When founders Evan Marshall and Lindsey Holthaus started Plain Jane in 2018, all they wanted was to make a low-cost CBD option accessible to everyone. Having used CBD themselves, they knew how important accessibility of the plant was. Instead of focusing on fancy, expensive packaging and design agencies, they worked on sourcing the highest quality flowers at lower prices by moving right to the source in Southern Oregon.
Southern Oregon is home to many of the best cannabis farms in the nation. The farmers provided a consistent pipeline of high-quality hemp flowers, and Plain Jane provided an outlet for those farmers to sell those flowers. Plain Jane now works with dozens of local farmers and has over 20 strains available year-round.
When they first started the company, customers initially thought the prices were too good to be true and that the products would be of lower quality. In reality, Plain Jane products are anything but plain.
With the use of water curing technology on their harvests, Plain Jane has achieved an almost tasteless and odorless substance fitting for the name of its brand. While one might expect that this way of cultivating hemp flowers would yield an underwhelming smoking experience, the opposite is actually more accurate.
By creating a cleaner, smoother drag that satiates but does not overwhelm the senses, Plain Jane was able to develop a product that can be enjoyed in any place where one can smoke a regular cigarette.
The secret, according to the co-founders, is listening to the customer. Plain Jane builds the brand around what loyal customers ask for, consistently rolling out new strains and convenient smokable hemp products in distinct packaging.
With their products being anything but plain, it no longer comes as a surprise that Plain Jane now has more than 75,000 customers from everywhere in the United States. The only plausible explanation for this is that word about quality products travels fast, since Plain Jane says the majority of their traffic is organic. Apart from Instagram, they don't even use advertising much, especially on social media.
The strong brand caught the attention of Joe Pham and Gus Hanger, who acquired Plain Jane in 2020. Pham and Hanger have been in the hemp industry since 2015 and have access to hundreds of suppliers. Since its acquisition, Plain Jane has acquired a positive reputation that goes beyond affordability. Because of the impeccable appeal of their deliberately subdued CBD products, Hanger and Pham managed to introduce Plain Jane to Colombia.
The company continues to offer low-cost, high-quality options while exceeding their target profits. Plain Jane has become a national and international force to be reckoned with. Moving forward, they look to strengthen their expansion into Latin America and, eventually, the rest of the world, one pre-roll at a time.
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