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This week, Bryan Gerber, CEO of Hara Supply joins the podcast to discuss how he built his cone-making empire on a foundation of cannabis paraphernalia innovation.
HARA Supply operates more than 150,000 square feet of cone production in India. The company makes more than 100 million cones per month, more than 1 billion cones per year with an operation that spans 14 facilities and some 4,000 workers. And still, the production is not enough to meet demand.
Gerber entered the cone-making business in 2018. His team wanted to disrupt and clean up the cone industry that was experiencing lead times of more than 15 weeks and labor problems. At the time, much of the cone manufacturing was happening in India using "sweat shop models," according to Gerber. HARA's facilities are GMP and ISO certified, with workers producing cones in clean rooms. His company has cut lead times down to four weeks and he now works with 60% of the top 200 brands and 17 of the top 30 MSOs.
Gerber also has aspirations of reshoring, and it is possible that some production could shift to the United States in the near future.
HARA Supply is Gerber's second great success in the cannabis industry. He started on the paraphernalia side of the business in 2015, marketing smoking accessories and related products. He launched Hemper, a monthly subscription service for cannabis connoisseurs, and even started manufacturing his own products. Hemper now has more than 30,000 subscribers and Gerber prides himself in helping curate each box since he is a self-described "alpha consumer."
In this episode of the Cannabis Equipment News podcast, Gerber also discusses issues with managing a foreign workforce, problems with cone consistency and the supply chain and how he took over the entire cone segment.
Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.
