BEHIND the CAMera

Over the last four years, California Artisanal Medicine, or CAM, has risen through the ranks from out-of-state transfer to home turf hero. Now they stand on the precipice of bringing a massive 2,500-light facility online. Once they flip the switch, it will change the game for CAM and make owner Anna Willey one of the biggest producing female cultivators in California’s recreational market. With everything they’ve made thus far on the line and a wager backed by the quality of their product, Willey knows that, in cannabis, your brand is often only as good as your last run. Still, it’s not JUST the product she’s betting on; it’s the close, dedicated crew of people she’s amassed since bringing CAM over from Colorado, where she founded the company in 2009.

Sitting back on an unconventionally grey Sacramento summer afternoon, Willey talked about how, after successfully making a name for themselves in Colorado, by 2017, CAM was staring at the beginnings of a brick wall. “Back then, things were getting on such a large scale. I recognized that I couldn’t be in a bunch of warehouses. We had already gone from 100 lights to 1,150, and I was spending so much time in the garden I wasn’t interested in raising capital to scale up further.”

Seeing the oncoming issues with their future growth in the Colorado market, she decided to start phase two of her plan a little early. “I had always intended for CAM to make it to California someday. I had friends up in NorCal making their way in the cannabis scene, and when I was naming CAM, I knew that someday I wanted to end up in California. I mean, it’s 39 million people. You could go to 10 states and still not reach the same kind of crowd. It just seemed like the right time to take a chance.”

When Willey flew over intending to launch California Artisanal Medicine, she landed in the Bay Area with initial approval for a license in Oakland. “I just couldn’t find a normal landlord,” she said with a hint of sadness, “it was tough because everybody was asking for $3 a square foot, a percentage of your business, and all these shady cash payments up front, but Oakland was making it really easy for people who were passionate about coming over from out-of-state, even if you had cannabis offenses.”

After a challenging search, Willey, who was doing some licensing work for Connected, turned her eye to Sacramento. Her class-C general contractor’s license meant she was uniquely qualified to find the type of building that would be big enough for her to grow into. “I found our current spot in two weeks. Within a month, I was on the phone with my old manager in Colorado. She became my COO, even though we were only a team of 4. In our first year, we started just selling bulk. I didn’t have a clear idea of what direction to take the branding since there were so many different brands on the market here. But slowly, we figured things out and finished the warehouse’s second half to make the 550 lights we have now.”

While the operation continued to grow, one space Willey monitored growth closest was the company’s size. “It was still a small team, about 35 folks. We started getting into more stores, and that was when I finally decided to bring in our first head of cultivation so I could start developing the brand, but it was really homegrown.” Coming from a background in software systems and corporate structures, she developed a concept that in a business, it’s not the customer’s always right; rather, the employee should always feel challenged and rewarded. To make this play out in her own company, she maintained a workforce that was big enough to get the job done but small enough to reward throughout the year.

Don’t let this make you think CAM doesn’t care about what its smokers think. Willey herself maintains an Instagram account purely so that fans can connect directly and share their experiences. Curious how this manages to survive the staggering difficulties cannabis brands face on the platform, when I asked, she only shrugged, “I don’t know for sure, but I think maybe it’s because we don’t use it as our main form of engaging with fans. We focus more on getting our faces into stores to meet people. Having a face to associate with the brand is a big part of people knowing that buying CAM gives them good flower and a voice in how that looks in the future.”

Despite receiving so much support from fans, this major decision to put it all on the line, take on outside investments, and create her new dream wasn’t something she and her team took lightly. “The tipping point was when we experienced almost four times the growth in terms of revenue in the state. When the team looked at the list, we felt we had a shot at cracking the top 5, but to do it, we needed more space, more people, and room for R&D.”

For a brand with the word medicine in the title, I had to ask if large-scale cultivation and the shift to adult use have changed how she sees the plant in the marketplace. “Medicine doesn’t always have to go down hard. Things can be good for you, and you can enjoy them at the same time,” Willey reminded me. “I see cannabis as both the medicine and the spoonful of sugar. It has all these benefits for relaxation that can help with things like inflammation, and we now see inflammation tied to many long-term issues. I’m not a doctor, but I think because we’ve had such a lack of real clinical trials since legalization, people are starting to realize big pharma hates this industry because we can help with so many simple stressors that lead to greater problems later on.”

She described how the medicinal aspect of the plant is a large part of what helped her mother and father begin to accept her career in cannabis. The daughter of hardworking parents who immigrated to Queens from India, Willey came to the US from Jaipur when she was only seven. She grinned, saying, “like most conservative Indian parents, they worked really hard to put their kid through an education …and that meant I was supposed to be a doctor.” After hearing the accounts of people who’d used her medicinal cannabis, visiting the grows, and seeing the amount of planning that goes into creating a cultivation site (her father is an engineer), they found a newfound respect for what she’s been able to achieve in this industry. “Though I think sometimes my mom still tells people I’m a pharmacist in Arizona.”

Looking at the plans for the new site, it’s clear what Willey has for the next phase in CAM’s evolution will no doubt make her parents proud. Besides more cultivation space and an R&D section, there’s also a larger employee kitchen, indoor/outdoor lounge, and conference rooms for teams to come together and enact CAM’s strategy of people-product-process. Looking at all the ways they can start to expand, it’s easy to become excited about the future, but Willey is quick to temper that feeling with the necessary degree of caution.

“Let’s be clear that this kind of move is everybody deciding to put it on the line and commit to something more significant than what we’ve already built here. Whatever people are thinking, cannabis brands making a bajillion dollars; that’s just not true. We all put up a great front in this industry, but I think it is important that people know that right now, to be one of the people left standing in cannabis, you’ve got to really love this. Because you’re not going to make the kind of money that comes back tomorrow, it takes a lot of time and uncertainty. That’s where having good people and community comes into play.

When I asked what’s the most exciting aspect of this shiny new facility, Willey’s mind instantly flew to all the ways CAM would be able to foster growth within the company. “We’re creating opportunity. In a 500 lighter, you can have a manager and maybe an assistant manager, but your product price isn’t going up by much, so there isn’t a lot of space in the margins to give people consistent promotions. We provide incentives for employees who exhibit high performance, but for people who want to move up, have different opportunities, or maybe work in other departments; you can only do that by growing your company.”

“What about that outstanding packager that wants to be head of distribution? Someday, they’ll have to leave your company to get that job. It’s a natural progression for people to gain experience and go somewhere else, but what happens if they’re really good and deserve to rise to the next level, but you don’t have that level ready? In a phone interview, Willey was asked if she played certain kinds of music for the plants in the garden. She answered that she knew harmonic vibrations had the power to affect plants and people; that’s why they played music at CAM for the people working because that’s who makes sure all the plants are loved and cared for.

“The other thing that excites me is how many different things we’ll be able to grow,” she blurted out suddenly “Ninety-nine percent of industries, you find a product that works, and that’s it. With cannabis, once someone trusts your brand, they get excited about seeing the new things you’re able to create.” Willey’s eye’s sparkled as she started listing all the things she wanted to bring back in rotation, letting out a little sigh of amazement. “People like their tried and true and, for the most part, don’t really like change. But, for some reason, one thing about cannabis, especially in California, and especially with our amazing CAMsters, the new is always appealing to them.”

Though CAM has only been a part of California for four years, they’ve found themselves in a group of cultivators that have helped spearhead the popularity of Sacramento’s cannabis scene. Along with brands like Alien Labs, Blueprint, Seven Leaves, and Turtle Pie, as the popularity of CAM has risen, a whole community of “Sacramento Legacy” is beginning to take shape in the market’s eye. I asked Anna how she felt CAM fit into this evolving identity.

“The concept of legacy is complicated. When I think of legacy, I think of people who grew before prop.64 and even 215. Back then, there was a tremendous sense of community. You knew that if you didn’t head over to your buddy’s house to trim their harvest, nobody would come to your place when you cut down. Now things have grown to the point where we still call each other, but now it’s to discuss compliance and packaging. So when I think of legacy, I think of community. That’s very much alive here in Sacramento, and we’re proud to be included in that.”

Willey remarked that she had felt an overwhelming sense of inclusion from others since coming to the west coast. ” It’s been such a positive experience bringing CAM to California. I’ve felt really embraced. Whether it’s Seed Junky, Ted from Alien Labs, or Jason from Lumpy’s, I’ve been welcomed by this group of incredible growers. When CAM was starting, we grew Apple Pie, a weird offshoot of Apple Fritter; Jason came over and gave us tips on making it larger and more flavorful. It’s been so positive having this group of people to discuss challenges and solutions with.”

I asked Anna what the people in her circle had to say about her move into a much larger space, and she slapped the table. “Everyone has asked, what are you going to do with all this weed!? Right now, we’re in 275 shops, and there are 1300 shops in CA. Do I want to be in all of them? No. Do I want to be in the majority of them? Absolutely. We’ve had some rapid growth in the last two years, but I feel comfortable saying this brand will keep growing now that we have the space to devote to new flavors and products.”

As the shift change started and employees began filing out into the parking lot, Willey nodded towards the crowd, “CAM is going to keep moving, and we’re looking forward to bringing everyone along. At the end of the day, it’s about the 80 folks in this building because that’s what trickles down into the product.”