Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Kerr.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I founded Tiki Biosciences in February 2019, and then we launched online in April 2019. My background is in commodity trading, which seems like a big shift from a hemp supplements company focused on health and wellness, but it all really does connect. I have a Finance degree from TCU (1999) and an MBA in Agribusiness from Nebraska, which led to 10+ years trading things like equity options, to biofuels, to gasoline and diesel for QuikTrip. I really liked working for QuikTrip, but I wanted to be back in DFW, so I quit my job and moved back to Fort Worth in December of 2018. On December 20, 2018, President Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill, which reclassified Hemp from Cannabis, and made all of hemp’s derivative products federally legal and acceptable for interstate commerce. This massively changed the game and made a plant that had been off-limits for about 80 years suddenly legal.
Personally, I’d already been using CBD products from Colorado for about 6 months, with really good results. I was a few months removed from major back surgery, had dealt with migraines over the past few years, and was about 10 years from being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, so I’d already spent quite a lot of time looking into health and wellness issues just trying to get my own health sorted out. (Sidenote, my dad is a physician and my mom was a dietician, so I grew up in a family very focused on diet and exercise.)
When the Farm Bill passed, I started looking at the CBD industry from a business perspective. I already believed in the products and the evolving science behind cannabinoid wellness, but I couldn’t figure out why the products were so expensive. After meeting with potential suppliers, visiting manufacturing facilities, and evaluating business models, I put a business plan together and enlisted some friends to bring the highest quality hemp supplements to Texas – at an affordable price. Essentially, I took the QuikTrip fuels model – buy directly from the larger, highest-quality manufacturers, and minimize layers in the business model to offer the highest quality product at a fair price. All of our products are 3rd party tested for potency and purity, THC-free, derived from hemp from registered farms in Colorado, manufactured in Food-grade facilities, and come with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.
We launched online in April with the idea of being solely Direct-to-Consumer through the website, but we’ve evolved into a hybrid approach and are now in some retail locations and fitness centers too. There are advertising restrictions on CBD products with FaceBook and Google, so it’s been important to make our products accessible to as many people as possible so they can try them and realize that we’re not selling snake oil, and there really is a reason that people rave about their experiences with high-quality CBD products.
Has it been a smooth road?
Probably like every other startup, there have been some challenges. In addition to the usual issues, we had to contend with some banking/merchant processing issues because hemp is so new and the credit card processors didn’t differentiate between cannabis and hemp. For the first three months of existence, we had an online store that couldn’t take credit cards. That was fun… also, due to FDA issues, we can’t state that our products will help anyone with any medical issues. Most surveys show that the top 3 uses of CBD products are for anxiety, pain and sleep, and they also have a lot of surveys showing that people are getting tremendous results and some of the medical studies are pretty amazing… but the products, the industry, and the science is so new that we have to be very careful not to make any health claims.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Tiki Biosciences story. Tell us more about the business.
Tiki Biosciences provides high-quality hemp CBD products at an affordable price. All of our products are 3rd party tested for potency and purity, THC-free, derived from hemp from registered farms in Colorado, manufactured in Food-grade facilities, and come with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.
The thing I’m most proud of with Tiki is probably the customer stories after they use our products and have an amazing result. It’s a great feeling to know that your company/products have helped someone.
The thing that sets Tiki about from others is our combination of high quality and low prices. There are companies in the industry that are more than twice as expensive as Tiki, and 3rd party COAs show that Tiki’s quality is just as good, if not better. But we’re new and we don’t have a massive markup like some of the established brands – that’s not our business model.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I think we’re in the first or second inning of a massive sea-change in health and wellness based on phytocannabinoids. The endocannabinoid system was just discovered in the early 1990s, and it’s only a recent phenomenon that people are seriously talking about the lack of cannabis-based medicine being taught in medical schools. The US government actually has a patent on cannabinoids from 2003 (Dept of Health and Human Services) and they list their beneficial properties as being neuroprotectants, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant.
There is a lot of science and studies yet to be done, but I also know that people are fed up with a lot of the ineffective drugs that Big Pharma has pushed on consumers and the accompanying negative side effects. If phytocannabinoids can continue to be shown to be effective and safe for treating different issues, then there will be a large demand from health-conscious consumers for these products.
I’d recommend for everyone that has an interest in the science to check out the Online Resources links in the Learn section on Tiki’s website. There are a lot of impressive studies that have already been done.
Pricing:
- 1000mg Broad Spectrum Tincture – $59.95
- 750mg Broad Spectrum Softgels (25mg per softgel) – $54.95
- 500mg Joint & Muscle Salve – $44.95
Contact Info:
- Website: www.TikiBiosciences.com
- Phone: 800-931-8432
- Email: chris@tikibiosciences.com
- Instagram: @tikibiosciences
- Facebook: Tiki Biosciences
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