Sunderstorm is taking the leap to become one of the first U.S. companies to go abroad, setting up shop with its Kanha brand in Thailand, a country where medicinal use is allowed, but the prospect of full legalization wavers on the whims of its political leaders.
Expanding from one state-legal market to another represents a major challenge for cannabis companies. Expanding into another country, with an entirely different set of regulations and customs, in addition to dealing with a legalization structure on shaky ground, is an exponentially bigger challenge.
For CEO Cameron Clarke, the opportunity is too big to pass up — but one even he’s surprised is coming to fruition after following a slow and steady road map to becoming the fourth-largest edibles company in the United States, behind Wana Brands, Wyld and Kiva.
“Eight or nine years ago,” he says, “when we started this whole thing, if you told me that I was going to be opening a facility in Asia at some point, I would have said, ‘No way.’ But this gives us a completely different game to play than what we’re playing in the U.S. It gives us the chance to build one of the very first global cannabis brands, and I think that’s very exciting for our business.”
Similar to how Kanha operates domestically, the company has a local partner in Thailand, but the manufacturing side of the business will be handled in-house.
“We do not do licensing deals, because we feel it’s crucial that we manufacture our own products in order to maintain consistency across all markets,” Clarke says. “We want to make sure that if someone’s eating our gummy in Massachusetts, and then they go to California and have the same product six months later, it’s identical. That’s very, very important for us as we build our business.”
And the opportunity in Thailand is not just the country’s population of 72 million people. It’s a gateway to exporting products throughout Europe and Asia.
“The ability for us to be able to manufacture in one country and sell across the globe is a game-changer,” Clarke says. “We absolutely can’t do that from the U.S. right now.”