“Challenging,” might be a friendly way to describe Colorado’s competitive recreational cannabis market for newcomers. For those who are trying to launch a single line of products in a state where many operators are vertically integrated, “impenetrable” or “irrational” might be more apt terms.
Green Dot Labs’ 2017 Silver Label line marks the company’s first foray into the recreational market, but its founders have been building a following for their extracts in the medical scene for their extracts since 2008.
“We’ve grown in a smart manner, doing things step by step and never biting off more than we could chew,” Green Dot Labs CEO and co-founder Alana Malone says. “We didn’t just prove concept on the medical side, we operated on it and perfected it.”
Dave and Alana Malone, the husband-and-wife team that founded Green Dot Labs, spent nine years refining their cultivation, extraction and breeding techniques, never straying far from their roots as medical producers. Even as the majority of Colorado went vertical, Dave, a former environmental engineer, says he and his wife momentarily considered opening a dispensary, but then he found his calling in the industry.
“After I tried my first dab of sap, I knew that was the imminent future of how consumers would enjoy cannabis for years to come,” Dave says.
Green Dot Labs has carved a healthy niche for itself as Colorado’s dab experts by using closed-loop, light-hydrocarbon extraction and developing partnerships with select third-party growers to complement their in-house rotation of 135 different cultivars.
“Extracting everything we grow gives us a great lens to view cultivation, cultivars and the different ways that strains perform,” Alana says. “Through that we feel we can really monitor and crack quality-performance metrics, that if we’re putting all the right things together it will create something greater.”
But if it weren’t for the news headlines on Nov. 6, 2012, Green Dot Labs wouldn’t be here today. Having made the heart-wrenching decision to hang up their titles as part-time caregivers to start a family, the Malones had just removed the growing operation from their home when Colorado voters approved Amendment 64 to legalize recreational cannabis. The couple took it as a sign to not only reopen the grow, but to leave their old careers behind and plunge head-first into the industry.
“We had to do this,” Alana says. “We had these other careers going on, but they were less fulfilling as we dreamed a cannabis career would be.”
Alana’s parents were the company’s first investors.
“They lent us the money to start Green Dot Labs, which in 2014 launched as a concentrates company with dedicated cultivation facilities and methodology,” Alana says. “Their support has been tremendous.”