Serious fans of trendy home decor — you can now have cannabis elegance in your home or office space. Adrienne Uthe is the Owner of
— a line of beautiful, potted cannabis flowers that are realistic, affordable and designed to bring pops of color and light wherever you choose to place them.Uthe is also the founder of
, a leading business development and communications firm partnering with some of the nation’s most powerful startups and brands.We sat down with Uthe to learn more about her impact on the cannabis business, how she became the owner of Flowers of Pot, and how her passion for
growth helped launch her way into the cannabis industry.
Beginning in Pharmaceutical Packaging
High There: Thanks for chatting with us today! Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became involved in the cannabis industry?
Adrienne Uthe: While working for a pharmaceutical packaging company, I always dreamed of landing a job at the CDC or the FDA. That was always my trajectory goal. So right after undergrad, I moved into my master’s degree because you have to check boxes to get an interview with a lot of those folks.
While doing my master’s degree, we all pay for things. So I started working for a pharmaceutical company, which I did not want to do. But connecting and networking with the office in the Pfizers of the world would be good for my portfolio of the network. I just started seeing different things about cannabis on LinkedIn, and I started just organically connecting with people.
Inevitably I brought the idea up to the company’s president at the time, which was very scary for me. I was like a 22-year-old, didn’t know what I was doing, and I was like, “Hey guys, I think we should probably pursue this.” And we ended up putting a plan together, and they gave me the green light.
I started leading all of the cannabis packagings for that company, which was uncharted territory. But it opened the door to start making cannabis my life. I started packaging for two years, then after that, I went full-blown into cannabis and started working for a domestic association.
Her Acquisition of Flowers of Pot
HT: Can you share with our readers how Flowers of Pot began?
Uthe: So I bought the company. I had an old contact, and it was like a friend-of-a-friend situation where I heard that this company was sitting dormant. And I didn’t want to see it die. The business had been doing nothing for about two years. So I made an offer to buy it, and I bought it. And funny enough, my fiancee and I drove out to Chino, California, and picked up all of the products sitting in a warehouse.
We loaded up a couple of U-Hauls and then drove back to Salt Lake City. Then we did an addition to our house so we could make our little warehouse. I technically didn’t find the company. I purchased it, but now I’m just the full owner, and here we are.
The concept is fantastic, but we struggle on the digital side and have since day one, which is like the bane of our existence only because I get so jealous when people just have a product and can advertise as much as they want. We’ve played around with different marketing firms and ways to skirt the system and get around it. Truthfully, when you get shut down on Instagram after around two years of work, you get in line rather quickly because it’s not worth the risk.
We actually, and I don’t know if this will work, but we created little branded socks and hats so that we can drive traffic that way. Because even our flowers, it’s just marked cannabis content and [gets] censored. We’re still here and trying everything we can, but we’re trying to think outside of the box to get as much traffic to the website as possible.
Content is King for Cannabis Businesses
HT: Your marketing vision is incredible! Do you have any tips that you can share with our readers on the e-commerce space for cannabis businesses?
Uthe: Content is king. It is so prominent, especially in this space, because, again, you sometimes have those other digital chains kind of around your wrist sometimes. So it’s linking up with people who genuinely like your product and making cool content. It’s being strategic and wise enough to know what the content can and can’t be and not putting money into things that will inevitably get censored.
It’s about finding organic connections or investing in content companies to make your website as amazing as it can be. Because if we’re getting shackled on all these other areas, we’ve got to make sure that we’re really outshining in other areas.
The Founding of Kronus Communications
HT: Can you tell us about Kronus Communications and the firm’s role in the cannabis industry?
Uthe: So that is my communications firm. I started up about two and a half years ago, and it was really because I was somewhat disheartened and, to be perfectly frank, bored with what corporate life had to offer. I’m someone that likes to ask a ton of questions. I get bored very quickly. Typically when someone tells me “no,” I say, “yeah, okay.” Then I figure out a way to do it anyways. I wanted to create my pathway to success.
I had this epiphany moment where I was trying to think about where I wanted to go with my career. And it’s in its start-ups, people pushing the boundaries in climate, tech or biotech, or things like that that make me want to get up in the morning. To be frank, I wanted to create a pathway to connect with people like that and founders and CEOs daily.
We do a ton of venture capital work, a ton of startup work; that is like our whole world, finding startups that want to change the world, and we help amplify their messages through marketing, communications and PR. It’s pretty exciting, and it can get crazy but exciting.
The Future of Flowers of Pot
HT: What do you envision for the future of Flowers of Pot?
Uthe: Every day, I’m just waiting for it to be legalized to advertise as I please. It’s really just praying that we can stay creative in what we’re doing, roll up our sleeves, and take the nitty gritty route, but we have more products launching. We just launched about five other colors we normally didn’t have, and then we’re also playing around with different colored leaves. So, you’ll see some news about that coming out shortly. It’s just getting the brand out there as much as possible and creating relationships with larger brands like Urban Outfitters. I mean, that’s the dream. Right now, just tackling the digital landscape.
HT: It sounds like a lot to work. Thank you so much for your time, Adrienne!
For more from Flowers of Pot, check out the brand‘s official website .