we quickly bonded over our dislike of the culture at Amazon and began thinking of ways to combine entrepreneurship and cannabis into a business. One year later, we both quit our jobs at Amazon on the same day and started this new adventure. We didn’t exactly know what we were going to do or how, but we were confident that we would figure it out.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Once Fredrik and I quit our jobs at Amazon, our original idea was to create a cannabis-derived paper product, which we quickly invented and started manufacturing it in Washington state. Unfortunately, all of the people we pitched the product to explained to us that it needed to be in the shape of a pre-rolled cone, which led to us going down a rabbit hole about pre-rolled cones, what they are, and how you make them correctly. Fredrik and I needed to pivot, so we met a pre-roll manufacturer who brought the two of us on board to help him sell his cones. At the time, there wasn’t a machine available that made pre-rolled cones, but companies were able to sell the paper they needed to make pre-rolls. While we were working for this manufacturer, Fredrik and I learned a lot about pre-rolls and set up a separate website on the side, called CustomConesUSA.com. That website and company ended up gaining more and more traction, so we jumped into it full time and here we are today! Where we started versus where we are today was a bumpy road, but looking back I am extremely thankful for where it took us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://customconesusa.com/ https://daysavers.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/customconesusa/ https://www.instagram.com/onlydaysavers/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrmzkoV6UBjIH1QxegLjS6Q
• Other: https://customconesusa.com/buy-pre-rolled-cones/ https://customconesusa.com/pre-roll-machines/

Image Credits
DaySavers in collaboration with @emilyeizen (Emily Eizen)