The pot growing business is getting more mainstream every day, and nowhere is that more evident than at MariMed, Inc., the Newton, Massachuetts company that aims to be a “nationally recognized integrated business solutions provider for the highly regulated legal cannabis industry.”
CEO Robert Fireman says MariMed, founded in 2015, is one of the top five multi-state cannabis professional organizations in the country. The company’s stock trades on the over-the-counter market and has a market capitalization of nearly $565 million, as of July 23, 2018.
Fireman, a serial entrepreneur who pioneered private label credit cards with the Sierra Club, got into cannabis almost by accident. He had started an urban agriculture business about a dozen years ago, and was growing lettuce on the roof of the Moscone Center garage in San Francisco when he learned the city didn’t have the authority to lease him the space.
“That’s how I got into pot,” Fireman said. “When I couldn’t do a deal in San Francisco, my team out there said, ‘Mr. Fireman we’ve been dabbling in the wild west of cannabis in California.’”
Today, MariMed is developing and managing pot growing facilities around the country, working with Tikun Olam USA, the American branch of an Israeli company that calls itself “the most trusted name in Cannabis.” Israeli chemist Raphael Mechoulam pioneered research into medical marijuana some 40 years ago.
“He’s considered the father of medical marijuana, having ciphered the difference between THC, which gets you intoxicated, and CBD, which is anti-spasmatic and soothing for everything from arthritis to epilepsy,” Fireman said.
MariMed is working with pediatric neurologists to provide “highly pure” CBD to mothers with epileptic children and to help people with Parkinson’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis, Fireman said, but the company’s efforts are hampered by the fact that marijuana is still banned by the federal government.
“It’s very hard under the federal ban to find a way to get peer reviewed medical data here in the United States, because all research is done under federal funding,” Fireman said. “Doctors are afraid to get federal money to support their research.”
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MariMed manages facilities in Wilmington and Lewes, Delaware; Hagerstown, Maryland; New Bedford and Middleborough, Massachusetts; Anna and Harrisburg, Illinois; and Clark, Nevada.
The largest facility, in Hagerstown, covers 100,000 square feet for cultivation and production of marijuana. The total value of all the facilities is $32 million, according to MariMed.
MariMed had $6.1 million in revenue last year, up 70.2 percent from the previous year, according to the company. Fireman claims to be on course to double that revenue number this year, and confidently predicts MariMed will steadily grow to $50 million to $100 million in annual revenue.
“Listen, it’s all about innovation,” Fireman said. “The country needs entrepreneurs that understand how to take ideas and turn them into business solutions and hopefully turn them into innovative industries.”
Fireman, who says he’s in his “late 60s” may not be there for MariMed’s entire ride to becoming an innovative industry.
“I’m getting up there in age,” he said. “I want to retire in Vermont and turn this industry over to people who can make a difference.”
Credit: www.forbes.com