Mark Shin, Senior VP of Marketing at MFUSED – Interview Series

One of the most popular and rapidly evolving sectors of the ancillary cannabis industry is vape cartridge batteries. Far from the fragile and breakable batteries of yesteryear—which suffered from uneven heating and other common issues—today’s mass producers of 510 and proprietary battery formats build innovative designs using years of extensive consumer research. Thanks to brilliant mechanical engineers and top experts in product design and marketing, vape battery manufacturers now have an impressive talent pool to draw from.

For a deeper look into the unique and inventive ways vape pen technology is advancing, mycannabis.com spoke with Mark Shin, Senior VP of Marketing at MFUSED.

What subjects did you study in university, and what do you feel like were the most useful courses you took throughout your educational career?

I studied Communication in college, but if I’m being real, one of the most useful classes I ever took was typing in high school. I use that skill every single day.

Beyond that, where I’ve learned the most has been through real-life experience. There are things you can learn in a classroom, but there’s no substitute for actually building businesses, working with different brands, understanding consumers, making mistakes, adapting, and learning from the people around you. That real-world education has probably shaped me more than anything else.

What roles did you hold prior to joining MFUSED? How did those roles prepare you and provide you with transferable skills for the many duties of marketing in a vaporizer company?

I’ve held a wide range of roles throughout my career, and each one has given me a different perspective that I bring to what I do today.

One of my first major professional experiences was working at AT&T (T ) Wireless right out of college. It showed me how demanding the corporate world could be, but it also gave me a strong foundation in technology, business, and professionalism.

At 25, I opened my own sneaker store, which I successfully operated for five years before selling it. That experience taught me a tremendous amount about customer service, consumer behavior, entrepreneurship, and the relationship between culture and commerce. It also taught me that when you genuinely understand and care about the community you’re serving, that passion can translate directly into business success.

Over the years, I’ve also had the opportunity to work with brands including adidas, Monster Products/Beats by Dre, New Era Cap, and ASTRO Gaming/Logitech. My first professional experience in cannabis was as Senior International Marketing Manager at PAX Labs. I also spent time as the personal manager for Big Black from MTV’s Rob & Big and Fantasy Factory, which was another completely different education in entertainment, talent, culture, and brand building.

The common thread across all of those experiences is that I’m an experience creator. I believe my job is to build an emotional connection between a consumer and a product. Whether it’s a vape, a gaming headset, or a pair of sneakers, at the end of the day, it’s still a product. The real value comes from turning that product into something people connect with personally.

Every role I’ve held has sharpened both my professional skill set and my instincts around consumer culture, branding, and human behavior. That combination has taught me when to rely on data, when to trust my instincts, and most importantly, how to create authentic experiences around products and brands.

Prior to joining the MFUSED team, what were your previous experiences in cannabis business and science? What caught your professional attention about joining the team?

Like a lot of people, my introduction to cannabis was originally as a recreational consumer in my early adult life. I didn’t truly understand the business, technology, or science behind the industry until I joined PAX Labs.

PAX completely changed my perspective. I had the opportunity to see firsthand the scale and potential of the cannabis industry while watching states and international markets begin embracing cannabis in more legitimate and regulated ways.

What really captured my professional attention was realizing that this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in the early stages of an entirely new industry. When I first entered cannabis more than a decade ago, the legal market was still in its infancy. Even with all of the progress since then, I still believe we’re relatively early in the evolution of the industry.

That’s what continues to excite me. There is still so much opportunity to innovate, improve the consumer experience, build meaningful brands, and help define what this industry ultimately becomes.

How did MFUSED come into creation, and how does the company successfully combine “front-end market disruption with back-end R&D innovation”?

MFUSED is what I like to call a 12-year overnight success story. The company started in a garage in Seattle, Washington, and has grown into a multi-state cannabis brand while remaining independently and minority owned.

Our owners are still heavily involved in the day-to-day business. They’ve experienced the challenges, mistakes, learnings, and wins that come with building a cannabis company from the ground up. Because we’re independently owned and have largely funded our own growth, we’ve had to be disciplined about where we invest and how we scale.

At the core of MFUSED is our ability to stay nimble, remain close to the customer, and create the best possible product experience at the right value. That’s also where our R&D becomes incredibly important. Our hardware is custom developed around our formulations and the experience we want to create. We’re not simply taking an off-the-shelf device, filling it with oil, and putting our logo on it. We develop solutions specifically around the MFUSED experience.

Having that level of product quality makes my job as SVP of Marketing a lot easier because the marketing has something real behind it.

Super Fog is a great example. When I was developing the concept with our co-owners, there was real concern about how disruptive it could be to our existing business. In fact, immediately after launching it, we experienced one of our toughest months. But we believed in the product, understood what we were trying to build, and stayed committed to the strategy. Fast-forward more than a year and a half, and MFUSED has become one of the leading vape brands in the markets we serve.

When you combine the right product innovation with the right marketing strategy and execution, the results speak for themselves.

From a manufacturing/engineering and product design standpoint, what all went into the creation of the Jefe 2? Mechanically, how does it stand out against its many competitors?

At MFUSED, we believe technology should serve the user experience. Cannabis is incredibly personal — different consumers want different effects, different draws, different settings, and different overall experiences. So we don’t look at hardware in isolation.

With Jefe 2, we looked at the entire experience: the formulations, raw ingredients, airflow, heat patterns, hardware, and customizable settings. The goal was to give consumers more control and allow them to make Jefe 2 feel like their own device.

That philosophy is important because we don’t rely on generic, out-of-the-box hardware solutions. We develop our products around the experience we’re trying to deliver. Every component should have a purpose and contribute to how the product ultimately performs.

For me, the best validation is what happens when the product reaches consumers. The success we’ve experienced across our markets tells us that consumers recognize and appreciate the difference.

How were both previously successful model designs and customer reviews of older devices influential in the design of both the ION and the FLO? What is so unique about the design and usage of those two new devices?

One of our core philosophies at MFUSED is that we’re always learning and improving. Just because a product is successful doesn’t mean we’re going to keep making the exact same thing until the market moves past it.

We generally look at innovation in two ways: either take an existing experience and make it meaningfully better than comparable products on the market, or create something consumers may not even realize they need yet. That second part is where you start thinking about future technology rather than simply reacting to what already exists.

ION and FLO came directly from that philosophy. We took what we learned from the success of our previous Tank and 510 battery and asked ourselves how we could significantly improve the entire experience.

With ION, that meant upgrading materials and introducing new technology, including a custom proprietary mouthpiece engineered to improve airflow and the overall inhale experience.

FLO came from recognizing another problem. Traditionally, 510 batteries are treated almost like throwaway accessories or free promotional items. But a cheap battery paired with a great cartridge can still create a terrible consumer experience. So we asked: why shouldn’t the battery receive the same level of attention as the oil and cartridge?

That led us to build FLO as a premium 510 battery with custom technology designed specifically around the user experience. One example is our proprietary Kore Optimization Mode, which creates a balanced, fine-tuned pull for up to 15 seconds while helping preserve the oil through optimized heat settings.

We also added an LED screen and variable heat settings so consumers can customize their experience. At the same time, we recognized there are situations where discretion matters, so we created Ninja Mode, which allows the device to operate while keeping the LED screen dark.

Those details matter. We think about where consumers are going to use our products, how they want to use them, and how we can give them more control over that experience.

Our goal is to become the leading cannabis vape company in the world. If that’s the goal, we can’t become complacent. We have to constantly improve the entire consumer experience and continue developing technology that is relevant not only to today’s consumer, but to the consumer of the future.

Because the states that MFUSED operates in are so geographically spread out from one another, how do you ensure that the quality of both operations and products is consistent and remains at the same expected standard across those states?

MFUSED is actually now available in five states: Washington, Arizona, New York, Maryland, and Missouri.

One of our biggest advantages is that MFUSED started as an operator. With more than a decade of operating experience, we’ve developed what I would describe as our own proprietary cannabis operating system — processes that allow us to operate efficiently, optimize production, maintain quality, and make what we do repeatable and scalable.

That operational foundation is extremely important when entering new states. We don’t want five different versions of MFUSED. Our processes and standards are established at the national level so that when we enter a market, we have a proven foundation that can be replicated.

At the same time, cannabis is still a very regional business, so our philosophy is to think globally and act locally. The operational and product standards should remain consistent, while our approach to the consumer and the market can reflect the culture and needs of that particular region.

Ultimately, we want someone to walk into a retailer in any state where MFUSED operates, purchase our product, and know they’re getting the same level of quality and experience they expect from us.

What are some of your regular duties as Senior Vice President of Marketing at MFUSED? How do you and your team successfully stay on top of an ancillary industry that’s constantly changing and adapting to customer sales and consumption trends?

My core responsibility is being a steward of the MFUSED brand and making sure everything we do remains relevant to our customers. And when I say customers, I’m talking about everyone in our ecosystem — retailers, budtenders, and ultimately the consumers using our products.

To me, marketing is storytelling and experience creation. I have one of the best jobs in the world because my job is essentially to make sure people have a memorable experience with our brand and products.

That experience can mean different things to different people. Someone might choose an MFUSED product because they’re looking for a specific effect or experience. Someone else might be using it socially with friends and creating a memory around that moment. We can’t define that experience for every consumer, but we can create a brand and product ecosystem that gives them the ability to make it personal.

That’s also why I believe great marketing requires more than understanding marketing theory. You have to understand culture. We stay closely connected to cannabis, but we also pay attention to adjacent lifestyle industries and broader consumer behavior. We’re constantly looking at what’s happening now while also trying to identify what could be next — and then determining whether there is an authentic way for MFUSED to participate.

From an organizational standpoint, I’ve implemented a marketing operating system that gives our team structure around how we identify opportunities, execute campaigns, and measure outcomes without taking the creativity out of marketing.

We also have a very strong sales organization and processes for capturing relevant market and consumer data. The key is that we don’t rely exclusively on data or exclusively on instinct. We marry consumer data with real-world experience and cultural understanding.

For me, that’s the best of both worlds.

How did the expansion into Maryland and Missouri and the strategic partnership with Curio Wellness come to fruition? What were some of the biggest roadblocks in finalizing the deal, and why is the deal beneficial for both companies?

At MFUSED, we’re always evaluating opportunities to bring the brand into new markets, but expansion has to make sense for everyone involved. We look for partnerships where both sides bring meaningful value to the table and where the relationship can be mutually beneficial.

Curio was a strong fit because they hold themselves to the same type of high standards that we expect internally at MFUSED.

One of the biggest challenges with any partnership like this is effectively blending two organizations while establishing very clear roles and responsibilities. You have to determine who owns what, how decisions are made, and how both companies can benefit without creating unnecessary complexity.

One of our goals from the beginning was to make the relationship as seamless as possible for Curio. MFUSED remains heavily involved across the business and maintains strong control over how our brand and products are represented in market, while leveraging Curio’s operational capabilities and local market expertise.

Our cannabis operating system also gave us a framework for integrating the two businesses and executing successful launches in both Maryland and Missouri.

The results demonstrated the strength of the partnership. We were able to establish MFUSED as a leading vape brand in both markets relatively quickly, which showed us that when you combine the right partners, operational systems, products, and execution, the model can scale successfully.

How do you see the MFUSED technology and vaping devices as a whole evolving as the American cannabis industry also simultaneously evolves? Because vaporizer technology has come such a long way, where else do you envision the evolutions going in the future?

MFUSED is a technology-first cannabis vape company. As the cannabis industry evolves, we’re going to continue investing in and developing technologies that improve the consumer’s overall vape experience.

One of our biggest advantages is our commitment to hardware development. We have a dedicated hardware development team based in Asia, which gives us direct access to the ecosystem where much of the world’s vaporizer technology and manufacturing innovation is taking place.

That’s a capability many cannabis brands simply don’t have. A lot of brands still take an existing off-the-shelf hardware solution, fill it with oil, put branding around it, and take it to market. That’s not our approach.

At MFUSED, we’re developing hardware, technology, and formulations together so they work as one integrated system. That gives us the ability to create experiences that are genuinely differentiated rather than simply putting a different package around the same technology.

I believe the future of vaporization will be about giving consumers more control, consistency, customization, and ultimately a better experience. The technology should become smarter and more intuitive without becoming unnecessarily complicated.

Because technology and product development are foundational to MFUSED, our goal isn’t to follow where the vape category goes. We want to help define where it goes next.

We have some incredible new products and technologies coming, and I’m excited for consumers to experience what we’ve been working on.

Thank you for joining us, Mark! For more information on MFUSED, please visit its website.