Michael Scherr love of Puns sparked the idea for BirthJays a candle with a joint. The media buzz generated by BirthJay prompted the launch of their second brand Arbor Hemp and the creation of their holding company, Aria Brands. He talks to Dan Humiston about each of their brands and about their current capital raise. Produced by PodCONX https://podconx.com/guests/michael-scherr
Michael Scherr love of Puns sparked the idea for BirthJays a candle with a joint. The media buzz generated by BirthJay prompted the launch of their second brand Arbor Hemp and the creation of their holding company, Aria Brands. He talks to Dan Humiston about each of their brands and about their current capital raise.
https://podconx.com/guests/michael-scherr
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Michael Scherr: [00:01:35] This product idea of being able to celebrate with a joint in your cake and to that network. I was invited to speak in L.A. to add a J cake with 20 birthdays and I got to carry it out and sing happy birthday to him.
Michael Scherr: [00:01:51] once in a lifetime opportunities that you can only fragment till after it happens and you see a picture of you, you're like, wow, I just say happy birthday to you from MJBulls Media.
Dan Humiston: [00:02:07] It's the Raising Cannabis Capital show.I'm Dan Humiston.And on today's show how the products that this Cannabis entreprenuer created for the untouched Cannabis novelty market helped to relaunch his Cannabis holding company.
Dan Humiston: [00:02:31] Today, Raising Cannabis Capital, we are joined by Michael Scherer, the CEO of ARIA Brands. Michael, welcome to the show.
Michael Scherr: [00:02:38] Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Dan Humiston: [00:02:40] Well, I appreciate you being with us today to talk about your company. Aria Brands is actually a holding company. You just can't wait to talk to you about birth J because I think it's for what the hillarious name it's in it. And for two, I can't believe what a good niche this is. You've got to tell everybody about this company once again.
Michael Scherr: [00:03:00] Aria, hold color right now and I'm higher. Celebration's is kind of my novelty gifting company. So, I mean, you're the smartest guy in the room, but I'm probably the funniest because I kind of got a hankering for dad jokes and regular basis. So higher celebrations obviously is a nice little throwback to the gifting and taking the any event and making it a higher celebration. So our goal is to take random Cannabis products or other products and make them hire celebration. So at birthdays came out of I guess, using those as brainstorming and some ideas of things and, you know, my birthday ever made and I was letting a joint in as well as a candle on here and other. And then I just think of, you know, get 20 names. But birthday is essentially as a joint with a candle on top and stake on the bottom to go on to your cakes. You don't get frosting on your cone or you don't get wax melting down the joint.
Michael Scherr: [00:03:52] And yes, it is plenty. It's a play on words. They're also the engineering behind it. And getting that to market was a lot more difficult and took way more time than I had ever anticipated.
Dan Humiston: [00:04:02] Oh, my gosh. But it's got you so much attention. You've got got to tell us the story about Snoop Dogg's birthday.
Michael Scherr: [00:04:09] Yeah, we've been very fortunate to get some strong PR. And, you know, since we're raising capital, we don't have a lot of money for marketing spends with a lot of marketing and also free videos and press from now this week and rock CEO Josh kesselman. And so people have just taken a liking to this product idea of a female to celebrate with a joint in your cake and shoot at network. I was invited to Snoop's compound in L.A. to have a birthday cake with 20 birthdays and I got to carry it out and sing Happy Birthday to him. Well, was a once in a lifetime opportunity that you clearly fragment till after it happened and you see a picture of you, you're like, wow, I just say happy birthday to you.
Dan Humiston: [00:04:52] So out of the world, like you would think what ever happened to this isn't your world. I mean, you even Cannabis for a long time. But not Snoop Dogg's world. I mean, this is just so funny. So, Flo,.
Michael Scherr: [00:05:03] The funny part that is being I was musician prior.You know, I spent 10, 15 years on the road as a entertainer and cruise lines in Europe, Caribbean and in a recording studio. And so double a lot with customers. You kind to keep customers excited and happy. The night of entertainment doing pianos was the style of music I played. So you really are the entertainer. And that's kind of how the mindset of our celebrations came up and brought changes. How do you create products that are engaging, that are entertaining? How do you create experience for our product? I spent my whole life with experiences onstage. And so it joins a joint. But if you can create a story around that, you have something different and you're going to be able to create a niche, hopefully.
Dan Humiston: [00:05:45] Yeah, I think that's super important. And I would jump over to the latest project is aaba, which is a Hemp drive livewith CBD consumer products. Same thing. You've got a story behind that. I think it's essential for getting the product launched.
Michael Scherr: [00:06:00] If you're going to be in CBD, you differentiate and you have to create something that stands out as a story. And again, back to the experiences around those you don't necessarily know when or how or what to take. So by creating that narrative around the product, coupling it with strong branding, package design, as well as a partnerships and differentiated user experience, you can hopefully penetrate through the noise. And so, yes, we just launched after about a month ago and we are offering subscription models. So being able to simplify your user experience by finding the price you like and then offering large discounts for subscriptions and we'll ship it every month. But the other aspect that we're focusing on now is a partnership with a company called Go Fire. We've created a partnership where every time they sell a device, we kick off a free, smart cartridge of our proprietary oil. And in that box on their device, as well as a coupon for our subscription.
Dan Humiston: [00:07:02] Oh, my gosh. For one, I love re-occurring revenue. Any model that has reoccurring revenue, it's just set it and forget it. It's great. You dissect these once the person is hooked. Then they don't have to worry about it and you don't have to worry about it. It's just build and it sent out. That's great. I'm super excited about your collaboration with gunfire. We had them on our show. Peter, what a good guy. Super good guy for our listeners. They haven't heard it go back. It's up so 22. It's a precise dose every time it's Bluetooth so that you can. An update is exactly what you took. I think it's gonna be the future of how we deliver Cannabis. I think that's the direction that it's going to go eventually. With everything moving to tack in for you to get involved with those guys early on and just latch into that realizing that that technology is going to be the future, I think that is so far sighted. I love it.
Michael Scherr: [00:07:51] Thank you. And I totally agree. Peter's fantastic. And they're building a really incredible company. That's not just my specialty data and IP as well. And what is so imperative that God is on all of our products behind their proprietary endoscope, which is a QR code. You scan. You can track your dosing, but it also has artifically analysis or CIA. So you can see that this product was tested. It takes five milligrams within one or two, three percent. You're going to know, okay, this is exactly that, because I have the test in front of me. My phone's at a thirty five companies tested in the last six months. I believe fifty seven percent of them had less than the half the amount of CBD advertising label you wouldn't put as a CBS and finagle their heads to a never ending label on that one hundred or fifty or four hundred.
Michael Scherr: [00:08:33] And that's kind of why it's so important for this partnership and also the industry for self-regulation.
Dan Humiston: [00:08:39] It won't go. Fire is going to hold your feet to the fire because every time you've been right. So you've got to make sure that you're at the top of your game all the time. And it's a real statement that you're making saying that we're going to work with these guys, we're stripping everything down. We're gonna be completely naked. You're gonna see exactly what you're getting with our product, every single dose. I mean, it's not just every single it's every dose. You're going to know exactly what you got. Let's take a short break to let you listen to a quick preview of our next episode.
Shawn Pahwa: [00:09:09] Put in a nutshell, what it allows us to do is eliminate growing media throughout all parts of the production process. So we don't use coconut fiber, we don't use Rockwell. So we let's mix. So as you can imagine right off the top, it lends itself to a much leaner cost structure. We don't have purchasing costs, transplant labor disposal. So there's a considerable benefit to using the technology.
Dan Humiston: [00:09:34] Tune in on Sunday to hear Sean Pahwa from gnomeworks. And now let's get back to the show.
Dan Humiston: [00:09:44] Let's jump into the capital race.
Dan Humiston: [00:09:46] Let's talk about the capital race.
Michael Scherr: [00:09:48] Yeah. Several months ago, I raised about 20 percent of our Hatami not raised on the Internet and pre and as far as ARIA brands, the holdco like you talked about the last few minutes.
Michael Scherr: [00:09:59] There are two distinct companies with two different value propositions. Both are strong. And because I've already built products from other companies, because I have inventory, e-commerce, everything ready to go.
Michael Scherr: [00:10:10] We want to move forward. Both of these companies see, you're investing in kind of the parent company that owns 100 percent of the two .
Dan Humiston: [00:10:19] Yeah, that's a great opportunity. So you said it's a five hundred thousand dollar seed round and it's still open. So people still have an opportunity to participate and have all of ARIA brands information and all of birthday.. information and everything else about our aaba Hemp on the MJBulls website and also be in the show notes. So if anybody is interested in following up with with Michael and now would be a good time because this thing will probably move quickly. Michael, thanks for being on the show.
Michael Scherr: [00:10:51] Well, thank you for having me in. I appreciate your time today.
Dan Humiston: [00:10:55] Good. It was good.
Dan Humiston: [00:10:55] This is gonna be another fun product to watch. Good luck. Thank you so much.
Dan Humiston: [00:11:01] Today 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 236.com. Today's podcast was produced by MJBulls Media.
Dan Humiston: [00:11:22] 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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