The number of cannabis lubricants and weed-themed vibrators has increased over the years, but adult-themed greeting cards are notoriously outdated, leaving very few options specifically suited to adult distributors. Of course, sites like Etsy and Faire showcase a wide variety of indie makers and creators who are fully dialed into niche lifestyles, but greeting cards and stationery with a modern, boutique vibe are virtually nonexistent for adult retail buyers.
Enter KushKards, which made its adult retail trade show debut at last year’s virtual ANME/XBIZ show. The boutique brand was already established in the cannabis B2B industry, having debuted in 2017 at CHAMPS, a counterculture wholesale expo dedicated to the smoke shop industry.
We are in the business of TLC, from each thoughtful card design down to the quality control with packing and shipping.
KushKards founder Lauren Miele’s passion for design, which would fuel her future career, was ignited while she was still in high school in Ossining, New York. She became interested in studying window display design, though she had no formal design or merchandising experience. She used a high-school window display project to create her art school portfolio and was accepted into New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT).
“I learned how to create and design in my first major, which was everything about visually presenting a brand from packaging to window displays to catalogs,” she said. “We designed in-store campaigns for Sephora. I took one InDesign class for that major and use everything I learned in that class to this day. In my second major, I learned how to manufacture. I truly loved learning. I was a sponge.”
During college, she learned window display techniques, large-format printing, mannequin styling, 3D modeling, presentation skills and how to implement props in visual merchandising. Miele picked up additional retail experience through internships at Louis Vuitton and Aéropostale. In 2013 Miele graduated from FIT with an AAS in visual presentation exhibition and a BFA in home products development.
After graduation, she interned as a fashion accessory designer, assisting on projects to modernize classic bathroom accessories like shower curtains and soap dishes. Miele eventually became a full-time employee, with one project including an overhaul of Titan’s shower curtain rod packaging, which was dying in the market. Miele said that she walked all over New York City to find inspiration, from the Container Store to JCPenney to luxury fashion boutiques. Between city excursions and compiling trend reports, Miele was ultimately inspired by a phone booth, and created her own spin on the design elements to re-envision Titan’s packaging design. The shower rod packaging is still available in nationwide Bed Bath & Beyond stores today.
“FIT helped mold my thinking as it relates to product innovation, packaging design, product presentation, and so much more,” she shared. “Inspiration can come from the most unexpected places. It’s just a matter of being open to those opportunities.”
That same year, Miele was on the train headed from Washington Heights to Penn Station when the “high-dea” for KushKards first came to mind. Wanting to make something unique and personalized for a cannabis-enthusiast friend’s birthday, she created a card with a Nike Jordan shoe illustration during the train ride. What gave it the classic KushKards touch was a handful of pre-rolled joints that Miele sewed by hand onto the card to form the recipient’s initials.
For the next three years, Miele worked on KushKards as a side project while continuing to make one-of-a-kind cards for friends by request, with the handmade touch as the core of their charm. During that time, she knew that she had something special on her hands, and her repeat customers agreed. With a personal connection to cannabis, a solid college education and hands-on experience with visual product design, Miele had the skills needed to create and grow the KushKards brand in her back pocket.
In 2016, she traveled to three different cities to determine the future home of KushKards, with her eyes set on states that had legalized cannabis and would be fertile ground for the niche brand. In April, she soft-launched the brand on Instagram and purchased tickets to walk the High Times Cannabis Cup in Denver with the hopes of gaining traction in an exploding market. That weekend she also set the goal to acquire her first wholesale client by trekking around local Denver dispensaries with a map of stores, the Uber app and a “backpack full of dreams.”
“That was the weekend that everything happened,” she recounted. “If I can come back with a sale on my first trip, that would be my sign to make this dream happen. At the time, dispensaries were only focused on selling weed, no accessories or merch for their stores. So, the concept of greeting cards was very new but designating an empty spot on each card for customers to attach their own pre-rolls made sense for dispensaries. AMCH Dispensary in Denver’s Cap Hill neighborhood was the first KushKards retailer ever, who sealed the deal on 4/20, no less.”
A few months later, Miele officially left her full-time job, loaded up her life and that backpack full of — now bigger — dreams, and relocated to Denver with a signature product and a specific brand purpose: “Strike a match and light what’s attached.”
From 2016 to 2017 she focused on scaling the business, establishing a presence at CHAMPS Trade Show and scoring larger wholesale partnerships around Colorado — including Sweet Leaf, then one of Colorado’s premier dispensaries with 15 locations. In 2018, KushKards launched a new product which was an instant hit: one-hitter pipes wrapped with decorative weed-patterned designs. Today, the cards with attached one-hitters are among the top two bestsellers in the KushKards lineup, and Miele plans to expand into private labeling.
Over the next two years, Miele launched more products, including her “High-deas” notepad, weed-themed polka-dot tissue paper and gift bags, further blending her love of stationery and cannabis accessories. She exhibited at the first Cannabis Wedding Expo and went on to exhibit at other mainstream B2B shows, including the NY NOW gift expo. Today, KushKards has been dubbed "The Hallmark of Marijuana" by Herb.co and Merry Jane Magazine.
By 2020, the brand was in the midst of acquiring major wholesale momentum, especially after being awarded Best New Product for KushKards’ polka-dot gift bag in the lifestyle category at the National Stationery Show. Miele landed a spot on MDBerry’s roster of “30 Leading Women Entrepreneurs Ruling the Marijuana Industry'' alongside the likes of Jane West and Whitney Beatty.
Then COVID hit. Retail store closures took a toll on Miele’s wholesale business, which accounted for 90% of sales at the time. However, she struck unexpected gold while growing her TikTok account mid-pandemic. She debuted a KushKards Mystery Box, using TikTok to spread the word. The video went viral nearly overnight and helped to earn nearly 80,000 TikTok followers over a few months, in addition to a slew of KushKards.com web sales.
Unfortunately, cannabis businesses are not impervious to the gray area of social media regulations. While she rode the TikTok wave through the majority of COVID, Miele says, a total of five KushKards accounts have since been removed from the platform due to cannabis-related content.
In the end, the pandemic was a blessing for the budding business because it allowed Miele to devote most of her time to direct-to-consumer marketing efforts, and helped recoup a percentage of lost wholesale profits while nurturing a new relationship with her target audience.
Circling back to July of last year, KushKards expanded its B2B footprint and debuted in adult retail via the virtual ANME/XBIZ show, establishing itself as one of the few cannabis-centric businesses to assert a presence in both B2B markets. However, ramping up momentum in adult retail by convincing retailers to embrace a new era of greeting cards and “stoner stationery” has required a good deal of elbow grease.
Miele shared that some adult retailers are understandably apprehensive with this product category due to a less-than-stellar experience with greeting cards in the past — outdated designs with nude cartoon models or just plain bad jokes, low or no sell-through and repeatedly receiving paper goods that were damaged in transit.
No stranger to the bootstrapping mentality, Miele says she is prepared to support retailers with custom-tailored creative solutions, including more protective shipping options for single cards.
“I have an answer for everything — we will figure it out,” she said. “Between our consistent shipping times, high-quality paper goods, the ‘delight’ factor and customer demand at the retail level, there is a place for NaughtyKards and KushKards in any adult retail environment.”
She has also worked to win over adult retailers who are hesitant to introduce cannabis-themed gifts and accessories, as well as cannabis retailers that have been slow to venture into adult products.
“A handful of adult retailers have told me, ‘That’s not my customer.’ I ask them, ‘How do you know which of your customers would gravitate towards cannabis greeting cards?’ Weed is like sex — not everyone discloses their personal preferences or lifestyles. The customer is already there, whether they can spot them or not.”
To this day, Miele designs the artwork for each card herself and works with her team to maintain quality control over each order that is packed and shipped to distributors and retailers from her at-home warehouse facility. She explained that the core values of the company are centered around the end-user experience: unique gifts created from the heart that demonstrate the power of personal touch and a remarkable visual presentation.
To better cater to the adult retail community, Miele is currently expanding NaughtyKards’ offerings based on retailer requests and feedback. She introduced a fresh design for her award-winning tissue paper and gift bags, now adorned with purple and pink sex toy illustrations in addition to a handful of new LGBTQIA+ card designs like “Love Cums in Many Colors,” “Eat My Box” and “Have a Gay Day,” to name a few. Building on the original intentions for NaughtyKards, each slogan aims for playful, relatable and bold messaging while also being fun for Miele to create.
“We are in the business of TLC, from each thoughtful card design down to the quality control with packing and shipping,” she said. “KushKards and NaughtyKards create a memorable component of gift giving, making an impact without breaking the bank. Customers appreciate lower-cost add-ons that deliver a more personalized gift-giving experience.”
Both KushKards and NaughtyKards have gained traction in adult B2B since last July and currently occupy shelf space in retailers such as Museum of Sex, Adam & Eve and over 25 Hustler locations.
Since turning 31 in February, Miele has hit a few major company milestones, including building a team of seven women who pack and ship orders and manage inventory, along with a newly appointed sales manager and project manager. Prior to March 2021, Miele was managing everything on her own with part-time help around the holidays. As of now, KushKards has partnered with 10 cannabiz distributors throughout the U.S. and Canada in addition to its growing adult distribution channels.
“It has taken me about six months to get used to being a full-time CEO,” she said. “2022 has been about working on the systems I never put in place, to give the business a solid structure, and building the foundation and longevity that comes with putting a team in place. Mostly, it was getting everything that I had built so far out of my tiny laptop and into more seamless processes.
“Things that I had been hiding behind for years are now possible again, like keeping up with my CRM for sales management. I stopped doing that a while back because I had to fulfill orders myself. Now I have time to focus on operations, artwork design and social media content because I can trust this incredible femme-led team to hold things down, whether I am in the office or traveling at a show. This ship is running right now, and I am so thankful.”
Despite the removal of numerous TikTok accounts and similar content restrictions, Miele is committed to the KushKards social media presence, which has earned nearly 51,000 followers on Instagram alone without any paid advertising. Fortunately, she has an engaged audience that is helping to leverage the NaughtyKards brand. Whether traveling or working from the home office, Miele is relentlessly creative in the reels and videos that showcase day-to-day activities at the company, using trending sound clips to enhance the algorithm appeal.
“Social media is how your customers see you, most often before finding your website,” she said, noting that even though sexual wellness and canna-businesses are limited on social media because of their content, it is still vital to show up. “Make it quality. Put the time into each post. If you must change into 30 outfits to do a transition, you have to do that. There is so much untapped opportunity! Don’t feel bad about spending time on your phone to participate in social media, especially if you are the heart and soul of your brand.”
To Miele’s surprise, she learned via social media that her canna-branded polka-dot gift box was recently featured in the recent Netflix movie “Senior Year.” Someone from Netflix had contacted her for gift boxes a year ago, but until receiving a shoutout from a social media follower in May, she did not have any expectations.
“I just said yes to a random opportunity, and now a small piece of KushKards is on Netflix forever,” she said.
Other notable media features for KushKards include Forbes, New York Fashion Week, Buzzfeed, High Times and Huffpost. Miele’s impact and success to date spring from attributes like a solid work ethic, consistency and self-confidence as a young femme entrepreneur.
“You have to believe it. You have to believe you’re a boss.”
Aside from ongoing creative innovation, two big goals for 2023 include a dialed-in SEO strategy for the KushKards website and an office to accommodate the company’s expected growth.
“I love running business operations from home, but I can’t stop dreaming about the most magical office,” she said. “We are going to outgrow where we are now soon. I’d love to be in a big office space with glass accents and full-time salaried employees.”
When asked where she imagines herself one year from now, she gushed, “In that shiny pink office, sipping rosé all day with KK.”
There is an undeniable satisfaction that comes with finding or receiving the perfect greeting card. When giving or receiving an intimate product, the addition of a greeting card that really resonates can make a gift that much more personal and meaningful.
No one could have predicted the journey in store for Miele when she made her first KushKard on that train ride back in 2013. As far as the near future is concerned, between her creativity and commitment to her products, this 31-year-old entrepreneur is on track to keep busting through the grass ceiling as a powerhouse femme founder in the cannabis biz and beyond.
