Carlos Frias has quietly grown, publicly traded GL Brands, into a full scale Hemp Consumer Package Goods company, trading on the OTC under symbol FRLF. He speak to Dan Humiston about their two brands and their distribution network and their export agreement with Mexico, Produced by PodCONX https://podconx.com/guests/carlos-frias
Carlos Frias has quietly grown, publicly traded GL Brands, into a full scale Hemp Consumer Package Goods company, trading on the OTC under symbol FRLF. He speak to Dan Humiston about their two brands and their distribution network and their export agreement with Mexico,
https://podconx.com/guests/carlos-frias
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Carlos Frias: [00:00:22] And in November of 2018, Mexico issued the regulations and we received 25 product permits to export all of our portfolio products into Mexico through our partner. So we've since then imported three shipments of product into Mexico and we're roughly three pharmacy in Mexico's from MJ MJBulls Media.
Dan Humiston: [00:00:44] It's the Raising Cannabis Capital show. I'm Dan Humiston. And on today's show, how this publicly traded Hemp consumer packaged good company secured an agreement to export to Mexico.
Dan Humiston: [00:01:07] And Raising Cannabis Capital, we are joined by Carlos Frias, the CEO of G.L. Brands.
Dan Humiston: [00:01:13] Carlos, welcome to the show.
Carlos Frias: [00:01:15] Thank you so much for having me.
Dan Humiston: [00:01:17] It's exciting. It's exciting. G.L. Brands is a publicly traded company, multinational Cannabis Hemp, consumer packaged good company and Global House of Brands.
Dan Humiston: [00:01:27] Trading on the OPEC under symbol FRLF FRLF
Dan Humiston: [00:01:35] I'm going to start right off here because Hemp consumer packaged goods. I love this. I love this. You come up with this one. Did you come up with this? This is great.
Carlos Frias: [00:01:44] I don't know it so much. I came up with it other than I identified that that's what we were. It's like everybody in this space is in love with oh, we're a manufacturer were an extra week scrag. We're a cultivator. And I think for us, it was like, well, we make product. That's what we are. We're a consumer packaged goods company. And four years ago, we were a CBD company. Three years ago, we kind of started understanding that there was a bigger play here than just CBD. And I'd say the last 24 months we've been 100 percent an inch wide and a mile deep and truly being a Hemp consumer packaged goods company.
Carlos Frias: [00:02:19] Yeah, 'cause CBD is too limiting and not that it's not huge, but it's to limit your company. Based on what I've learned from the Web site and watching your way more than just a CBD company. Let's just start off with your premier brands. Give the listeners a flavor for what you're doing.
Carlos Frias: [00:02:35] Basically G.l brands like you said, we're a consumer packaged goods company and House of Brands. We have the Green Lotus brand and we have the IRA brand and the Green Lotus brand. I actually founded four years ago. The mission of the brand is to create communities through the restorative power of Hemp. Right? And work Cannabis people. I've been in the cannabis industry my whole life since I was 23 years old. Other than the Marine Corps, Cannabis is all that I've known for the last 16 years of my life. It was really important for us to position the company as having a true meaning, a true vision, one that we could communicate to the consumer and identify with the culture of the consumer, which we're Cannabis people. Right. We really do believe that the cannabis plant has healing and restorative powers and we want to create communities through that. What we built was a very unique identity within the brand in all of our packaging is made from hemp paper.
Carlos Frias: [00:03:26] All of our swag is made from hemp. Sure, that's cool. You know, hemp pads, our guys are print material is made from hemp paper as well. Yeah, very cool.
Dan Humiston: [00:03:35] It's really having a whole experience of the restorative power of hemp in every way that it can be used on this earth and building a brand around that. So that's what the Green Lotus brand. And then we have the Iwry brand, which is more of a therapeutic brand that has really cool formulas. All the formulas use ancient herbs and other functional type herbs that along with AMP EXTRACT and the CBD and all the cannabinoids create a synergistic effect to achieve either. Calm is one of the tinctures balances. Another one of the tinctures. Relief is another one of the tinctures. And so they use a lot of different ingredients, such as like cats, claw, muggs fruit, the other ingredients that on their own have therapeutic properties.
Carlos Frias: [00:04:15] And by blending them with CBD turbochargers, the formula fact that you're in so many different retail places throughout the United States, you said at the beginning before we jumped on that you've been running sort of under the radar, just getting everything in place. But all your brands have really strong roots in real great distribution thing that excited me was that you're exporting your products to Mexico. That's really neat. Tell us about that.
Carlos Frias: [00:04:40] Man Who? Mexico. After about one year of having founded the Green Lotus Products brand, Mexico passed the medical cannabis legislation, which defined medical Cannabis as Cannabis having less than 1 percent THC and thus being in Texas. You know, we're right across the border that the light bulb just kind of went off like, wow, that's Hemp, right? So Mexico passed this law. They're calling Hemp medical cannabis. We've got to figure out what the hell is going on. So luckily, I have family members in Mexico.
Carlos Frias: [00:05:09] One of my family members is actually a congressman in Mexico. So I was able to talk to him and kind of network a little bit and get to the agency of the police, which was drafting the regulations for this law that had passed. So we were able to communicate with collectivities and understand kind of where they were trying to take the regulations in the industry and at the same time met a great distribution partner in Mexico. And they have forty thousand points of distribution in their network. But we developed a partnership and together we lobbied the Mexican government and and were there kind of from the very beginning of when they started drafting regs, we were able to come in and kind of help drive some of that process. And in November of 2018, Mexico issued the regulations and we received 25 product permits to export all of our portfolio of products into Mexico through our partner. So we've since then imported three shipments of products into Mexico and we're roughly in three thousand pharmacies in Mexico.
Carlos Frias: [00:06:02] So we're in. Yeah, we're GSC Mexico. Oh, my God.
Carlos Frias: [00:06:07] We're in pharmacy. So Mexico, which has 13 points to sell and then thirteen hundred ten independent pharmacies throughout the country.
Dan Humiston: [00:06:14] I mean, if you would have said that like 10 years ago, hey, I'm going to interview a U.S. company who's going to export Cannabis to Mexico. Right. It's like, what? Are you kidding me? That is it's upside down. It is so funny. That is so funny.
Dan Humiston: [00:06:28] I this another thing I think is really unique to your company is the you're active in the futures market. You purchase a lot of Hemp in advance so that you can lock in on your pricing.
Carlos Frias: [00:06:37] Yes. So it's kind of interesting. Whenever we started the company, you know, sourcing was a lot more difficult to compartmentalize. The market was and you had pockets of growers and pockets of extractors and nobody really had scale. And at that point where we'd have to do to secure our crops was we would purchase Hemp ahead of time on futures contracts. So we partner with farms and buy their crops on a futures contract, which at that time made a lot of sense because we'd bite at a discount. There was limited product. Great. So we were buying Hemp ahead of time and we'd take that to our extraction partners who would then extract that into an oil for us and then we would then make product out of it. Now fast forward to 2020. Prices have compressed and it's getting a little bit more difficult to kind of predict where the market is going to be. So we're getting a little bit more clever with kind of how we're doing our deals and kind of building in some flaws and some, you know, some mechanisms in the contracts that are gonna keep us from being committed to a price today that will change drastically in 60 days.
Dan Humiston: [00:07:34] Cause especially for all your stockholders, I'm sure they appreciate the stability of knowing that, A, you're not going to run short on product and B, but you already know which pricing is, which is great.
Dan Humiston: [00:07:47] I want to take a quick break to thank you for listening to today's show. As the exclusive Cannabis podcast network, we're constantly adding new Cannabis podcast to support our industry's growth. And that's why we're so excited to welcome the Seed to Sound podcast to our network. The team at Seed to Sound has produced over 50 exciting and thought provoking Cannabis podcasts. And now you can listen to all their previous episodes and all their new episodes at MJ Blaze.com. So welcome seed to sound. And stay tuned for new exciting Cannabis podcast on the MJ Abels Cannabis podcast network.
Dan Humiston: [00:08:27] Let's jump forward. So a lot of our listeners are curious about acquisitions as that's still part of your growth strategy.
Carlos Frias: [00:08:34] Yeah. So I think that we will be looking at some acquisitions in the future.
Carlos Frias: [00:08:37] I think that ones that makes sense and aligned with the mission and the vision of the company in our infrastructure, I think that we will be adding brands either organically or through acquisition here in the medium to long term future. But yeah, definitely a part of our growth strategy. And really I think that the way that we're looking at the world over the next 24 to 36 months is to be true to our mission and our vision of being a Hemp consumer packaged goods company and beginning to, number one, building brand equity. Right. Focusing all of our effort on building the equity in our brands. And how do we do that? We do that by creating experiences to our brands that connect with consumers. That's done through the design element of the brands, the packaging, the experience that people feel whenever they open the packaging and they go to your website and they chat with a customer service representative and it's communicating those brand messages over and over and over a way through experiences. So it's building the brand equity because it Dena. the day once Hemp is on every shelf. The only thing that's going to have value is brands. Number two is to continue to expand our distribution network here in the United States and in Mexico and in other parts of the world.
Carlos Frias: [00:09:41] You know, we want to conquer kind of one one country at a time. We feel that we have a pretty good footprint in the United States. Went about seventeen hundred points of sale. We just closed really big retail pharmacy chain that is adding another two thousand points of sale next month. So the future is really bright in the U.S. I think that we're projected to have anywhere from five to six thousand points of sale in the U.S. at the end of 2020 calendar and anywhere from five to six thousand. And Mexico continuing to open that footprint and open up new distribution channels for us through our brands. And then the last thing is that path to profitability, which is huge. You know, we just closed around that round was really to fund the merger of the business and taking the company public and all of the costs associated with taking a company public. And I think that for us, it's really important over the next 24 months to be very fiscally conservative and use our capital intelligently because we do not want to become dependent on the capital markets. We want to have a self-sustainable, profitable business.
Dan Humiston: [00:10:38] Now, just a normal guy start getting to the Cannabis industry. This is what it's about. I'm really happy that somebody like you is having so much success because that's who should have it. Guys like you, you know, you started right off in this industry and just plugged away and now you're now it's working for you. Carlos Frias from G.L. Brands. And we'll have all of his information in the show notes. And also all the stock information will be in the show notes and it also be on the MJBulls.com Web site. Carlos, really cool.
Dan Humiston: [00:11:07] Thanks for being on the show.
Carlos Frias: [00:11:08] Thank you for having me. Pleasure.
Dan Humiston: [00:11:12] Today's show was made possible by the generous support of our sponsors, like all 36, the country's premiere blockchain payment processing platform that's providing dispensaries and its customers with a safe and secure payment option other than cash. To learn more. Go to all 36. Today's podcast was produced by MJBulls Media. The industry's premier Cannabis Podcast network with original music, produced in part by Jamie Humiston. I'm Dan Humiston and you've been listening to the Raising Cannabis Capital podcast.
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