Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Moodie and Brooke Brun.
Brooke and Katie had been best friends for years and decided to start a natural product manufacturing company in 2013. At that time, Brooke was taking heavy doses of anti-seizure medications for her epilepsy. Every time Brooke went to see her neurologist for checkups, they wanted to give her more and more medications to combat the side effects of all of the medications she was already taking.
Eventually, the medication became more debilitating than epilepsy and she became fed up with her quality of life. This is when Brooke decided to look for an alternative and discovered that CBD was working for children, so why not try it herself as an adult? She went to Katie and asked her to formulate an oil with CBD and the results were so transformative that they both decided this should be accessible to others.
Luckily they were able to find a supplier of organic hemp in Colorado and got to work making all natural products to sell at their local farmer’s markets. It took a little time to educate the community, but then it took off when customers started coming back with their stories, and even bringing friends and family to try the products for themselves! Now it is has grown to a nationwide company supplying CBD to individuals and businesses alike.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Operating a business in the cannabis industry is no easy task. While hemp does have a little bit more freedom than marijuana in some respects, it does have it’s own unique challenges as well. Since we are allowed to manufacture, sell, and ship our products according to the Federal Farm Bill it made sense for us to have an online store. However, the federal banking regulations are still behind the curve so we cannot currently accept credit cards through any online processors (like PayPal, Stripe, Square, etc…)
So this makes it very challenging to operate an online store. Also, advertising is not as simple for us as it is for businesses in other industries. There have been times where we created 16 advertisements and only one of them gets approved to run on our social media channels. This makes it extremely difficult for us to market our brand, and also more difficult for customers to be able to find us.
kb Pure Essentials, LLC – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We started our company in 2013 as best friends trying to share all natural products with our community through local farmers markets. Over the years our brand has evolved and we’ve become experts on the many uses of hemp and cannabis. We’ve discovered how beneficial CBD can be both internally- via infused oils for wellness- and externally- via infused topicals for skincare, pain, and active lifestyle personal care products.
What sets us apart from other companies in the cannabis industry is our grassroots approach to building our brand through local farmers markets and community events. We are proud of the fact that we started with nothing and built a thriving company by focusing on serving the people in our community and beyond. We are now distributing our products in all 50 states, and helping thousands of people improve their life- some in small ways, and some in life-changing ways!
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
We have proud moments every time a customer writes in or stops by our booth, to tell us about how our products have benefited them. Often times our customers rave about how effective our natural deodorant is, and other times we have local doctors sending their patients to us for a pain slave that works better than any prescription medication on the market (without any negative side effects!). That makes us feel proud to know we are helping people. That is really what it’s all about.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kbpureessentials.com
- Phone: 858-210-5581
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kbpureessentials/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kbpureessentials
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/kbPureSD
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/kb-pure-essentials-san-diego
Getting in touch: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
