Stretch your stash with… lavender?
Submitted by Cannabis News on Mon, 01/24/2022 - 12:23
This Ottawa-based company is the first to offer herbs through the Ontario Cannabis Store that won't get you high.
Cannabis accessory brand Ouid (pronounced “weed”) began with a problem.
The company’s founder, Lauren Tansley, has a low tolerance for THC. Smoking a joint would often make her uncomfortably high, she says, so she started thinking about ways she could dilute the potency of her cannabis.
She wasn’t interested in mixing in tobacco or carrying around musty half-smoked joints so she started adding other non-psychoactive ingredients to her cannabis instead, herbs like lemon balm, lavender and peppermint.
Tansley compares the herbal blends to mixing “soda with your whiskey,” adding that they can boost flavour profiles, stretch out your stash and dilute the potency to a preferred level.
Since that founding product, the company has expanded further into cannabis accessories and homeware.
Keeping the liquor analogy going, Tansley says Ouid makes products that people can be proud to display in their homes — think bar cart, but for pot.
Ouid opened their flagship store in Barrhaven, a suburb of Ottawa, this past July and launched their first product, a herbal blend called Uplift, on the Ontario Cannabis Store this month.
The lone product in its category, the blend features herbs that are reputed to boost energy and creativity , including red raspberry leaf, peppermint and gotu kola, a herb in the parsley family, and contains limonene and pinene terpenes . Tansley says the blend has pepper and clove tasting notes, as well as a slight menthol profile.
Her favourite of the three blends Ouid offers is Arouse, which contains lavender, passionflower and lady’s mantle, among other ingredients. Tansley says the blend, with a mildly spicy taste, pairs best with hash.
“It’s our most hash-friendly blend. It has a lavender under base but it doesn’t taste like a bath bomb.”
The blends sell for $24.95 for 16-grams at both Ouid’s flagship store and through the OCS.
While some might be skeptical of the price, Tansley says one of the benefits of using herbal blends is they cut down on your cannabis intake, saving consumers money over the long run.
“I use 90 per cent herbs and 10 per cent cannabis but a lot of people will use 50-50 or if they just want a smoother smoke, they’ll just add a pinch,” she says.
“So it can really stretch your stash and it’s good for money-saving.”
She admits that smoking the blends, like anything else you inhale into your lungs, can be detrimental to your health , but says the blends can also help people cut back on their cannabis intake.
“People overdo it all the time,” she says. “I just didn’t want to get weird anymore at parties or at home on my own.”
While the blends remain Ouid’s flagship products, the company is launching 25 new products this month. Some of Ouid’s retail partners include home decor stores, record shops and gallery spaces.
Tansley credits Ouid’s creative director, Dave Shaw, for helping bring the new product line to life. Nearly every accessory that Ouid carries they have created, whether it’s a grinder, stash bags, joint tubes, even vaporizer batteries.
According to Shaw, who was formerly the head of product development for David’s Tea, there’s an opportunity to counter some of the stigma that still surrounds cannabis through design language.
“We see a really nice opportunity to open up the market a little and create something that you’re proud to display in your home,” he says.
“Similar to your barware, like some wine glasses, or a set of Sake ceramics that you’ve invested in.”
In addition to aesthetically-minded designs, Shaw also has to keep functionality in mind.
“You definitely have a real set of requirements for the cannabis sphere and how you want things to perform. So we wanted to make sure that we’re meeting all of those and that our products are going to be the best in the category for performance, as well as looking unique,” he says.
Shaw believes they struck that balance with Ouid’s flower mill, which retails for $39.95.
The first accessory the company designed, the sleek, four-part mill has an organic feel compared to a traditional cylindrical grinder, Shaw says.
“I feel like there’s a pretty set symbol that people think of when they think of a grinder and this is something that, when you pick it up, you don’t want to put it down right away,” Shaw says.
“It’s almost like a stone that you find that’s worn down by waves and you want to keep playing with it and rotating it in your hand.”
Ergonomics is the other major focus in Ouid’s designs. Shaw says one of the first things that came to mind when creating the flower mill was the ease of use.
“We iterated on how many twists does it take to unscrew the separate components, we wanted to make sure that it had a lot of capacity in the right places, that the mesh to filter out the pollen was the right diameter, and we really played with the strength of the magnet that holds onto the lid,” Shaw says.
“A grinder is a grinder, but we tried to make sure that we could push it to execute its job perfectly.”
With two more locations planned to open in the Ottawa region in the spring and summer, it’s that sort of thoughtfulness that Tansley is hoping separates Ouid from its competitors . A former archivist at the National Library, Tansley said she left behind her government job to step into history, rather than just organize it.
“I didn’t think I would wind up in the cannabis industry,” she says.
“But working at the library, archiving everybody else’s accomplishments, I was like, ‘Man, this seems like a really neat time in our country’s history. If there’s any chance for me to get in with something on the ground floor, this is probably it.'”
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