An Essential Hemp Story: Ron Alcalay Reveals the Vital Hemp Journey

Episode Transcript
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(00:10):
Greetings, hempster. Thank you for listening in to another hemp episode of
Hempel Ware Radio. This is Tyler Hemp, your hemptrepreneurial
host, here to hemp power your hemposphere because it's hemp
portant. Hemp entrepreneurs and hemp companies around the
world struggle to market and sell their products effectively,
but it doesn't have to be that way. At HempAware, we

(00:33):
provide strategic marketing and branding services so
that hemp entrepreneurs just like you can transform the world
with your hemp products and services and transform the planet
in a way that supports all of life. So if you're struggling to get
traffic to your site or convert that traffic into ongoing
sales or if you're needing help with your website, marketing,

(00:55):
or branding in any way, visit hempawaredot com and check
out some of the valuable resources that we've put together for hemp
entrepreneurs and companies just like yours. On
today's show, I'm honored to have a long time buddy and
one of the OG Hemsters. His name is Ron
Alcalay. I like to call him Rony. And he is the

(01:17):
creator of a lifestyle and hemp clothing brand called Vital
Hemp based out of Southern California. And their
mission is to introduce people to the superior
qualities of hemp by producing the most comfortable,
healthy, and truly eco friendly clothing on the planet.
As a vital member of the sustainable business community, they

(01:40):
were part of the ground swell that changed the antiquated
laws re legalizing the cultivation of industrial hemp in
the USA so that we can all benefit from the
myriad uses of this amazing plant. From food,
plastics, clothing, paper, energy, fuel,
medicine, and so much more. Vital Hemp introduces

(02:02):
people to the superior qualities of hemp by producing
the most comfortable, healthy, and sustainable hemp
clothes possible. Hemp has come a long way and so has
Vital Hemp. From their 1st weekend stand on the Venice
Boardwalk in 2003 to their journeys up and down the
West Coast to green festivals in Denver and DC

(02:24):
and back to Sedona, Joshua Tree, and their old shop
on Main Street in Santa Monica. All I can say is
wow and express my gratitude for Ronnie
for being such a an inspiration for so many people and for
making this world a greener, more sustainable, and hempy place.
So, Hempster, as you very well know, it's been far too

(02:47):
long since hemp was known for what it really is, an
essential solution for food, homes, clothing, plastics,
energy, medicine, and fuel, and so much more. So if you're ready to take your
hemp game to the next level and learn some things about how you can
do better with your hemp business, then you're gonna love this hemp
episode. So with that said, I'd like to welcome my good buddy and long

(03:10):
time hempster, Ronnie Aukule, to the show. Thank you so much for
joining me on this hemp episode. I appreciate you being here, brothers.
Thank you, Tyler. Thanks so much. It's always good to see your
face. It warms my heart. Right on. And, you know, we've known
each other, gosh, I think probably close to 18 years. You've
been doing this over 20 years now. But I don't

(03:32):
think I have ever asked you, what did you do
before you got into hemp and before you created your
own hemp company with Vital Hemp? What what is your background? What is your
expertise? Sure. Well,
I was the eldest son of 2
Jewish immigrants. My father from Bulgaria, he was a

(03:55):
quantum physicist. My mother from Mexico,
from Polish ancestry, and they met on a blind date here in
LA. I was kind of the
A straight son until I started smoking weed in
the summer between 7th and 3th grade and threw
little plants just beyond the backyard,

(04:17):
which my brother saw me doing and ratted me out to my
mom. Even though I told them it was a science experiment
and she'd like, she'd like, mom, what's mommy's
science experiment? But anyway, so they weren't too pleased.
And they basically sent me to an all boys prep school called the
Harvard School, now Harvard Westlake. And from there, I went to

(04:39):
Brown and I did all the things that, you know, the eldest
son is supposed to do. I graduated magna cum laude,
double degree, and then I went to graduate school.
Well, I thought I'd be a lawyer, but I ended up working in a law
firm and realizing that wasn't for me, and that it would kill my
soul. I knew I was a writer from probably 8th grade.

(05:03):
I decided to go into a master's
and PhD program at Berkeley with master's in
creative writing and PhD in English and American literature. My
idea was that I hadn't really even though I was one of my majors
in college was top line, I felt like I hadn't read enough
novels, and I really wanted to

(05:26):
become an expert in writing stories. And I felt that the
only way to do that was to consume more stories.
So I did my master's in creative writing, my
PhD in English and American literature. It took 10
years. Along the way, I taught 6 of those years at
Berkeley. I developed I developed an expertise in

(05:47):
teaching writing and also in the literature
of the 19th 20th century in America and the US.
So I focused on post World War
2, fiction and film. I also taught film history
for many years. So at Berkeley, at San
Francisco State, I lectured in the film industry department there

(06:11):
and in the film department, and then I moved out here. I worked in the
film industry, and my idea was to help the industry tell better stories.
I worked with Steve Jobs around the entertainment
world until I got hired to, like, some screen clothes.
And then went back to teaching again at AFI, later at
Loyola, with 3a half year stint working as

(06:33):
a brand writer for the Children's Nature Institute with the nonprofit
that served about 20,000 kids and
parents and teachers everywhere, bringing them out to
from the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles, landlocked neighborhoods. We
would rent buses. We had trained walk leaders who went through a week
long training program on how to

(06:55):
provide interactive multi sensory nature
experiences to the youngest children from
pre k to 3rd grade when kids' minds
are really developing and when their attitudes are
forming. And I learned so much about how
important being exposed to nature can be.

(07:18):
I took it for granted because I grew up on the wild edge of LA.
So the call says that a lot of these kids have never even seen the
beach or walked on uneven ground. And those experiences
form neural networks in to brains as kids'
nature. Super important. We also combined with

(07:39):
the lesson plans where we pretended we were trees
or birds and sang songs and smelled things and
interacted with nature. You know, their their impulse is if they see
ants, they just wanna kill them. And we would say, no. You know, this is
their home. I would be like it if a big giant spayed and
stomped on you in your home. And so, you know, keep

(08:01):
developing the apathy for these kids so that they started to see
that every species are placed and
functions in this world, and
to to have developed feelings of respect and responsibility
for the natural world because we're intertwined.
And the the state of humans isn't

(08:24):
intertwined with the state of other species. So,
my expertise, I did teach students to the
professional writers, writing screenplays, music video
treatments, treatments, commercial treatments.
You name it, I wrote it. And I'm still doing that. I just, this morning,
wrote a holiday newsletter for the largest postproduction

(08:46):
company in town, and I really enjoy
using my skills of the wordsmith to
help other companies, particularly allied companies,
achieve their goals, whether internally or externally.
I'm doing more of that. Vital Hemp is still going.
Ideals for how to for new products that I wanna bring

(09:09):
to market. And that's that's my background.
That's beautiful. I mean, you you have done a lot in your life,
and I I didn't realize you had a a PhD in American literature
and taught at Berkeley. I mean, that's super
pertinent information that all these years I didn't know about you.

(09:29):
And it totally makes sense with, you know, the kindhearted
human being that you are, that you worked with kids and taught them
empathy, connecting with nature. It's totally on point with with
who you need to be. So tell me,
like, the moment or the the revelation that you had,
like, I'm gonna create a hemp company. I mean, you could have been a lawyer.

(09:51):
You could have gone into, you know, other fields like you
said. But for some reason, you're like, I gotta create this hemp
clothing company. Why did you what was that moment like for
you? When did you have that epiphany? Yeah.
Well, I think there were several epiphanies along the way. The
first was on a road trip north to bid farewell

(10:13):
to my friend, Lincoln Shlensky, who finally got his PhD at Firpo
After 13 years, I had bought him a swatch as a going
away present. He was going to the University of Alabama in Mobile
to teach English and Dubreich studies. I always think
that's kind of funny. Dubreich studies and in
Mobile, Alabama. And I bought him a swatch to remind

(10:36):
him of the value of time. But but on the
way up north, I stopped in San Luis Obispo to get a bite
and saw this place called The Hemp Shack. And it was the first
time I'd ever seen a hemp store before. I went in
and there were some beautiful clothes. And I remember
feeling the hemp linen shirts and

(10:58):
thinking, you know, this feels like it was made
from plants. And it was the first time in my
mind that I connected the idea that clothes
can be made from plants. That when we're walking even that when we're
walking around in our cotton, it's actually comes from the
earth, which plant matter. But the with the

(11:21):
hemp, because of the nature of the linen and the longs
long fibers, it was really clear to me that this was
like walking around wearing plants. And when I tried it on,
it felt that there was this kind of instead of being a
barrier between me and the world, I felt that it was a
permeable barrier. Like, that my my skin could breathe

(11:43):
through the fabrics. The world could breathe through the fabric
into me. And it felt much more
natural, and I felt more alive wearing it. So that was
maybe my first experience. I bought the Lincoln a
a sea salt gray banded collared shirt by a company called
Juice Naturale. And but by the time I got to Berkeley, I had

(12:06):
fallen so in love with the shirt, but I ended up giving him the swatch
and keeping the shirt for myself. So, maybe
a month a month later, I'm down in LA. I went to a
yoga expo in in the expo center, and I
see a guy selling some closeout merchandise of clothing
and things. And so there's some hemp feasters, and I said,

(12:28):
hey. Do you know where I can get any more clothes by this company called
Juice Naturale? He said, oh, yeah. It's a long story, but they
were the leaders of the high end hemp clothing business in the nineties,
and they divorced and they dissolved the company. I said, well, well, do you know
where I might get some closeouts? And so, yeah. You know, there's this guy
named Jeff. He opened the hemp store on the just off the

(12:49):
Windward Circle, and I think he bought all their closed out
stuff. I said, oh, well, that's cool. That's not far from where I
live. So and I at the time, I was in Louisville Street at
Loyola, Maryknuff. So I went down there after after
lecture, and I saw
this parody of a hemp story, you know, with the plastic marijuana

(13:11):
leaves around the perimeter and the obligatory picture of
Bob Marley, and it smelled thick with
No. Chocolate. Smoke with with smoke. No.
No. With with cannabis smoke. And Oh, okay. The the stoned owner
the stoned owner was behind their glass case with the walls,
and and yet there were these beautiful clothes.

(13:35):
All these different colors of just natural clothing all around
stores. So I bought some things and
returned the next day, very excited and bought more things. And
I signed his guest with email list, and I made some
comment like, this stuff's so great. I just have this fantasy of sharing it
with the world. So about a week later, I'm in my

(13:58):
flat in Los Feliz, and I'm preparing a lecture on, you know, Francois Truffaut
or Italian Neo Reeler. You might forget which ones. On my Zenith
laptop with the green little letters tell you how
old, how what when it was. It was 2,000 and true, actually. And
I get this email, and it's just like a one line email
from this guy. It says, I'd like to discuss the possibility of going

(14:20):
into the Hemp business with you. So here I was in academics,
and suddenly I get this email. And I remember going into one of those
moments where I just looked up into the right, and I think
my eyes were open, but this full potential future
sort of unrolled like a movie in front of me,

(14:41):
one that I had never seen before. And it was interesting. I was like, wow.
Could I do this? This is at the time I was lecturing,
I just felt I'd seen an inconvenient truth. And
I I felt like there's more that this world
wants from me than to be standing on a podium in front of a
podium, in front of a 125 film majors and lecturing

(15:03):
about the, you know, creative achievements of mostly dead
white men. I think that this world needs me to
to do more and to fight for healthy
environments and healthy ecosystem. And so in this
moment, they kinda had a vision that that could be possible
to have clothing. So I said, I wrote back and I said, yeah. Let's

(15:26):
move. And so we met. He said, I wanna start a hemp clothing
wholesale hemp clothing company with us. He said, what do you think we'd need? I
said, well, I think we need a name and and a website. We
might need a partnership agreement to figure out our roles
and responsibilities. I I might like a an LLC
to protect my meager assets. And he says, oh, you know

(15:48):
so much, I'll give you half. And I said, well, I don't know about let
me think about this. So I talked with a couple friends who had gone to
Brown and got on to Wharton Business School and were, you know, successful
business people. And I said, what do you think about this? They said, well, be
careful who you get into partnership with because the partnership's like a marriage.
And you gotta know that you can trust the person and then you

(16:09):
communicate the with the person and then you like them. So you're
gonna be spending a lot of time with them. I said, well, how do I
do that? I just met with them. Well, they said, well, do something small with
them first just to test test the waters. And I said, oh, that's a good
idea. So I went back to him and I said, look. I spoke with my
friends. They gave me some good advice. We're very small. Anything

(16:29):
small that we can do together is to see if we try to get
along. And he said, well, there's this dream festival up in San Francisco. I said,
perfect. San Francisco, we could stay with my friends in Oakland.
I'll work the booth with you. I don't even wanna get paid. I just
wanna see if I like it. And so we met up there. He
showed up showed up smelling like a homeless guy. My my friend

(16:52):
gives me the bottle of doctor Broders and says, hey. Please give this to
your friend, ask him to take a shower. Alright.
Like, Jeff, you smell like you've been marinating in your own urine for
hours. Oh, sorry. Sorry. So he took a shower. The next morning, we get
up. We drive the U Haul across the Bay Bridge towards San
Francisco. Francisco. Literally

(17:15):
runs out of gas. He's like, oh, I forgot to fill up. Like,
dude, quit putting the neutral. Roll up the windows.
Turn off the radio. Get in the right ways. And we, like, screwed over
that last bump on the Bay Bridge, and I knew where to get off on
that first, Texas. And I knew where the 76 station was, so
we, like, put I ran there. We got one of those gas tanks. We made

(17:37):
it. And we sold. We set up the booth and I worked the
booth and we sold a couple of $1,000 stuff. And I
felt great because I met the green the members of the green
business community, the, you know, fair trade
chocolatiers and solar nuts and the
health, the superfood yeets and all in all of these

(17:58):
people who later became my close friends. And
I thought I felt more at home in their company than I
ever had among my supremely intelligent academic
sons because they were on mission that it was
more than just Hetty. It was really from the heart, and it was more than
just ivory tower who was really in the world and

(18:20):
here to be a service for the future of life on Earth. And
that was what that was what I how I saw myself.
So did you go into business with Jeff? I did. I
we drove home together. We talked about our vision for for
our company. We both wanted to to bring hemp back to the
masses. And I said, yeah, like like the gaff of

(18:42):
hemp. And, you know, we wanted we wanted to do stylish basic.
So we came home, I copied a 2 page partnership agreement from
the back of a Nolo press cook I found at the library. And we were
partners for about 3 months until he kinda at the time I met
him, I learned he had a seaway notice for his shop. I
talked to his landlord. I kinda got him out of a jam. I invested some

(19:05):
money. I started opening accounts in Northern California and the desert
on Melrose. And, you know, he kinda got back on his feet, and then
we ordered a second ship. We sold through the first shipment,
and then he ordered a second shipment. And I learned that he
had ordered some fabric without telling me, and the second shipment came with a
name that we hadn't discussed. And I'm like, what's this forehead thing?

(19:28):
And he said, oh, well, I just had some extra labels. I'm like, what about,
Lord, I thought we were gonna do vital temptations.
He says, oh, no. Well, I had these extra like, yeah.
So he said, well and then he's kind of he wasn't
communicating well, and I said, look. Just tell me what's going on. And we said,
well, I wanna do 4 halves separately. And he said, well, listen. I don't have

(19:50):
our agreements in front of me, but I think there's something called a non compete
clause. Why would I be in business with you if you if you're gonna be
running a competing business? And he said, well, then I'll buy you out. I said,
I don't wanna be bought out. I'm in this. And he
said, well, then let's just divide up the flows and and
terminate the partnership. Like, really? Can we just do different brands

(20:11):
for different sectors? Like, you know, the gap has Old
Navy and Banana Republic. And so, no, I wanna do this. I'm like, alright.
So it was like, one for you, one for me, one for me, one for
me, one for me, one for you. And I had 40 boxes of PEM clothes
in my garage. And most dealers, no experience
in the in the clothing business. And I was like, what am I going to
do? What am I doing? So I called my friend Greg

(20:35):
Went, who was a sustainable guy. And I said, what do I do?
He said, well, why don't you talk to my friend Clayson? She's producing the 1st
birthday on the promenade. And I think it's going on in about a week. This
was an an equals. I said, great. I called Casey. She said,
yes, sir. Just bring a check for a $125. This was
in April of 2003. Just goes to show you how much booths bought

(20:57):
back loans. A $125 for a 10 by 10. I mean,
later I would spend, you know, $8,000 or more at the natural
products next up for the same size foods and for
not making that much more. But anyway, so I I I was like, okay, I
got a week. So I put an ad for a man with a van to
help me, stop take the stuff down.

(21:19):
I painted a a sign of the logo
on some hemp cloth. I went downtown. I bought
some used racks and used hangers
and basically set up booth. It was a one day event.
And, you know, I sold about a $1,000
bad guy from the closeout piece that the name was

(21:42):
Howard. He had had a store on the on the boardwalk in the 90.
He he walks by and he says, oh, look at you. What are you doing?
I I I thought you were partners with Jeff. He said, I said, yeah. We
terminated. He said, oh, so what are you gonna do now? I said, I have
no idea. He said, oh, well, why don't you
come down to the boardwalk? I'll help you out. I know a guy, and he

(22:03):
can rent you a spot. So I went down the next day, and I
met this guy, and he shows me this little closet, you
know, in a terrible part of the boardwalk. And he says, and you could put
all your inventory here under under this building. And,
I'm thinking, like, yeah. And it'll be gone the next morning.
And so I just said to him, I'll I'll I'll get

(22:25):
back to you. So I called him I literally called him back 10 minutes later.
I said, I think I'm gonna pass. I walked to the top end of the
boardwalk, turned around, started walking really slowly, just vibing,
like, I'm gonna set up on the free side of the boardwalk. And I got
to this place just south of Fig Trees, and it just
felt right. And I look up, and there's a guy named Dave, and he's

(22:47):
straddling a bike. And he's like, hey, Ron. And
then Dave had worked for Jeff. And I said, hey, Dave. What are you doing?
And he's standing underneath an empty half of a 10 by 20 foot
booth. And I said I said, I'm just looking for a place to set
up my, you know, cell hemp clothing. And he says, oh,
yeah. I heard you and Jeff parted. Guy's a

(23:09):
jerk. He borrowed my van and blew out the transmission and and he, you
know, not pay me back. So I'm I'm
leaving town. I'm going back to Vegas. He's like, you wanna buy my half of
the booth? I said, how much? He said, $50.
I said, oh, well, let me check. And I I looked to my wallet. I
actually had a $50 bill. I handed it to him, and he he took it.

(23:30):
And he said, well, wait. Hold on a minute. I shared the book with Mary
Anne, who was in the other 10 by 10. And there's this, like, white
Rastafarian woman, like, with selling white e Ethiopian
clothes. And she looks up, and he says, hey, Mary Anne. This is Ron.
He's a cool guy. He wants to sell hemp clothing out of this side of
the booth. Is that okay with you? And she looks up at me, and she
goes, yeah. He looks pretty cool. Oh, okay. So

(23:53):
so I say he takes the 50. He says, and I'll come back tomorrow
and help you set up. So that's began my, you know, 2
year adventure on weekends on Venice on the
Venice board. That's awesome. Yeah.
Man, so you've been doing this. I mean, that was way back
in 2003. So that's, you know, 20 years ago.

(24:16):
What has the transformation been like for you in
terms of people being open and receptive to
hemp? I mean, obviously, being in Venice, I'm sure from the very beginning,
you had people that were gung ho about what you had to offer.
But I'm sure you've encountered the people asking if they can smoke your
clothing and just the overall the negative

(24:38):
perception of hemp being cannabis. What has your
experience been seeing the transformation over these years? Well,
yeah, I haven't experienced too much outright negativity.
I've experienced a bunch of stereotypes. You know, I
created the term hemp education. And on the back of all
my hang tags and business cards, I have several

(25:01):
backs of amputation mostly gleaned from the
emperor wears no clout no clothes. And anyway,
I you know, so when people would say, hey,
if if I wear out my clothes, can I smoke them? I would
say, well, hemp won't get you high, but wearing the clothes
will raise your spirits. And I came up

(25:23):
with little slogans that were designed to sort of
counteract some of the Stigma. Negative negative
stereotypes. Mhmm. Yeah. You were a big inspiration
for me in that way because like you, I'm I consider
myself a wordsmith, and I love the power of words
and the, and so I created something called

(25:45):
the the HempSecon, which is a Hemp Lexicon.
And so over the years, we've just been adding, you know, as
you very well heard at the beginning of the show, all my little I
loved that. Yeah. It was so much fun. So overall these
years, when it comes to the products that you've you've developed,
tell me a little bit about the the spread of, you

(26:08):
know, shirts and hoodies and pants? Like, what what
are the different products that you've developed and and offered through Vital Hemp?
And what are you focused on offering these days?
Well, you know, I just wanna finish up the the last point a little bit
and to say Sure. That that the project of Hemp
Education was always a big part

(26:31):
of vital hemp through my new, through, one
of the things that I really enjoyed doing was writing the newsletters,
But I really enjoyed it when people, the Venice
Boardwalk drew a lot of people from all over the world and so did my
store in Santa Monica. And a lot of people were just curious. They didn't
really know what hemp was. And so because I knew a

(26:53):
lot more and continued to learn, I was able to tell them
everything from the difference between hemp and marijuana in terms
of how it grows, in terms of the THC content, in terms of the
different uses. I was able to tell them about all the different
uses of hemp, both historically and and currently,
turn them on to the ideas of hemp bioplastic

(27:15):
and building materials, and then put them in a hemp
shirt and tell them about the benefits of
hemp fabrics, both from the antimicrobial perspective and
the breathing, the durability, the way it wears
in. You know, it was fun coming up with metaphors, like people that
I told you about the hemp won't get you high, but these colossal rager spirits.

(27:38):
I would I had another one that I came up which would which is like
hemp is like you know, it's like canines. Not not all
canines are the same. You know, the golden retriever can be your best
friend, and the wolf, which also has a a valuable place
in in in the ecosystem. But if you encounter it, it could
it could bite you. And so in the same way, you know, you you might

(28:01):
if you were to just discover marijuana for the first time
and ingest a bunch of it, you might get really, you know, way
too stoned. But hemp t shirt could be your favorite t shirt
in your wardrobe. Anyway, good luck. Now that's just
on that. Now in terms of what we've made in the
past, when I first started on the boardwalk,

(28:23):
I was buying t shirts that that Barbara
Fillipone designed and had
made in her fact in one of the factories she worked with in
China. And they were very standard cuts. They
were pretty standard colors, you know, black, white.
I believe there was a navy blue and possibly a

(28:44):
burgundy and maybe an olive. And, you
know, those were good. I was selling them for $30 a piece. I think I
bought them for 15 or something like that. And, you know,
it was an okay business. It was challenging. It wasn't I
wasn't getting rich on it at all. I I don't even know if I was
making a profit after all, but didn't really pay myself much in those days

(29:06):
or ever. But, eventually,
I used the contact that
I had through my short lived partnership with
Jeff to travel to China and to well,
even before I traveled there, to just just
just start becoming a designer of things that I wanted to make.

(29:29):
So if I wanted to make a long sleeve, I would buy a Patagonia long
sleeve and send it to China and say, please make this in this
specific hemp tencel knit that I was using. And
they would make it. And then I would, you know, work with a pattern maker
here and say, okay. I want the sleeves a little bit narrower than
than how they came out, and I want the body a little narrower and

(29:50):
or a little longer. Or you know, and I would send notes back with
drawings to China, and then they'd say, okay. We got it.
And then I would cry I'd wire $20,000 or
whatever it was as the first payment, and then another
20 later. And then cross my fingers, and then all these boxes
would come in, you know, filled with hemp clothing, whether it was T

(30:12):
shirts or hoodies or long sleeves or later pants or
skirts. And I would, you know, unfurl the
boxes. And they and they were all colors that I had chose from, you
know, Pantone chart based on things that I wanted to
to see in the world and, you know, usually inspired by nature.
And I had a lot of fun with contrast stitching and back in

(30:35):
those days. And, you know, I I experiment. Like, this shirt that I'm
wearing, it's probably from that old time. I mean, can you believe it? I this
shirt's probably 10 years old than these. It's an aqua shirt
within the contrast. It's, you know, flatlock stitch. I mean, this one was made
in LA, but, yeah, this is one of my aqua shirts I love it.
Wearing. So my idea was to

(30:57):
still to create fashionable basics so that we could
replace the polluting cotton that was really
polluting ecosystems and leading to
farmers and places like India killing themselves
because they couldn't maintain their livelihoods with the
expenses of the of the pesticides, and then the pesticides

(31:19):
would blow off into the rivers. And there would be health problems
among their wives, birth defects, and the fish would be born
with 3 eyes and all sorts of problems. I remember listening
to a presentation by the head of women's health organization,
International Women's Health Organization at one of the business
conferences up in San Francisco, and it brought tears to my eyes. And I thought,

(31:43):
you know, if if hemp can alleviate some of the suffering
and help clear up some of these polluted ecosystems that are
being polluted because of cotton, then then we're doing a good job.
Which actually ties into my my next question. And you already kinda
touched upon it, which is, you know, why is hemp so much
better than other fabrics? Why why should more people

(32:05):
be wearing hemp fabric clothing? Well, I think
it's better on a micro level and on a macro level.
On the micro level, I've touched on the fact that, you know, it it's it's
the most breathable natural fiber. Really well. I
wear it as a base layer when I'm skiing. I also wear it
as when I'm in the hot, humid tropics.

(32:28):
And I've had people from mountain
climbers to surfers give me, you know, phenomenal
feedback. Like, hey. I love this. I was down in Ecuador. It performed
so well. Or I'm in Bali. I wear your stuff all the time. Or I've
had, you know, rock climbers say I was in Joshua Tree
in winter stuck up on a face overnight, and I was so happy that I

(32:50):
was wearing your Vital Hem hoodie. Or, you know, things like that.
Or people coming back from Tibet saying, like, I was holed up in
a cave, and all I had given away, all my belongings, and all one of
the only pieces I had was your vital ham booty, and I was so
happy. Oh, you know, I mean, these stories sometimes bring
tears to my own eyes. But so that's the micro level. The

(33:13):
macro level is that unlike cotton, that
is pesticide intensive, except for organic cotton, but
that accounts for such a tiny little one
part overall cotton production of the world. Hemp,
is largely grown all over the world without pesticides because it's just
naturally pest resistant. It also

(33:34):
uses a lot less water than cotton cultivation, both
in the growing of it, but also and more importantly
in the care of the garments. For example, when I wear
a pair of of pants, if it's a pair of cotton pants,
typically, I'll wash that pair of pants, you know, after I wear it because it
will have absorbed a bunch of sweat, and it just doesn't feel

(33:58):
clean anymore. I can wear my hemp anywhere. My my
that's which I think you've probably had a pair or 2 in your
lifetime. I can wear those 3, 4
times before putting them in the in the laundry. They're made out of
a 100% hemp linen. They're they breathe.
They don't absorb perspiration. They wick moisture away from the

(34:20):
skin, and they stay fresh longer. So,
you know, I'm saving 3 to 4 washes
every time I wear that. Same with t shirts. I thought I was wearing a
cotton t shirt. Every day, I would have to wash that or
put it in the laundry. I can wear a a hemp t shirt two times.
It's second day, it's still fresh. I mean, unless I'm, like, running up a hillside.

(34:43):
But for the for everyday use, yeah, you can wear a t
shirt earlier. Afting it having the water
usage of that. Mhmm. The life of the garment, that adds up. Over the
over millions of people, that adds up. So there's that. Then I learned
about the most important thing with respect to
global warming, which is the way in which the hemp crop

(35:05):
sequesters atmospheric carbon. For every
ton that we've harvested, sequesters 1.62
tons of atmospheric carbon, which means it's a carbon
from that carbon that it brings out of the atmosphere goes into
the soil, into the fibers of plant the roots

(35:25):
root systems and the actual matter of the plant. So it gets turned
into products, whether it's clothing, food,
building materials, etcetera. And I felt really, really
good about that Actually, Patagonia, actually.
Mhmm. Those are a couple of reasons. How how's that? Oh, more
than enough. Yeah. I mean, it's very clear to me that there's

(35:48):
far more reasons to wear hemp than any other type of fiber.
So to kinda shift gears here and get more into the
hemptrepreneurial aspects of your life. It's not
easy being an entrepreneur, let alone a hemptrepreneur.
There's more challenges. There's more struggles.
There's more things I think that get in the way for somebody to be

(36:11):
delving into a hemp business. And so in your
experience, what what would you say are some of the biggest challenges
that you've had to face as a hempsterpreneur and how have you
been able to overcome some of those things?
Well, I think like many people, we
go in from because we're idealists and because we care

(36:33):
about this world and we wanna do something tangible. We don't
just wanna go, I would have never gone into apparel
if it wasn't. I would have I I really didn't care
that much about clothing. At work, I was still wearing God's
for Ross dress for less or from my from an estate
sale on the side of the road or stuff that I was still wearing in

(36:56):
college because my body hadn't changed that much. So, you know,
to me, as long as it was comfortable, I didn't need it
to be fashionable. And I I really didn't care about fashion. I
never went to fashion magazines. I still don't. It
it was because of hemp that I got into it. And I think that's
what draws a lot of entrepreneurs or people in to

(37:19):
become entrepreneurs, to become hemp hemp preternures
in in the hemp world. So what is it that that's that
are the unique challenges? I think for a lot I think that one of
the unique challenges is that it draws a lot of people who don't
have necessarily a lot of business business experience. I did
not have business experience. I did not go to business school. I've

(37:42):
never taken a business class. I didn't even know
how important marketing was until probably 10
years in no, probably 7 years to
running my business when I opened my store on main street.
Okay. So of all your years
marketing your products in the hemp industry, what

(38:05):
would you say are some of the biggest challenges that
you've had in this industry and and marketing and
selling hemp products, and how have you been able to overcome some of those challenges?
Right. So as I think I said before,
the the challenges were at the
beginning largely because of my background,

(38:28):
or or I should say lack of background in business, I
didn't even realize until probably 6 years
into the business that it made sense for me to
put money into marketing. I was just putting
money into product and refining product and
and, you know, occasionally, I would go to a festival or a

(38:51):
show. And I in my mind, I didn't even think of those places as
marketing opportunities. I was just there to sell. And
I I mean, I did eventually create a website, and
I I did start my newsletters a long time
ago. So in some sense, that was marketing. It was marketing.
Had I back in, let's say, 2,005

(39:15):
or even 2010, had I decided to put
more money in into such things as Facebook ads
and understand that world, I think or even
Google AdWords, which later I discovered maybe
2015 around then I started to put somebody into
Facebook ads, somebody into Google AdWords.

(39:37):
I I also never really understood or
devoted myself to affiliate marketing, which would have been
another really good opportunity for Vital Hemp because I have lots of
allies in the world, and I think that they would have been happy
to make a little money by turning other people on to
Vital Hemp stuff. So in a way, I think it just had to do

(39:58):
with inertia and just going with where I was strong, which
and where I wanted to spend my time, which was working
with the designer other designers, cutters,
sewers, bit models, pattern makers, dye houses, all of
that, you know, all of the people associated with production,
and then writing my newsletters, which I can do and love

(40:21):
to do just because it's that's my strength, And
being out on the road, being either being in the shop or being out on
the road at festivals or expos and so forth, where I'm actually
meeting with and interacting with my customers
and helping them out. So I think that was my biggest
challenge, was when I did eventually understand that my

(40:43):
understand that my business could really flourish
much better. If I were to devote some qualified
resources towards marketing. I ended up hiring
a series over the years of, you know, probably starting in
2,000 15 or so till 2020,

(41:03):
a series of digital marketing agencies
who just let me down one after another. They would get
me on a monthly retainer. You know, the the salesperson who initially
I spoke with knew his stuff impeccably. And I thought,
okay. Finally, someone who gets what I wanna do. They're saying all the right things.
I've asked them all the right questions. They're telling me all the right answers. And

(41:26):
then I sign up, and then I pay, you
know, whatever, $3,000 a month and getting
some college 19 year old college graduate
in Florida or Mexico who's, like, writing these stupid,
thank god it's Friday, you know, memes, which
are ridiculous and full of grammatical errors. And

(41:48):
and anyway, I I can times
I went through that stuff and no accountability,
no increase in sales, just money out the door over
and over again. Not entirely true with the
one foray I did into Google AdWords. I did get some
some benefit from that. I may have gotten some benefit from the

(42:10):
few times that I myself paid for some
Facebook ads, but it would have been really good,
I think, to have someone trustworthy and knowledgeable
me or to maybe bring someone in house to
do that. I just never found the right people to do it for

(42:30):
me. Well, what what did you find to be some of the most,
like, effective ways of getting sales? I know we
from what you've shared with me and from who I know you to be and
how you operate, word-of-mouth is, like, probably
foundational. People wear your clothing and are pretty much walking
billboards for Vital Hemp, and then they tell their friends and

(42:52):
then it kind of spreads. But is there anything beyond that that you're I
don't even know if word-of-mouth is number 1. I think it's
repeat business. I think that Mhmm. I have a, you know, I have a
email list of 75100 people or so. And
I venture to guess that every single one of those people well, no, not every
single one, but probably 6,000 out of those 75100

(43:16):
are actually customers who've bought something at one time or another over the
last 20 years. Yeah. And so when I send a newsletter
marketing is a big thing for you. When I send a newsletter out,
there's a I usually get a flurry of orders. Nice.
For whatever reason, I had it in my mind that I should send out a
monthly newsletter. So I've really only been sending out monthly newsletters. Some other

(43:38):
companies I see, they're sending out 2 to 3 newsletters.
They're maybe not newsletter, but 2 to 3 email marketing
this or that a week. Yeah. So they're really
benefiting from that. I, for whatever reason, didn't do
that even though that would have been a smart move. Yeah. And it's not
too late. And it's not too late. And, you know, I'm I'm in a I'm

(44:01):
in a point of transition in a way because I'm
not sure how VitalHab's been a bit of hibernation
since we closed the store at the beginning of the pandemic.
And I've not really produced anything since the beginning of the pandemic.
I've just been selling off existing inventory and

(44:22):
inventory levels are very low right now. I mean,
and I I I I just got very tired of running
the business all by myself. When I say that, I I mean, I've always had
people working with me, but I've always been the one in
the c level making those decisions,
whether it was CEO,

(44:44):
CTO, CFO, CMO,
blah blah blah, technology. Mark, I've been making decisions that I
wasn't actually that qualified to make. And a few times when I
did hire someone to take over those
hats, they might work for a while and makes help me make some good
decisions. And then, you know, for whatever reason, they might leave

(45:06):
or I might let them go. And then I would
be left with sometimes with systems I didn't understand,
sometimes with systems that were half made, sometimes with systems that didn't
integrate with other systems, and so forth. So you're saying marketing
for you has has at the core been repeat business,
sending out your monthly newsletter, word-of-mouth. Showing

(45:29):
up. I mean, showing up at at events. I mean Live events. And also,
what's interesting is that I had a pretty decent business. Part of my
business was making custom orders for other
companies. So whether that was early on,
raw food restaurant called Leaf Cuisine. My friend Rod loved my
shirts. He's like, hey. We need shirts for our for our team and our customers,

(45:52):
and so I made I think he might have been my first custom order customer.
He chose the color. He had a new logo. I made it.
I took it downtown. I had it printed, blah blah blah. That was first
one. Next one might have been early one was John
Rulak from Nutiva, and that was a big order. A 1,000
shirts, men's and women's, and in two colors

(46:13):
with his logos and even a little side patch here, logo on the backside
patch here. Those turned out great. He loved them. His people loved
them. And when you have a 1,000 people getting shirts,
right, that's a 1,000 people going, oh, I love this
shirt. Wow. Vinyl hip? Okay. Yeah. Let me go
online. Oh, okay. I'm gonna order another one. So now that's kinda like I

(46:36):
don't know how long it would take me to sell a 1,000 pieces
if I was at a booth. Mhmm. So you don't know how long it would
take you to sell a 1000 pieces long it would take me. If you've been
in the store, it might just to sell a 1000 pieces, it might have taken
3 months to sell a 1,000 pieces Mhmm. Or or a month or
2 months. I don't know exactly. I I don't have had. But to to

(46:57):
get a single order where it's a 1,000 pieces or maybe you have a 1,000
customers who bought each of them will likely fall in love with that
piece and then maybe might wanna get more. So it's kind of
a very good model, I think, for me to grow the business if
I wanna jump back in and grow it
with the middle bound. B to b wholesale focus.

(47:19):
Yeah. Especially, like, cut to border. Not even wholesale
because those customers have you know, wholesale
owners, especially of boutiques, they're they're operating with
limited budgets. They wanna place limited
orders targeted to their customers, and they're very
finicky. Like, you get they get something and it does, oh, can I return this?

(47:41):
Can I just, Okay? I would like they want what they want everything at
wholesale. So you're not making the margins. Plus, you're dealing
with someone who's as finicky, if not more finicky, than your
average retail customer. So it just didn't me. I mean, I
did it for many, many years. I I love Yeah. My wholesale
customers, and I love the fact that there was someone in from

(48:04):
Mexico to Seattle, there were stores
telling my stuff. And, you know, on the East Coast
and all over. I love that. And I I love visiting
those stores and meeting the owners and and and supporting them as
best I could. From a business perspective, it wasn't the easiest for
me to do. And then sometimes, a lot of times, I wasn't just able

(48:26):
to satisfy them. It's like they'd be like, oh, we want
more men's long sleeves. And I'd be like, well, I don't
have enough men's long sleeves to give you a full size run-in the colors you
want. All I have is enough maybe for my store, and even then, I'm running
low. Mhmm. So Hard to keep up with it
all. Yeah. So I do I I think it would have been better had I

(48:47):
got had gotten into had maybe a wholesale sales manager
who was really good. And I did, at times, have people
who were devoted to wholesale. And I had at one time, I had
road reps, and I had people who were supposedly representing the
brand. And the idea was to create
enough preorders and aggregate those

(49:09):
preorders so that and even get deposits on the preorders so that then
and I did this successfully kind of near the beginning. Starting in
around 2005. I was doing that even when I was getting
Chinese goods because it was allowing me to fund the
production. I would take 50% deposit. I'd let people know
what I was ordering. They'd order. I'd take 50% deposit. Then this stuff

(49:32):
would come in. I would ship it out and and collect the
second 50% before shipping, actually, including Mhmm. That was a
good model. And I just you know? Anyway, with this
I think at a certain point, I was probably doing too many things. I was
doing the store, wholesale, custom orders, and ecommerce, and
festivals. And so it was just too

(49:54):
many things. I was one guy. I was self funding it.
And yeah, it was sort of a recipe for a little bit of
It it burnout. Yeah. A little burnout and also just
not being able to look at all of these
activities that I was doing and be with a very cold analytical
eye. Mhmm. Hit the numbers and go, okay. Does it

(50:15):
really make sense to be doing wholesale? Does it really
make sense to be going to this festival considering
the costs? Yeah. You think maybe as as, like, a word of
of advice to other hemp entrepreneurs, you would say
maybe pick one area of a business and hone
in and focus your energy so that you can really ignite that one

(50:38):
aspect of it rather than trying to do 10 different things? Yeah.
Yeah. Absolutely. For sure. I mean, it's very
tempting because, you know, you wanna be able to serve people
online. You wanna be able to serve people if they're going to a store. You
wanna be able to serve people if they're going to an expo
or if they want custom orders. But unless you have the

(51:00):
the staff to help you manage
and integrate all of those different sectors of
your business into one model
and to coldly assess, like, what's performing,
what's not, and then to make decisions based on those things. Same
with I mean, I'm an optimist. Right? So I and I like to try

(51:22):
new things. So I always thought, well, maybe doing the wholesale
will eventually grow their business too, and then they'll
order more the next time. Mhmm. More in terms of
production. Maybe it would have been better for me to stick to t shirts and
hoodies and pants for a while before venturing into
long dresses and short dresses and, you know,

(51:45):
whatever, beanies and hempkins and everything else
that I did. Yeah. What I I call it chasing all the Henleys,
button downs, long sleeve, short sleeve, shorts.
I mean, you name it. Right? Yeah. And there were many, many,
many more things that I wanted to do that customers were asking
for, any one of which could have been a success. But the

(52:07):
problem is that when you spread yourself too thin, as I did,
and you don't have the resources to thicken the
ice, so to speak, to support you, you can fall
through. There's some thin areas, and then they become kind of dangerous
areas. Like, oh, well, is this whole thing just gonna cave in? Or
what do I do now? I gotta, you know, I can't really support this area

(52:30):
anymore because it's too thin. I can't support that area anymore. It's too thin.
So gotta skate over to the thick areas.
Yeah. I call it the the for hemptrepreneurs, it's
the curse of too many hemportunities. That's there you
go. There you go. To kind of shift gears here, I I
just have a few more questions. Sure. So I, first of all,

(52:52):
really appreciate you and everything that you've done in the industry. And
I wanna kinda focus in specifically on
vital hemp products and what makes them unique, what makes
them different from other hemp
clothing products on the market? What what it what is different about your
products, and what makes them unique? Initially,

(53:14):
my my vision for the brand was to
create stylish, comfortable,
affordable hemp clothing and ultimately made in the
USA. So I think that the first distinguishing
feature from some brands is that some
brands are still made overseas. Many have returned home, and

(53:35):
I'm happy about that. But we've, ever since 2010,
we've been manufacturing here in LA. And I'm
a designer in in effect, and I have been since the
beginning. I'm told I mean, since the beginning when I started designing,
not in the 1st couple years when I was just selling other
people's stuff. But for the last 18 years, I've been the designer,

(53:58):
and I've worked with family owned businesses in Los
Angeles, and I've always attempted to source the very,
very best quality materials and to work with the very,
very best contractors. And and it took me a
while to find those.
For example, if the knits that I

(54:20):
was getting were shrinking too much or would develop holes
or whatever it was, I would switch and I would find a different manufacturer.
And, ultimately, I ended up making my knits
in LA, like, actually from yarn. I found someone
somewhere that could just import the yarn, we'd make the fabric in LA.
And it's a really, really and so it's so stable and so

(54:43):
good. I took a, you know, probably like a 4 mile hike today.
I'm still wearing the shirt, and it doesn't even smell because it
was wicking the whole time, and hemp has these great ant
antimicrobial qualities. So there's that. Best
best sewer, best dye house, best cutters, finishing,
all of that. I really have. When I made my Anywhere pants,

(55:06):
I used American made thread. Who uses American made thread?
No one, I guarantee you, uses American made thread because
it's so much more expensive than the Chinese made thread or
thread made anywhere else in the world. I wasn't I tried to minimize
the use of plastic. Like, I never went into the
recycled plastic blends. I just think plastic. There's a

(55:28):
myth that plastic is recyclable. Most of it, above
90% of it, never gets recycled. And because
people think that it can be recycled, it just give permission
to make more and more things out of plastic. Oh, I'll just recycle these bottles.
I'll recycle these containers. I'll recycle. And it just ends up going into
landfill, eventually gets into the ocean, but everywhere else. It's horrible.

(55:50):
It's clogging up the arteries of the planet
and the lungs of the planet and the ocean being one of the
major ones and very harmful. So I never
wanted to participate in the plastic thing. I
don't even think recycled plastic's a good solution at all. You know,
maybe if they're taking stuff out of the oceans and then

(56:12):
recycling that, fine. But any new product,
recycling, forget it. Just let's not make let's go to a
0 plastic model Mhmm. Manufacturer. Mhmm. When
that plastic is made with biomass. Mhmm.
And or polymers. I know that's not right on
the horizon, but it we're we're there. We're getting close. Okay.

(56:34):
Second thing is I was one of the first people
to just really invest in 100% hemp stuff.
I'm not saying I'm the first. I mean, the company that came before me, Juice
Naturale, they had a lot of heavier, 100%
shirts and some 100% pants made in
China. I I really liked using the 100%

(56:56):
hemp linen fabric for my shirting and
pants, and I just think it's such a great fabric.
And people have loved my Anywear pants, both
men's Anywhere pants and the women's Anywhere pants for decades
now. So I just keep making them when I can all totally out of the
men's ones except for small and double extra large. But I have

(57:18):
women's still in most size runs in most in
most of the sizes, in most of the colors, not all, at this point.
But, yeah, and I would use YKK zippers because I knew they're
the best. I would use either coconut or Coroso buttons
because coconut's a natural
product and Coroso is a shell. Or is Coroso a nut? I

(57:40):
think Coroso is a nut, actually. So, again, just reducing
plastic, using the best quality. What else? I I
know one thing. What? Oh, the colors. Yeah. The colors
is definitely unique. You're using hemp and
TENCEL. You're blending with before. No. No. I used anymore.
I used hemp. I was one of the early ones. I mean, Barber developed

(58:02):
that that fabric. Like, your your knit
fabrics, the jersey knit, is that a hemp and organic cotton, or what is
it? Hemp and organic cotton. Okay. Nice.
It's a hemp and organic cotton. It's a 5545. It's a really
nice weight. I garment dye everything rather than piece
dyeing. So Oh. So everything is preshrunk. Yeah.

(58:24):
And I spend a lot of time with fit. You know, people
really like my fits, whether it's I mean, I can't tell you what I what
I meant wanted to make a wrap dress. I probably went through so
many iterations of that wrap dress till I got it just right. And then I
you know, and then people loved it, and I sold out. I maybe made it
one more time after that. I don't know why I didn't continue making it.

(58:46):
I guess it's just bandwidth. Maybe I didn't have enough money to fund production at
that point for more. But, yeah, I really, really concentrate on fit. I
mean, my background, as I had mentioned to you, is in writing and literature,
and and in this I I get I put as much care
into the fit into sort of nailing the fit of things as I
do with making sure that, you know, I've

(59:08):
proofread an essay that I'm gonna put in the world or or something like that.
You know, there are times when things where there are surprises and, you
know, maybe the sleeves come out too long because the fit, the
shrink test was different than what ultimately happened in
production. And, you know, I've had to adjust. Sometimes I've had
to shorten sleeves, or sometimes I've had to somehow make things

(59:31):
work or size down or do something. Rarely, but it
happens. Not not everything is perfect. Yeah. I'm more
proud of certain styles than I am of others. I made a hemp
Henley couple years ago, and I thought, oh, this is
gonna be so cool. It's a Henley hoodie, and it's got buttons.
It ended up a little boxier than I would have liked and a little shorter

(59:54):
than I would have liked. I still wear it. There's still people who love
it and buy it, But it wasn't like one of those,
like, the regular hoodie where people just where I sell
out very quickly because that's a staple that people didn't want.
Yeah. You know, and they wanted it every color. They want I mean, I
have people who are constantly saying, oh, can you bring this back? Oh,

(01:00:17):
can you bring that back? Oh, can you make more of these? And let me
know when this is available again. And, you know, on the one hand, I really
want to make more. On the other hand, I
just am at a point where unless someone wants to come
in with resources and know
how, particularly maybe marketing know how, ecommerce know

(01:00:37):
how to build the business. I'm just not
inclined to jump in by myself again.
Those are all unique, you know, differentiators with your
products. That was, you know, what I was looking for. I mean, I think people
have over the years told me that the colors are
so unique and and really make them feel good. And I think it's because I

(01:01:00):
choose the colors both with my eyes
and, like, with my whole my heart and my whole body. Like,
I literally will just look at colors and
say, how does this make me feel? And then I'll just,
like, let it let the color allow
let the vibration of the color create a feeling in me.

(01:01:22):
Yeah. And when I have the feeling that I
feel good about, then I'll choose that color. That's
awesome. Yeah. Well, man, we're I'm just coming up to the kind of
the end here, but I have a couple questions left for you. Sure.
Okay. And this one is more related to hemp in
general and the history of hemp. I'm curious. Do you have,

(01:01:45):
like, a couple of hemp fun facts that you keep in the
back of your pocket when anybody doesn't know the
history of hemp and and how
embedded and woven into the fabric of our of our history it is? Is
is there a couple like, a handful of hemp fun facts that you
like to share? Yeah. Many, many, many. I bet.

(01:02:07):
Of the fact that hemp has been
used for paper for 1000 of years
and that the Gutenberg Bible was written
on hemp, and the Mark Twain were
published in on hemp. Abraham
Lincoln wrote his speeches on hemp. The

(01:02:30):
constitute the early drafts of the constitution, all drafts except
the final one, were written on hemp paper. Benjamin
Franklin, with the works of Lewis Carroll, also hemp.
Benjamin Franklin's first printing press employed hemp
paper. And I just feel like hemp is
so inter intertwined with our history and the history of

(01:02:53):
the world. And people, you know, who don't know much
about it think, oh, hemp is marijuana. But once you start
to introduce them to the many
varieties and features, not varieties, but the many many uses of
hemp, they kinda go, oh, wow. Really? I never knew that. I
love also talking about

(01:03:15):
hempcrete and, you know, Dion Margraf
and his work and that that that moment when he was
at Earth Day down in San Diego with that little demonstration
hemp house and his blowtorch and, like, you know, 3 inches away
from a hemp house with a blowtorch, and the thing would not ignite.
And it all it might do is just a little bit of a little little

(01:03:37):
circle of carbon that was, you know, not even burning
but just getting hot. And and and knowing from
documentaries I've watched and from reading that this is the
healthiest possible building material,
fire resistant, mold resistant,
super insulative in terms of

(01:04:00):
regulating temperature. And I remember learning
about this beer holding facility in, like, Scotland
or somewhere that reduced its annual electricity
bill for cooling the beer, keeping the beer cool by something
like 40% when they change one of the buildings to
hemp. And then how versatile it versatile it is

(01:04:22):
from building a small structure on your own property to building
the 2nd largest Marks and Spencer department store in all of the
UK in in modern curves and
with, like, stucco smooth stucco exterior
to the point where you're like, wow. I I had no idea this was hemp
trees. So that's another one. The other is that

(01:04:45):
hemp bioplastic is being used by the
many of the major car manufacturers for the interior body
panels of their cars, whether it's BMW,
Porsche, Mercedes Benz. They're all
using hemp bioplastic, especially in their high end cars
because it's stronger, lighter,

(01:05:07):
more durable, more flame resistant, more
mold resistant, and it doesn't off gas the way that
petroleum based plastics do. It doesn't get misshapen
with heat. And at the end of its useful life, it can be
composted. So, I mean, it's just such a win on so many
levels. And I'm I'm buoyed by the fact that

(01:05:30):
the car industry is recognizing hemp as a useful
material for body panels. I I wish that
we had never stopped using hemp bioplastic
for the exterior body panels as well Yeah. As
as Henry Ford did and Mhmm.
See if they're interested in that YouTube video, hemp, Henry

(01:05:53):
Ford hemp car and watch him use a sledgehammer on
the back fender of a of a of one of his models and watch the
sledgehammer literally bounce off the the, the
body the exterior body panel of the car. I mean, can you imagine how
much money we would have saved in
auto body costs by having lightweight,

(01:06:15):
super dead resistant hemp bioplastic be the shell
of our cars. But then our companies wouldn't have
made money and sold more vehicles. And, you know, the the
whole auto in this body shop industry probably would have just
been something else. Mhmm. So those are
some fun facts that I like to trot out here at the Those are

(01:06:37):
awesome. Yeah. Those are that's, more robust, I
think, than any other hemptrepreneur I've had on the show. You you
definitely know your know your hempstery as as we
say. Yeah. So my my last two questions
are, number 1, how can people learn more about Vital
Hemp? Where can they find you? I know you said you're not you don't have

(01:06:58):
your physical store, but you definitely have your website. How can people order some of
your products and learn more about what you're up to on the socials and all
of that? Yeah. Vitalhemp.com is the website. If
they wanna keep up with what's happening with the company, just sign up for the
newsletter. And at least once a month, I hope to let
you know what's going on. If there are any potential

(01:07:21):
investors or partners out there who want
to resources and know how and believe in the mission
and the and believe they can help scale
it, I'm I'm open to having conversations. And you
can just find me shoot me an email through the website. We do have
an Instagram page. I don't think it's super active. Well, I think we

(01:07:44):
post a little bit more on Facebook. Those are basically the ways
people can find me. But if they wanna buy something from what we have
left at this point, find us on, vitalhemp.com.
Any more? So my my final question is,
imagine you were standing on a world stage and
you were literally addressing every human being on the

(01:08:06):
planet, and you could, within 60 seconds,
share one message with them, and it could be about hemp or
it could be about anything at all. What would you want every human
being on in in the world to know? I would
want everybody to know that we live
on an absolute miracle jewel

(01:08:30):
of a planet that is abundant,
resourceful, marvelous beyond our imagination
to even comprehend, and it has
everything here for us to live
fruitfully, to live in peace
and abundance, in harmony with all the

(01:08:53):
other species with whom we share
this planet. And I would like everybody
to know that as a goal for
humanity to continue to keep this planet
vital, not just for us, but for all of the species that have
as much right to be here as we do, that we

(01:09:16):
think about how we can support
these other species in their native ecosystems.
Whether that's hemp as a crop
that serves beyond humans, birds
and and enormous amount amounts of other

(01:09:36):
species. Or whether it's dolphins or
or insects or you name it.
They are all or or algae or plankton or
coral. They they are all part of this
interconnected world in which we live
and that we, as stewards, as sort

(01:09:59):
of high on the totem pole of consciousness and also high on the
toad totem pole of potential and
real destruction that we're causing, we I believe we
have a responsibility to respect the other life
forms, to better understand how
we are all related, and to learn how we can

(01:10:22):
support the myriad life forms to work
together in holistic ways to create abundance and
peace and harmony for all the
living beings on earth. And this will require some
people earning less money perhaps, exploiting people less,
But it will ultimately be a much, much happier future

(01:10:45):
and and one that is around for our
children and grandchildren and for many generations,
as at least 7, as the our our Native
American brothers and sisters remind us, is to try to
keep that vision in mind. And it's it's a
so I would say that's my message, Tyler. Amen.

(01:11:08):
Well, I appreciate that. It's it's right in alignment with a
book that I'm looking to publish early 2024.
It's a working title, but the title is something
like how hemp pays for peace
and using this as our vehicle for creating more peace
on earth. And I I get that we may never get to a

(01:11:31):
point where there's no wars and there's no destruction and
fighting. Like, there's probably always gonna be some level of that. But if we can
create a deeper sense of of health
and wealth and and true harmonious abundance
with hemp as our vehicle, I do believe that we all,
as a human family, and all species, like you were saying,

(01:11:54):
can experience more harmony and more
peace as a result of hemp being at the center of what
we're doing. So that's why you and I do what we do, and
I really appreciate your insights and your wisdom and the
experience that you've brought to this industry and appreciate you being on this
hemp episode of Hempel Ware Radio. Yeah. Tyler, thank you so

(01:12:16):
much for hosting me. And it's always good to hear from
you and see you and to just witness
your evolution from the
kid in the, alley who was helping
me unload my van after a hard day's work and
teaching me about heart to heart hugs. And a lesson

(01:12:38):
that I've that I decided to adopt probably
18 or so years ago and have
given 1,000, heart to heart hugs since then.
And I owe that to you. And I think it's a Testament to
your big heart. You shared that with me
and, but just know that that legacy continues through

(01:13:01):
me into the world. So thanks for bringing the love
brother. It's an honor and a privilege. Thank you so
much. I appreciate you all tuning into hemp episode of Hempel Ware Radio.
This is your hemp entrepreneurial host, Tyler Hemp, here at Hemp Power and
hemp educate your hemposphere. We'll see you on the next Hempisode.
Thanks everyone for tuning in.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}An Essential Hemp Story: Ron Alcalay Reveals the Vital Hemp Journey