By Patrick Wagner
Tim Cullen has heard every Breaking Bad joke you could throw at him. In reality, the former-teacher-turned-marijuana-mogul shares very little with TV’s Walter White, the fictional chemistry teacher who became a criminal kingpin.
Cullen and business partner Ralph Morgan own and operate both Colorado Harvest Company and Evergreen Apothecary in Denver.
“I was a high school biology teacher for 10 years prior to jumping into this,” Cullen said. “You can insert your Breaking Bad joke now.”
It was nearly a decade after leaving his teaching position that Cullen began Colorado Harvest Company in 2009, but his first contact with medical marijuana came in 2002, when his father was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Cannabis-infused edibles helped with his flare-ups, Cullen said.
Shortly thereafter, Cullen received more bad news, prompting him to take matters into his own hands when he was also diagnosed with Crohn’s disease.
Eventually, he had the idea, “Hey, I think I can probably grow these plants as well as anyone else does,” he said. “So I picked up some plants and started.”
It started very small, with Cullen experimenting with what would work best for growing cannabis, looking to find the best combinations and variables.
“At that point we could produce plants at my house, which, in hindsight, was a really cool laboratory,” he said, sounding very much like the person who had taught photosynthesis and other concepts to teenagers in a former life. “I was able to play with soil and hydroponics and different lighting and cooling and nutrient solutions. Over the course of a few years we got really good at it.”
Those early years of experimentation worked in his favor as he ventured into the business side of the medical marijuana world, and eventually into the legal, retail market.
“It wasn’t like in 2009 I was jumping into the deep end of the pool,” Cullen said. “I knew how to do it. That gave me the confidence to lease a warehouse and really start into this.”
It didn’t take long before Colorado Harvest Club (CHC) was blooming and the Mile High City was moving headlong toward legalization.
“I think the whole world is watching how legalization unfolds in Colorado over a longer period of gestation,” Cullen said. “When Colorado passed the legislation, it caught attention of not only the nation, but really around the world. We get a fair number of media inquiries from outside the U.S.”
The implementation of Amendment 64, which began in 2012, also brought vertical integration, and the initial requirement that business owners produce 70% of their own product as a regulatory device. That was the impetus that led Cullen to team up with Ralph Morgan.
“He and I really came together out of necessity, a couple puzzle pieces that really fit together well,” Cullen said. “He had a really successful retail store, Evergreen Apothecary, and an undersized grow. I had a great big grow and a really small retail center that wasn’t really even open.”
The merger went on to become a dedicated partnership between Morgan and Cullen even after the 70% requirements for vertical integration had sunset.
“We were peers in the space and saw the benefits for each of us,” Cullen said. “As it would turn out, we get along fantastically, we make good decisions together and really enjoy working together. So what started off as somewhat a shotgun marriage has turned into a fantastic business relationship.”
After forming the business partnership, Morgan split his ownership of both OrganaLabs and O.pen VAPE with Cullen. Morgan and his wife had originally founded OrganaLabs in 2010.
“When Ralph and I became partners in 2011, I purchased his wife’s stock, so he and I became 50-50 partners in that company,” Cullen said. “What we ended up working out is they purchased half of that company and then we launched O.pen VAPE. So the O.pen Vape is the device and the oil inside of it is made by OrganaLabs.”
Today, CHC and Evergreen Apothecary have 47 employees, and plans are in place for two additional stores to open in 2015. One grow was just licensed, and construction for another is under way and should be up and running within the next four months or so.
“So by this time next year I’ll have between 90 and 100 employees,” Cullen said.
Cullen believes a sense of social responsibility guides the company’s actions. One example is a recently-published study on the economic impact of CHC and Evergreen Apothecary.
Cullen worked with Jack Strauss, Ph.D., on the study, which showed the two marijuana businesses impacted 280 jobs in the area and has contributed nearly $30 million in revenue.
“I want people to know that there are jobs being created, that they are getting tax dollars from this revenue, that their vote wasn’t in vain,” Cullen said. “We’ve always felt like we’ve had a lot of economic impact but we could never really say what that was. It was cool to work through Dr. Jack Strauss on that project and really see what the impact was. And it was substantial.”
Strauss was the main researcher assembling the data. In his report, he wrote that his goal was to focus on the economics and to present the benefits of the cannabis industry to city and state officials in terms of tax revenue, jobs created and payroll.
“As a result, I found that CHC and EA pay 10 times the tax revenue of both a typical restaurant and retail store,” Strauss wrote in his report.
Cullen compared his businesses to the Happiest Place on Earth.
“We’re sort of like Disney World. For every Mickey Mouse you run into there are five people behind the scenes making that happen,” he said. “We have 55,000 square feet of warehouse space under light and so the majority of my employees are in the background making magic and then the people in the retail stores sell that magic.”