STIIIZY’s Darren Blair on the brand’s commitment to providing quality cannabis to the Missouri market

Photo Courtesy of STIIIZY

STIIIZY—a cannabis brand that originated in Los Angeles—has recently expanded to the Missouri market. Popular for its vape cartridges, 12 different strains of vape cartridges are now in your local dispensaries. 

Among the 12 strains are indicas Watermelon Z, OG Kush, Skywalker OG, and King Louis XIII, sativas Blue Dream, Super Lemon Haze, Sour Diesel, and Strawberry Cough, and hybrids Apple Fritter, Blue Burst, Pineapple Runtz, and Pink Acai. Along with the cartridges is the original STIIIZY battery that the cartridges are compatible with, all-in-one and LIIIL all-in-one pens, as well as a power case that can charge the original battery and hold a vape cartridge when consumers are on the move.

While Missouri consumers currently only have access to these cartridges, the brand also carries flower, extracts, and edibles, which consumers can soon expect to be accessible in the state. 

The Pitch had the opportunity to speak with STIIIZY’S Vice President of Business Development Darren Blair to discuss the recent move to the Show-Me State.

The Pitch: How long have you been with STIIIZY, and how long have you been involved in the cannabis industry in general?

Darren Blair: So I’ve been in the cannabis space for approximately four and a half years. I’ve been with STIIIZY for about a full year now, so I’ve seen everything from 2019 to 2024 across all the different markets. So, it’s definitely been a little bit of a whirlwind, and we’re all trailblazers.

So, give me a little bit of background on the brand. I know that it originated in LA in 2017. You mentioned that the three ‘I’s’ in STIIIZY are like pillars for you all.

STIIIZY was created in 2017 by our current CEO and Co-founder, James Kim. James Kim is an ex-army veteran. We talked about the three I’s, STIIIZY—influence, innovate, and inspire. The way we look at that is those are three core pillars that we try and bring to the market, but also how we run our organization. 

I always say we want to treat our people like our best customer, and we want to do the best job compared to any other brand at listening to our customers and making sure that we are hearing them, acting upon it.

I think when we go back to the grand history, what I’ve learned from our CEO is that James Kim has a massive growth mindset. And what I mean by growth mindset, he doesn’t believe like he knows, he doesn’t believe like he’s got the right answers, James is a constant student.

The way our business really started was small—it started with a couple shops, it started with the brand, it started with wholesaling in California. He kind of caught lightning in a bottle, in my opinion, because he listened to the consumer, he listened to his employees.

Obviously, I wasn’t around for that, but now, after being at STIIIZY for almost right at a year, I can see why the brand is the way it is: he’s so in tune with the market. He’s so in tune with the culture, and he drives that down through the entire organization, and he brings everybody on the journey with him. Some people call it luck; I call it very strategic

He hit the nail on the head. He met the consumer right where he wanted, and he built an organization that supports his ambition of being the most trusted, well-respected brand in cannabis in the world.

I can tell that you all are highly acclaimed just based on the awards that I’ve seen. Can you touch on some of the most notable awards that you all have won?

We always believe in just doing all the right things for all the right reasons, so I don’t want to get super in-depth on the awards. We believe if we do all the right things for all the right reasons, we’re just going to do a good job. 

If we do right by our people and we do right by our consumers and our accounts, we’re just going to do a good job. So, to be transparent, we have a whole page of awards that we don’t just stare at. We’re thankful when we look back to say, “Man, we’ve got some wins,” but we’re so focused on the future and innovation that what’s happened in the past is kind of water under the bridge and we’re grateful and thankful for that.

Photo Courtesy of STIIIZY

We’re so focused on future proofing the business that the awards are great, but we know if we just keep doing the right stuff, it’s all gonna work out. I think what’s most important for me—things I would want consumers and accounts and people in Missouri to know about, is just our ambition towards social impact, our ambition towards lifestyle.

Coming from a writing style that’s going to be more about lifestyle, culture, arts, and music, I want to talk a little bit about that from a social impact perspective. We’re super committed to making a positive impact on our local community, particularly those historically marginalized or underrepresented. So, a lot of ways we do that is, we have team outings to go support local communities, providing assistance to parks, schools, and resources to veterans.

That’s some of the most important because that’s at the core of what we do and a byproduct at the core of what we do. We end up making some pretty cool products with a pretty cool lifestyle.

But we’re people first—We work with people, we love people, we care about people, and we listen to people. So, not only do we contribute time to the community, we contribute dollars to the community. We put our money where our mouth is and I think what we would see in all markets that we’ve launched in is we found a way to carve out a space for STIIIZY from a social impact perspective because people are important to us.

We have festival partnerships and activations that we’re working at nationwide. We’ve executed some pretty cool stuff—we’ve done EDC, we’ve done Rolling Loud, We’ve done Outside Lands, we’re doing ComplexCon in Nevada. So, we’re really excited to learn and understand what’s important to the Missouri market.

You want to be a part of the community and it’s not just a product. If we made it just about the product—let’s be real—anybody can take us out at any time. It’s about the culture, it’s about the lifestyle, it’s about the people. It’s about people being heard and accepted, and I think we create a very safe environment for our consumers, our accounts, and our employees to operate in.

So we’re easy, we’re STIIIZY. We want to be the easiest brand in cannabis to work with, period.

So how do you all plan on having your presence felt a little more than say any other cannabis brand would in Missouri now that you all have expanded here?

The first 30 days, we’re really trying to understand the market—We’re making sure that our product was getting out into the consumer’s hands. You only get to be new once. So, we wanted to make sure we did the core basics, that way we can fund things that make an impact within Missouri-specific communities.

Photo Courtesy of STIIIZY

STIIIZY dropped a line of merch to go alongside their expansion to Missouri. There is also a billboard ad heading into downtown KC. What are some other marketing techniques that you all plan on using to help grow and gain more success?

Without fully disclosing how the sausage is made, I would say that we look at every state as its own individual heartbeat and its own individual rhythm. Each state, each city, each community requires a different level of fuel. 

St. Louis needs a different level of fuel than Kansas City. The language generally is going to be about the same, but the approach, the content, the copy, and the creative might look a little bit different. So, in simplest form, we have a very robust list of levers that we can pull, whether it’s PR, whether it’s digital, whether it’s SEO, IG, Facebook—we have a very robust list of, let’s call it, places where eyeballs are that we find very, very interesting.

We really try and meet the consumer exactly where they are. What I think we’ll learn over the next 30, 40, 50, 60 days as we continue to evolve in Missouri—because we will continue to evolve and learn and grow—I think our strategy will shift. I think the biggest thing that you’ll learn from us is, one, we put our people first on everything.

Let us see where the people want us to go, so we’re gonna ask a lot of questions. Our strategy is nimble enough to follow the people, and we’re not afraid to ask questions. The math says this, but we’re going to ask people we know and trust where we should show up.

We’re confident in our infrastructure and our talent within the organization to be able to support flexibility, support nimbleness, and be able to show up where we need to show up.

I know that’s a long-winded answer, but we’re extremely agile and we’ll show up where we need to show up as the market continues to evolve, because my first opinion of Missouri is the commitment to excellence in the Show-Me State. It’s the commitment to excellence, it’s the commitment to quality, it’s the commitment to doing legal cannabis the right way. I can feel it, I can see it, I get it.

Photo Courtesy of STIIIZY

That’s the way we operate. We want to be 100% above board. If you want to kick booty by doing it the right way, you listen. The performance ambition was to be the number one most trusted brand in cannabis in the world. I think we’re even evolving into wanting to become the number one most trusted CPG brand in the world.

It comes from very humble beginnings, and we wanted to really enter the Missouri State through humility and say, “Hey, this is your state; you’ve invited us into the state. We’re going to approach the state with all of the right moves, and we’re not going to come to the state like this big, loud, noisy brand from California that thinks they know everything.” We took the approach like we know nothing, and we listen to good partners and good relationships in Missouri to help us guide what we delivered in the first 30 days.

So, is there any part of the models that you used for the other states that STIIIZY has expanded to, and taken that to this expansion, or is that something that you have to throw out the window because the structures of the cannabis programs in varies between states?

75% of the strategy continues to build upon itself. You’ve got to leave 25% for flexibility based on state needs, and I think every state that STIIIZY has launched, there’s been key learnings from every state, whether it’s good or bad. 

There isn’t a playbook for cannabis right now. So, as people that are always trying to future proof the business as a company that’s just never settled, as a company that understands that consumers are changing their purchase habits, changing how they receive content, changing what they eat, what they drink, how they socialize—I think every state is always gonna be different.

So we like to have a really good pulse on the culture and have a really good pulse on the people and let the pulse and the culture dictate our moves.

Missouri’s market only carries the 12 vape cartridges from STIIIZY at the moment, but you guys have extracts, flower, and edibles as well. When can Missouri consumers expect other products from the brand?

I don’t want to give an exact date because I don’t want to step on myself, but very soon. We are really excited about the expansion of our portfolio in Missouri and what consumers can expect. We are gonna be launching our 40’s program, so that’ll be our multipack pre rolls and then also our 40 singles.

The 40’s program is all products that test over 40%. The byproduct of the impetus of that, the genesis of the 40’s program, is we’re listening to our consumers—Our consumers desired a very high potency and desired a certain experience. So, we put their desires in a jar and created the 40’s program, and they can expect that very soon.

I don’t want to give an exact date, but we are working very hard behind the scenes right now with manufacturing and procurement to ensure we have all of the right processes in place to deliver against our standards of the best experience, the best consistency, and something that a consumer can bank on.