Rodney Carter Jr., Co-Founder of TRENDS – Interview Series

Despite being operational for over half a decade, New York’s cannabis industry still presents persistent challenges for business owners and managers across all sectors. Even for lifelong New Yorkers with years of entrepreneurial experience, launching and sustaining a business in the Empire State’s market is no easy task. Multi-departmental hurdles remain particularly tough for social equity applicants—especially those who qualify under the Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary (CAURD) program after being impacted by past drug policies.

To get an updated look at the ups and downs of New York’s cannabis industry and evaluate the overall success of the CAURD program, mycannabis.com spoke with Rodney Carter Jr., Co-Founder of TRENDS.

What were your first experiences with cannabis, and how did previous cannabis policy impact the lives of you and your loved ones?

My first experience with cannabis was really fear. Fear from the war on drugs campaigns and propaganda. As young kids, we were told that weed was the gateway drug and during a time where crack was prevalent and having a father on drugs made me even more fearful of it. Eventually, learning my entire family utilized the plant and that government and policy was created around it to incarcerate Black and Brown people allowed me to give it a try to make my own determination from my own experiences about it. The first 3 times I did not even get high but the fourth time melted my mind and numbed my pain. I was hooked, being that I was in a constant state of pain not even realizing it dealing with a mother dying from breast cancer and a father on crack cocaine.

Before coming up with the business idea that became the TRENDS dispensary, what experiences in entrepreneurship and business management did you have?

I come from a long line of hustlers, ever since I was a kid I always tried to find a way to make some money. Being a kid growing up in NYC there were no shortages of ideas if you were creative. From 8 years old, we sold basketball raffle tickets, shoveled snow to later hosting high school back to school bus trips, selling t-shirts, drinks, mix tapes, and circus lights. From 16-19, I sold circus lights outside of Madison Square Garden and would make roughly $1,000 a day after expenses. This business taught me a lot about being a leader, having employees and business expenses as I had 10, 10-15 year old’s as employees underneath me. I graduated college with a BA in Business Administration and been hustling ever since.

Although I made it through my 2 years of college, I came back home to the darkness and pain I was trying to escape and now found myself knee deep in the streets selling drugs. I learned that selling weed was the gateway for me selling much harder drugs, not necessarily taking them. After my mothers passing at 22 and deciding to take boxing seriously which then led me to becoming a personal trainer, later managing a NYSC Harlem Location for 5+ years, a stint at Equinox I then opened my own business Boxing Express which later transformed into Hurricane Fitness. Hurricane Fitness has been in operation since 2018 and is still active today.

When did the idea of starting up a cannabis business first come to mind? Did you or any of your family members or friends have any concerns about you and your brother working in the New York cannabis industry?

To be honest, we’ve never thought about entering the cannabis space. I was happy and content in the health and wellness space. I went from selling things that killed people to selling things that healed people. I like to say that this is bigger than us and that the universe has this in store for us for the impact that we intend to have on the world. Legalization was first mentioned to me from a friend who simply knew I had a strong relationship with cannabis. She tried to connect me with folks looking to obtain the license through justice involved persons.

I didn’t take it seriously as at the time, I was focused on my purpose of personal training. A year later it was brought back to my attention by my father and uncle who had a relationship with folks in DC looking to get into the New York market and were looking for justice involved persons to invest in. Once I learned that it was serious and potentially an opportunity to create generational wealth and potentially transform the lives of our families, we jumped in. The investors however pulled out due to the predatory environment, so we pushed on and 6 months later received our CAURD license. Family/Friends at first didn’t believe in us, the opportunity or what we were tying to build until we did it.

How would you describe the experience of applying for a CAURD license? What all was required from you and your brother as applicants, and how truly accessible of a program is it for potential applicants?

The CAURD application was an intense and arduous process. Even more so because applicants were only given a month to complete it, we only had 2 weeks to complete it once we discovered the application was open after the investors pulled out due to their lawyers increasing their fee from $10K to $40k just to complete the application.

We scrambled for those 2 weeks to get all of our documentation and everything completed. Both my father and I had an experience where the courts were closing for the day and told us that they couldn’t help but then decided to help us stating that God told them to. We were fortunate enough to be able to complete the application and put the money up ourselves for it. My father, my brother and I were all arrested for cannabis. It was my father’s conviction who allowed him to be the justice-involved person and my business Hurricane Fitness which granted me the CAURD license and for us to open up TRENDS Dispensaries. Raising capital became the next hurdle, everyone at the time was offering only predatory deals and we happened to take the best of the bad deals going around.

What were some unexpected roadblocks or other unforeseen issues that you ran into either during the licensing process or during another part of the cannabis business startup process?

We ran into so many unforeseen problems, for one we thought we won a lottery ticket but instead signed ourselves up to work for the state. We were promised 3 locations, consumption included with our license and $1M to establish our business, none of which have been delivered. The fund was stolen, regulations changed up on us daily and then the injunction happened. We were planning to be the first dispensary to open in Long Island City but due to the injunction and our building’s condo board preventing us crucial access, we were set back.

We were met with protestors at our community board hearing because once a few residents in the neighborhood heard 2 Black and Brown brothers were opening up a cannabis shop things got even harder for us. Despite the roadblocks intentionally trying to slow us down we decided to push harder and opened up our location as a pop up while still under construction. Since being opened for over 2 years now and the hardships we’ve endured, I simply chalk it up to to getting my degree from the school of hard knocks and from the experience we’ve encountered I would say it has been a Harvard-level education.

Why did you decide on Long Island City as the location for TRENDS? What economic advantages does the area bring to the dispensary that other nearby areas might not?

We chose LIC initially because we were locked into being forced to choose a location only in Queens. This later changed and opened up to anywhere for everyone else following our round. Being a Queens and Harlem native, we’ve driven through LIC our entire lives. Brandon and my dad lived there since 2014 or so and we seen the development coming. We also loved the idea that it felt like the center of NYC being 5 min from Midtown, 5 min from Brooklyn and having all of Queens behind us. LIC is the fastest developing neighborhood in the country with a high income population which fit right into our target demographics. LIC did not have many competing illicit smoke shops or room for many more incoming dispensaries to pop up.

How do you ensure that TRENDS is more than just another New York dispensary? How do you plan on using the store to be both an example of strength and professionalism in the New York industry?

TRENDS has been much more than a dispensary from inception. We are a lifestyle brand that promotes health, wellness and community. We’ve created an ecosystem that encompasses wellness, fashion, events, media and culture. We are a hospitality brand, so while most dispensaries compete in pricing we don’t. At the end of the day, we all sell the same products so our differentiator is how we make you feel coming in and leaving our space. We don’t follow trends, but we set them. And what we do differently from many other dispensaries is that we aim to bring a high level of professionalism to the industry and being such a young an immature industry, it’s very much needed.

We do this also by our standards and dress code, as I believe we’re the only dispensary that has employees wearing blazers for uniforms. We are big on education and shattering the stigma. We do this by sharing stories, especially those of people whose lives literally depend on this plant. TRENDS is an acronym for The Real Experience Needs A Different Story and that’s what we’re here to do. Share our story and yours!

In your own words and based on your own experiences, why is it special to own and operate the first Black-owned dispensary in Long Island City and one of the largest in Queens?

This is a special time in history period. But it’s even more special for me because I have an opportunity to build something great with my family that can truly change the lives of so many people. Being a person of color and getting this opportunity feels like a double edge sword. From being in the mix these past couple of years, I see how the system was set up with good intentions but at the same time set up for us to fail. When I look at the CAURD holders who were provisionally licensed, only about 20% looked like me. Of that 20% maybe 20% of them were able to find funding even with the predatory lending going on. So unless you were a savvy business person with a team and your own capital, you most likely wouldn’t have gotten far.

The landscape began to look more like they’re using us to set up the market and train the customers for the big MSO’s to come buy us out for pennies on the dollar. Little do they know, TRENDS is here to stay. We’re building a brand that will become a global leader in this industry but to answer your question I don’t even like considering ourselves a black owned business as that has worked against us also, we just want to be a great business.

What do you think the next few years hold for both TRENDS and the greater New York cannabis industry? What are the most widespread changes that you predict will occur either to The Empire State’s industry or the national cannabis industry?