There’s limited room for error for a brand like Sonder, a queer-owned cannabis company run by partners Faun Chapin and M. Paradise. Of course, the marijuana industry is more competitive than ever, a fact exacerbated as some states have deemed cannabis an “essential business” during the COVID-19 pandemic. But there are other, more subtle challenges that arise in an industry largely run and cultured by straight, cisgender men.
“You don't get a second chance as a woman or as a LGBTQ person or as a person of color — you have to be perfect every single time,” says Faun Chapin, describing going into meetings with prospective investors. “And even when you are perfect, they are constantly looking for ways to punch holes in what you're doing. Like, ‘They're too perfect, there's gotta be something wrong here.’ And it's like, ‘no no, we're actually just completely buttoned up because that's what you have to be as a woman, or as any non-cisgender white male person.’ You’ve got to be the Leslie Knope or the Lisa Simpson or the Hermione Granger.”
As Chapin notes, what’s important to Sonder is using cannabis and the creativity it imbues to foster community and connection. “Sonder is a moment of awareness, a connection to yourself and to the world around you,” their website reads before ever mentioning any business jargon. And it’s not a monolithic community, but a community built on the inclusion of outsiders who just happen to have a shared love of cannabis.
Chapin’s love for cannabis runs deep, coming from a second generation cannabis family herself. “My single mother of three used cannabis to help us survive and then thrive throughout my childhood,” she says. “Cannabis has been woven into everything that my life revolved around.” It even helped pay for her time in grad school at Yale. Yet Chapin herself didn’t start using cannabis until two years before Sonder’s formation. “I actually had to train like an athlete because cannabis made me so anxious,” she says; when she first started using it, she recalls telling Paradise to stay downstairs while she went up to the bedroom, turned off all the lights, and took a hit. Despite the anxiousness that would quickly seep over her, “after six months I can smoke with Willie fricking Nelson.”
Chapin first met Paradise a decade ago in New York City; both were working in design, branding, and product development. Disenchanted and disengaged with their jobs, the pair took a sabbatical upstate to the Hudson Valley to figure out a game plan for a future business, one that they wanted to enter into together. This eventually led them to Oakland, California, where they began building out a design company. And then came the news that changed everything: on November 8, 2016 Proposition 64, also known as the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, passed by a vote of 57%, legalizing the sale and distribution of cannabis in the state of California.
Chapin’s brother and sister were already farming in the Emerald Triangle, growing an orchard full of 18 foot cannabis trees. They knew they wanted a piece of the pie, but weren’t sure what “aha” ingredient they could add to the mix. And then a lightbulb moment: branding. With a background in product development and consumer packaged goods, they quickly realized that capitalizing on their authentic connection to cannabis (which had been built up over decades) and their penchant for branding could prove the perfect alchemy for a new business. Thus, Sonder was born.
After legalization, the cannabis industry “was rightfully trying to legitimize itself and convey a sense of trustworthiness to consumers,” says Paradise. Many brands did so by mimicking the way cosmetics, food, and other packaged goods sold themselves to consumers. But the pair noticed that in the process, budding cannabis brands weren’t telling consumers anything unique or interesting about cannabis itself. “We forgot cannabis’ soul. We forgot the history. We forgot where we had come from. And so much of that for us was rooted in creativity and the creativity that you know has always been part of cannabis culture.”
Who makes up that culture and imbues that soul? “We really mean the community of outsiders that we built this brand for, because we've been essentially outsiders most of our lives and it's that outsider that we're trying to talk to: they’re women, they're LGBTQIA+, they’re people of color, people who have been pushed out of the sandbox for so long and we've made this new sandbox and said, ‘Hey, come and join us. We want to engage with you out there.’”
And while Chapin and Paradise are part of a collective of women, queers, people of color, and other marginalized communities making headway in the cannabis industry, there’s still struggles. At one point, the pair considered creating an email account with a man’s name just to get people to reply. “It's difficult because we're also trending, right? Women and gays are trending. Yay. It's about time. But it's also insulting on so many levels,” says Chapin. “And so we have all these companies that say ‘we are committed to the LGBTQIA+ community and we want to carry their brands,’ and then they won't return our calls. And we're one of the only gay, queer owned companies in California that produces the products we produce. And so there's so much lip service and actually getting people to follow up in any meaningful way is incredibly challenging, because everyone just wants to say they respect and represent and help support women and gays and then they never actually want to put any action behind it.”
There are more subliminal ways they are marginalized within the industry, too. ‘We were talking with this one investor, and at one point he leaned back and he said, ‘Wow, you two are certainly relentless,’” recalls Paradise. “And we both said, ‘We are relentless. That's exactly what we are.’”
It’s an issue that extends beyond investors. According to Thomas Giordonello, who handles PR for Sonder as well as other cannabis brands like Flow Kana and Airfield Supply Co., there’s a trend in Sonder’s coverage in which they’re included in larger pieces about being queer in the cannabis industry. “But when more mainstream coverage highlighting best products, best brands or new launches comes to light, the trend is obvious, it’s still a hetero male boys club,” Giordonello says.
Still, the Sonder community thrives thanks to word of mouth and marginalized communities showing up to support one another. And in turn, the company supports that same community from within, staffing with a team comprised of women and queer people — well, with one exception. “We do have one token white guy, and we're okay with that,” Chapin says with a laugh.
“Our goal in restructuring Sonder is to figure out how we can build that sense of community into every department, even departments like sales that are meant to be aggressive and individualistic and competitive,” says Paradise. “We don't need competition in that way in our organization. How do we create systems that incentivize collaboration and, ultimately, community?”
“We really see ourselves as a kind of modern day Charles and Ray Eames, who were a couple who lived their entire lives together in creativity, working for both themselves and for clients,” says Paradise. “Without the adultery,” adds Chapin. “We don’t have that.”
“Yeah, minus the cheating,” says Paradise with a laugh.
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