A fifth-generation California farmer with a legacy of raising cattle and growing grapes, Martin oversees Raw Garden's research and development, as well as their agriculture operations and manufacturing. We discussed his decade of experience in finance and cannabis business operations, as well as his approach to success in a very tough market here in California.
Raw Garden started in Thomas Martin's basement in 2008, with two 1000-watt lights. "It had been five short years since my family retired from nearly four decades of farming sugar-rich raisins for the Sun-Maid brand when the opportunity to grow a different active ingredient popped up. In the winter that year, we harvested our first crop of THC-rich cannabis flowers. Early in the following year, a visit to Harborside Health Center with my brother-in-law, Khalid Al-Naser, exposed us to the lack of branding and quality control in cannabis. This intrigued us."
"I grew up on a small family farm operating in a land of farming giants. My family had zero capital and zero competitive advantage in a massive raisin industry. We missed the opportunity decades ago when modern farming scaled, and we did not. Cannabis was a chance to return to our roots in farmed consumer packaged goods and get ahead of the competitive curve we had succumbed to in the raisin industry. It was clear: 1) there was massive room for quality improvement and branding in cannabis, and 2) we were going to grow a brand based on consistently raising the bar for the consumer via differentiation, trust, and value."
"Raw Garden recruits and retains great people who want to maximize access to fresher and better cannabis products that are valued and trusted by the most discerning consumer. Raw Garden is all about building teams that trust its members to positively impact their environment: families, neighbors, land, vendors, and customers. It matters because: 1) the consumer always deserves fresher and better, and 2) a business should not exist if it cannot greatly impact the people and communities that support it."
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