Missy Bradley, CRO at Ripple – Interview Series

For those who cannot consume smoke or vapor due to either medical or personal reasons yet still wish to consume cannabis, edibles offer a fantastic and, oftentimes, tasty alternative. Long removed from the days of dollar store-brand brownies cooked in a friend’s oven – usually with an unmeasured amount of THC – edible cannabis products now come in a vast gamut of forms. From a rainbow of gummies with experimental flavors that would make Willy Wonka envious to chocolates, cookies with every imaginable filling, and even stroopwafels – cannabis consumers quite literally have a catalog of products to pick from.

However, as the industry evolves, so do the edible products offered. One such company offering a uniquely innovative product and representing the successful possibilities of the edibles sector of the industry is Ripple. To gain a better understanding of their products and why edibles as a whole are a great option for consumers with specific needs, mycannabis.com had the pleasure of speaking with its CRO, Missy Bradley.

What first interested you about working in cannabis, and why did you eventually choose to work in the Denver industry?

I have been out in Colorado since we moved from San Francisco for my husband’s job. When Colorado first went recreational, you needed to be a two-year resident to start a cannabis company. I was approaching two years and a childhood friend reached out and said he wanted to start a cannabis company and asked if I would license it. 

To which I said no, because I wasn’t in the industry. I was kind of terrified of it and I didn’t really use cannabis for anything. So, the original product we launched was a micro-dose tea, and I had never seen cannabis used functionally like that. Being used to relax instead of just to get high. It really struck a chord with me that there are different uses for this product and that there’s a whole market that’s being underserved right now, and we could be at the forefront of this. 

As someone who studied journalism in school and even received a Master’s Degree in the subject, what was the transition from journalism to cannabis like?

I like to say that everyone could use a degree in communications. There’s not a single day that goes by that I’m not thankful for the fact that I can communicate, whether it be via email or in person and make sure that I make clear requests and that I’m clear in my delivery of responses. I think it was a much more natural path than it seems on paper.        

I started with the company building out a brand and having been in communications and learning messaging and how to approach different audiences with your content. It helps really nicely in building out a brand and figuring out how you’re going to talk to customers and get coverage, talk to reporters and engage with your community.

Speaking of studying journalism, what subjects or lessons did you learn while attending the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of Michigan that eventually became useful when working in the cannabis industry?  

I think the idea of being truthful to the narrative and process and making sure that you have an unbiased voice always in the room or in your head. Because you can very quickly get caught up in a brand and believe a story as opposed to the actual truth of what it is that you’re trying to do or trying to build.

We have from the very beginning had a product that we believed in and that we put out with integrity. And I think that’s something that’s very prevalent in journalistic ethics is making sure you are sourcing, getting the full story and approaching things in a truthful way.   

What were your defining experiences in the cannabis industry that led to the creation of the Ripple brand? And why did you choose to enter the edibles market in particular as opposed to the flower or extract part of the business?

The reason for entering the edibles market dates back to the founding of the company. My childhood friend was asked by his grandma to procure some marijuana. She wanted an edible and she was old and diabetic. She wanted relief from everyday aches and pains. He got her a brownie, cut it into tiny pieces and they sat in the back of her freezer and she never used them. 

That got him thinking about approachable products that anyone’s grandma would feel comfortable taking. That led us to our first product which was the micro-dose tea, which is something that people associate with wellness.    

In order to make a micro-dose tea, we had to make the THC water soluble, so you didn’t have an oil slick on top of the cup. In doing so, we accidentally created Ripple, which is a powdered unflavored dissolvable that you could add to anything. We would add it to our loose leaf tea. After we were in the market for three months, we started hearing more and more from consumers that the product sounds amazing but the dose is too low.

We got to thinking since we have a product you can add to anything, we’ll just sell the product and people can have the experience that they want. They can have it in the drink and dose they want. They don’t have to be stuck with a gummy or a piece of chocolate. They can explore cannabis in a way that’s more for them.

That’s been the most impactful part of the journey. Seeing my friends and family members who before wouldn’t touch cannabis, even in a topical form. And they’re now using it daily and weekly for relief and enjoyment in a way I never thought possible. Especially as we potentially gain access to larger markets with these possible federal reforms, it opens up opportunities for all types of patients.               

What have been some of your most notable accomplishments with the brand since its inception, and as co-founder, what do you believe the brand is doing differently than other brands?

I think first and foremost we were the first water soluble THC and we’re the only clinically proven fast acting commercially available THC product. What I mean by that is that we ran clinical trials with Colorado State University, that were double blind and placebo controlled in peer-reviewed journals, to prove the speed of absorption for edible products.      

We understood anecdotally that our products were being absorbed quicker. We could feel the effects faster and we started hearing from consumers that they could feel it faster. We wanted to understand why it was fast acting. So we set out to prove that our product was fast acting and that Ripper products are absorbed in the bloodstream in just 10 minutes following the same pathways as water. 

And that has really carried through the lines of our products in a remarkable way. We had fast-acting gummies, beverages and now we’re into tablets. 

Being the original water soluble powder, there have been many that have come after and none that have stuck. More recently, two years ago we launched a budget and fast-acting gummy that anybody could afford. Because of rising inflation and the cost of everything, we still wanted people to be able to access fast-acting cannabis products at an affordable price.  

That gummy is now the number two gummy in Colorado by volume. We entered such a heavily saturated market, and to see that adoption within a legacy industry was remarkable for us.            

How does producing a THC dissolvable such as Ripper differ from producing more commonly known edible types such as gummies? Are there any factors that need to be considered for THC dissolvable production and the larger production of cannabis edibles that cultivators and extractors don’t have to consider? 

We use specialized equipment to render the THC water soluble. It depends whether or not it’s going into a powdered format or a gummy, what the process is. There’s a lot of hype right now around nano-emulsification. In our company, we consider nano-emulsification a four-letter word because you’re not controlling for particle size. Yes, smaller particles are absorbed quicker into the human body, but we don’t know when the particle size gets so small, you’re crossing the blood brain barrier by that point. You don’t know if there’s any bioaccumulation in the brain or degradation of product when you have particle sizes so small.

The considerations to be made are how are you affecting the bioactive when you’re taking it from its oil state into any of your other products. We have done studies over rigorous studies over time to understand how our products hold up over time and if there’s degradation. We have a super stable product across powders and gummies and that’s super important to us because even though we have a “best by” date on the packaging, we want to make sure that if someone is having it past that date, that they’re still having a good experience.               

Given that it’s one of the two first states to legalize cannabis recreationally, all the way back in 2012, do you believe that the Colorado cannabis industry’s age, when compared to the other legal states, still benefits and/or otherwise strengthens the state industry? Conversely, do you think its superior age hinders its success compared to more lucrative and younger states?

I think it’s a bit of a hindrance for Colorado right now. I think Colorado has a lot to learn from other states that have come online in the last few years and are doing things a little differently. The Colorado regulators have been a bit stuck in their ways. The industry is down year over year and it’s continually declining and regulators aren’t looking for ways to support cannabis businesses in Colorado and that’s been tough.    

As small businesses, we’ve been showing up to try to provide paths to supporting our businesses, and it feels to us like they’re turning a blind eye. And that’s frustrating because there’s still cannabis consumers in Colorado and it stands to bring a lot to the state in terms of revenue. We feel like we’re a bit stuck. For one thing, there are plenty of multi-state operators who have trouble paying their bills. When their licenses come up for renewal, there’s no question from the state about their payables and what money they owe to small Colorado businesses. They’re allowing them to renew licenses when they have millions owed to Colorado companies. 

There’s also no calibration across testing labs in Colorado, so people know what lab to go to if they want a high potency result and that’s infuriating because the consumer does not benefit from that because they think they’re buying one thing and getting another.       

Even though the Colorado cannabis industry has existed for over a decade now, I would imagine it’s still nowhere near perfect. What are still some common or widespread issues that persist for business owners and employees alike despite the state industry’s longer existence?                    

Not being able to write off costs on taxes because of 280E, the issue that the state isn’t more heavily involved in businesses paying for products and services, and then I would say delivery and social consumption. We’ve never really gotten that right. We’ve had limited delivery in a few cities, but by and large, you can’t get cannabis delivered in Colorado.

And then we have only one, if not very few licensed consumption lounges, but we should be at the forefront of that. We’ve been around so long, we should be leading the charge on consumption lounges. The original intent of what Colorado constituents voted on was to regulate cannabis like alcohol and we are so far from that that it’s infuriating. By having a recreational market for 10 years, we’ve proven that there’s not a public safety concern. We’ve proven through research available that cannabis is not nearly as damaging as alcohol. It’s blasphemous that we’re treating it like it’s a controlled substance when you can go to any liquor store on any corner and buy a fifth.  

I think that we’ve gotten it really wrong in that regard in treating cannabis like a Schedule I drug. There are so many people who would benefit from cannabis as opposed to alcohol.    

Assuming cannabis rescheduling actually happens and cannabis goes from Schedule I to Schedule III, how would that impact both your brand and the greater Colorado industry as a whole?

It’s always so hard to make these predictions. For us as a small business, having the ability to ship products out of state would be enormous. Right now, our largest market is Colorado but we have license deals in other states, but those are not super lucrative for us. Being able to reach a consumer outside of Colorado with our clinically tested and fast acting reliable products would be everything for us as a brand and also as a company.     

I hope that if and when we are rescheduled, that there’s movement as far as the ability to create a product in one state and sell it in another, but the individual states will still have some form of control over the regulated businesses in the state. 

Thank you for joining us, Missy! To stay up to date on Ripple and the Colorado edibles market as a whole, please visit Ripple’s website.