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

Michele, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Hedone CBD’s mission 1) empowering people to explore self-care, awaken your sexual wellness, and prioritize pleasure 2) make quality hemp products and other natural remedies accessible and affordable.

In my personal life as well as the years I spent working as a therapist I see people. I see them uncomfortable, in pain, disconnected, and sometimes hopeless. When you go to school to be a therapist they tell you, “Your job is to affect change.” That’s pretty hard to do but the trick is the client does the work. You just give them the tools. I wanted to create some practical tools for people to deal with their discomfort, pain, and disconnection with natural accessible products. Our tag line is Hemp Heals and I do believe that. Give people tools that work, they can experience relief or relaxation and they can begin to heal themselves.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hedone is a woman-owned and operated business (Michele Nosala, Founder and Mercedes Foret, Co-founder) we sell personal care CBD products.

Mercedes and I met in 2010 when we were both attending Louisiana State University. I was studying to be a painter and Mercedes was studying photography. Our paths crossed in the shared studio space, and we became fast friends. Art school still holds a special place in both of our hearts as our friendship continues to grow and thrive.

After graduating LSU, we spent several years on our individual journeys. I attended graduate school in Los Angeles studying Art Therapy and exploring sexual wellness in a therapeutic setting. Mercedes’ fell in love with the Pacific Northwest and moved to Washington state to be closer to larger-than-life landscapes for her photography. While out west, Mercedes and I deepened our belief in natural alternatives for healing the body and mind.

In 2020 I moved to New Orleans and started working with another CBD start up. Mercedes stayed in the PNW. When I decided to open Hedone in 2021, she was my logical right hand lady. I already had established relationships with manufactures. I got our permits and tax accounts and Mercedes was charged with designing the website, brand, labels, and socials. When our products started to arrive, Mercedes was again charged with product shots and promotional content. We brought in Katerina LaForest in 2022 to manage our social media.

Our premiere product is the Intimate CBD Serum. Manufactured by a family owned/woman owned company. We worked closely with them to create a formula that met our specifications. We incorporate sexual wellness into our product development and ensure that our intimate products are condom safe, vagina safe, without any dyes or fragrance. We believe that pleasure should be experienced in and out of the bedroom. We carefully curated the rest of Hedone CBD’s catalog to promote pleasure and self-care for the whole body.

We plan to expand our product line to include water-based intimate serum, massage oil, new topicals, and more.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In 2020 I was asked to join a startup CBD export company, Healthy Cann. Healthy Cann is the dream of a Brazilian pharmacist. My aunt, another Brazilian, and the pharmacist propositioned my dad and I to start a CBD export business. The CBD industry in Brazil is medical and the law does not permit them to grow or manufacture cannabis yet. This means that all CBD products in Brazil must be imported. The four of us got to work. My dad and I here in the U.S. and my aunt and the pharmacist in Brazil. We needed all the standard permits, licenses, and accounts in the U.S. and Brazil and we also needed permission from the Brazilian Ministry of Health. We needed a shipping company that would import a controlled substance and I had never done any of this before. My background up until this point was artist and therapist. We did it. Six months after we started we exported our first package. Now we export $20,000+ of product a month. This isn’t the resilient part of the story, hold on.

The wild success of Healthy Cann was really exciting. I worked very hard at all that. I learned so much. I developed relationships with manufactures, the department of health, alcohol and tobacco control, UPS. I was doing it all and that is when I decided to open Hedone CBD. I felt like the medical classification of the industry in Brazil was limiting Healthy Cann’s product line. They focus more on tinctures and soft-gels, things that can be prescribed and dosed by a doctor easily. Their branding is minimalistic and clinical. My vision was a fun, sexy, recreational brand. So we got to work, Mercedes and I. Permits, accounts, website, brand, product research and development the whole thing again. We have chemical analysis for all our products. We are registered with the department of health. That work is done and now we have to transition to sales. Ultimately, we sell products. We sell products and our team is me, a photographer, and a social media manager. We underestimated our advertising budget and we made almost no money our first couple months. It was disheartening. What I did not consider when I started Hedone is that Healthy Cann had 5 sales representatives and 12 doctors prescribing Healthy Cann products in Brazil. The Hedone team had to rally. We increased our advertising as much as we could. I had to shift hard into sales. I started going to local shops and talking to store owners pushing wholesale and/or consignment deals. We started looking into trade shows, box stores, and distributors. I push my team to talk to business owners where they are. Things have started to build slowly but this is where we are now. Pushing. We are going to continue to try everything until we get the yes we are looking for.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

One of the biggest challenges of selling CBD on e-commerce platforms is that many large companies won’t allow CBD products to be sold on their sites due to the complex legal and regulatory landscape surrounding CBD. CBD is derived from cannabis, which is still illegal at the federal level in the United States. Although the 2018 Farm Bill legalized the production of hemp (which contains CBD), the FDA has yet to establish clear regulations for the use of CBD in food and supplements, which has led to confusion and uncertainty in the industry.

As a result, many e-commerce platforms, including Amazon and Google, have banned the sale of CBD products on their sites. This makes it difficult for small businesses like ours to reach a larger audience and compete with larger companies that have established distribution channels. We have been turned down by distributors as well. We were able to make contact with several sex shop distributors. Unfortunately, they did not distribute CBD.

Another challenge is the lack of consistency in state regulations regarding CBD. Some states have legalized CBD products, while others have not. We are currently based in New Orleans, La where CBD is legal, but the laws and regulations are volatile. It can be costly for a small business to keep up with changing regulations. In our case we’ve had to reprint labels, labor to relabel products, and lost time unable to sell products waiting for government approvals.

In addition, the high competition in the CBD market means that we need to invest heavily in marketing and advertising to get our products in front of customers. Without access to large e-commerce platforms, we struggle to reach new customers and compete with larger, more established brands. This is also difficult to do with social media platforms. Mercedes and Katerina work endlessly to create content, increase our engagements and following. We often discuss the possibility that we are shadow banned because of the restrictive policies of Instagram and Facebook. This makes it extremely challenging to grow organically. We have studied the rules for paid advertising on social media. There are obvious rules against the promotion or sale of drug use and there are rules against advertising the sale of adult products. We are challenged to get creative with our language, imagery, and phrasing. We also provide guidance for our influencer collaborators to ensure they do not get banned for promoting our business.

Despite these challenges, we are finding success by focusing on building our ecommerce site, Hedonecbd.com and developing strong relationships with our customers. Being located in New Orleans, I am going into CBD/Vape shops, adults stores, and boutiques getting to know shop owners personally. Cultivating business-to-business relationships with local store owners. We are also working with influencers and exploring all the avenues we can to promote our business legally. The Hedone brand is profiled on an ongoing virtual trade show allowing us to submit our products for review by large box stores like CVS and Walmart. Some of these corporations are expanding their CBD catalogs and we will do our best to fill that spot.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hedonecbd.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hedonecbd/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HedoneHemp/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michele-nosala-ab0148235/

Image Credits
Portrait Photographer – Stephen Lomonaco Product photos – Mercedes Foret Photo in art studio – Self Portrait