Snoozy - Helping You Sleep, One Gummy at a Time

Ramon Vela (00:02.859)
Welcome back everyone. This is going to be a great show. I have with me an amazing brand and two founders. I can't wait to get started. So let's do it. I have with me Chris Abenda and Owen Martin.

Let me do that again. Owen Martinetti, who are co-founders of Snoozy. Welcome to the show.

Chris Abbenda (00:39.614)
Thanks for having us, Ramon.

Owen Martinetti (00:41.432)
Bye.

Ramon Vela (00:41.451)
Well, I appreciate it. Thank you guys. I know we've had to reschedule and it took a little while. And as I was telling Chris earlier, for me, I'm completely fine with this. I interview mostly founders. I've done a thousand interviews practically. And I understand for me, it's family first brand and then podcast. I'm always very flexible when it comes to rescheduling. I'm just glad you guys made a little time for us because I'm

Fascinated by these type of products and I my audience is too. So why don't we get to it? I like to start off my interviews on a question of gratitude Now I've asked every founder pretty much that I've interviewed And for me, it's just a great way to start a topic on your journey as an entrepreneur however, I really feel like it's important because Consumers and listeners it's so easy for them to look on the

retail shelf to see things at the store, see things online, and just kind of think like, it's just some faceless corporation that is creating this product. They don't really think about the fact that it could be a small business, it could be, you know, there's individuals, small teams behind these products that just work their butt off and bleed, sweat, and tear over what they're doing. And this is a great way to kind of get to know who the people behind the brand is or.

by understanding what they're grateful for. And I really like to bring this to on a human level and we'll talk more about that during the interview. So with that said, if you guys don't mind, Chris and Owen, share a moment or a memory when someone did something for you that just made you feel grateful because it meant that they believed in you, your vision or your potential.

Chris Abbenda (02:29.918)
Yeah, sure. That's a great question to really open this up. I think for me, it's not really a specific moment, but it's really a person in my life, which would be my fiance. I've been an entrepreneur now for the last five years. It really started back in 2019 when I joined up with Owen. We'll get into a bit of our background later in this discussion. But I made a transition from working

I was going down a career path working in the commercial real estate industry in New York. And it just was not a satisfying or meaning career path for me whatsoever. I knew Owen was working in the cannabis industry at the time. He started one of the first hemp extraction facilities in upstate. And he said, why don't you come work with me? We need salespeople. So I quit my job.

I took some time off before I went up and moved upstate. But I didn't know exactly where that was gonna lead for me. And my partner, it was my girlfriend at the time, we've been together for 10 years and we're now engaged, fully supported my endeavor. Even though, like I said, I didn't know exactly where that would lead. And...

It's really important to have a support figure like that in your life to help make sure that you are doing the things that you want to do and feel good about the things that you want to do and having somebody there with you throughout that is the most important thing. So I have tremendous gratitude for my fiance.

Ramon Vela (03:55.941)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (04:17.527)
I love that. I have a comment on that, I'm going to let Owen go next.

Owen Martinetti (04:23.278)
For sure. So no, I echo kind of the same sentiment as Chris on this is that being an entrepreneur, you're constantly faced with failures, ups and downs, and having someone by your side, whether that's significant other or family members, has been a huge mental health support for founders going through what we're going through on a day-to-day basis, month-to-month basis.

So I'm kind of the same situation. I've been with my girlfriend now for three and a half years. When we first met, we were doing long distance. She was in California. I'm over here in New York. And we'd, we spent a few months on each side of the country. And when she finished grad school, she studied to be a somatic psychiatrist or psychologist. She, I was over here in New York.

And she decided to move from California to New York, despite that being maybe a negative thing towards her infrastructure that she had in California and getting started with her career post-graduation. she's, she made a pretty big sacrifice, I would say, coming to New York while I was building these things with Chris and some of our other business partners. yeah, huge support.

structure of her being here.

Ramon Vela (05:54.241)
Well, you know, you guys, both of your examples really are like go to the heart of the question. And actually what I like about them is there's so much mythology around entrepreneurship, like the lonely entrepreneur kind of climbing that mountain, you know, like whenever you see like those symbols, it's like someone just climbing a peak or something like that. The reality is what they don't show is there's a ton of people behind them climbing with them. And we're not islands, right? We're people, we have this.

sometimes it's not, whether it's a partner or a spouse or a loved one, whatever, there's always someone in the background. And the other thing that I always like to emphasize is that even the people who, there people in our lives where even though we're making the decision for ourselves to start a business and to go through the sacrifice, there's a lot of people who kind of sacrifice indirectly. you know, like,

who are with us and who support us and believe in us, like our families or whatnot, they're kind of behind us. They're just not like maybe doing the day to day, but they're there, they're offering support, they're helping. Hopefully they're helping, encouraging words and so forth or motivation. But yeah, that's a lot of the stuff that we don't really talk about in entrepreneurship. It's really beneficial to have people behind you.

Owen Martinetti (07:15.694)
Yeah, couldn't agree more. I know I think we were me and Chris relate to it or refer to it as the brain drain. Now we're we've our hands in a few different things at the moment. And I think, you know, both our parents or our loved ones are definitely sounding words, always hearing what's going right, but also what's going wrong, which it seems to change on depending on the week.

Ramon Vela (07:42.837)
Yeah, yeah, it's tough. that's actually part of what we're going to be talking about here is that I do want to talk about the challenges too, because I really feel like if people hear your lives, not just the glamour and what they see on social media or whatever, or LinkedIn or whatever, but really just hear the challenges that you face kind of on this road to achieve your mission.

it's almost like you give them permission to care because a lot of times, again, people just look at products and they don't really think about the people behind them. And this show is really geared to highlight, you know, not only just the brand and the product, but the people behind them and the story behind them. So again, thank you guys for coming on and sharing a little bit of all of that with us. So why don't we start off, through your guys, know, grateful story here.

We heard a little bit about some of the background, but why don't we talk a little bit about, you know, that decision to join forces and what was the mission or what was the vision that you guys saw that really encouraged you guys to do this? Because, and let me just set the table here. This is a really difficult business. I mean, there are businesses that I cover that every business is difficult. Every entrepreneur journey is difficult.

But you guys have chosen a field that has regulations and we were just talking about earlier and legal and illegal stuff going on and all sorts of things. mean, it's a little bit of the Wild West. It's better than it was five years ago or 10 years ago. But you guys have chosen on top of the usual entrepreneurial challenges, you guys have chosen a really difficult market to join. And I'm just curious, what was that vision that you guys first...

first motivated you guys to join forces and to move in that direction.

Chris Abbenda (09:40.12)
Yeah, for sure. and I think it might probably be beneficial for you to kick off our foray into cannabis.

Owen Martinetti (09:47.086)
Yeah, for sure. So Chris and I actually met at Baruch College. We had, you know, and met there. at that time, my senior year of college, was like 2017 in the fall, New York State legalized the Hemp Initiative Program. And

No one really knew what that meant in New York. You kind of had heard about California having a legal program, some of these other states like Colorado, but there was a newspaper article that my mom sent a screenshot of and it was just these giant cannabis plants that were like six feet tall. Someone was standing side by side with them and it said, you know, this is now legal and CBD oil is here.

and some variation of that. And at the time, me and my roommates in college were trying to figure out what this actually meant. We were participating in Canada at the time and didn't know too much about CBD oil, but it looked identical, like visually. Like those plants, look, you can't tell the difference if you ever see them side by side. That's a whole nother discussion. But from there, we ended up applying in New York State's first round.

Ramon Vela (10:42.615)
You

Owen Martinetti (11:09.12)
of licensing for cultivation and processing of CBD oil and started a project, two projects, one called Hemp Chain Farms and one called Naturae. And the purpose of both of those was we had studied, you know, what was going on in the hemp market and noticed that trust was like a big issue within the hemp side of things.

trying to source your raw CBD ingredients for your products or your brands was really hard to find. And you didn't know who to trust if you were actually getting what you said you had to get. And at this time, hemp was illegal. Hemp was legalized at the end of 2018 with the farm bill that passed. And so started a manufacturing facility, started a farm. was a 180 acre farm.

Ramon Vela (11:45.28)
Mm-hmm.

Owen Martinetti (12:02.83)
We did about 15,000 square feet of indoor cultivation where we propagated seeds and transferred them to the outdoor fields and did a little bit of indoor growing as well. And then set up a manufacturing facility where we would extract the CBD oil from this plant and just sell it bulk to other companies. And that's what kind of opened it up to this whole.

other side of the cannabis industry, which was a product that you could consume and didn't get you high. And consumers were talking about its impact on things like sleep, pain relief, anxiety relief, a lot of different ailments that you usually only hear from pharmaceutical drugs or over-the-counter drugs. And so that's how we got into it.

Chris joined up in 2019 when we started to hire a sales team. And when Chris joined up, it was really funny, we hired four people and Chris was one of the four. He was the only one of the four that said, I don't want a salary, I just want a bigger commission and I'll go hunt for it. And for those next three months, Chris outsold the other three salespeople combined.

And he was living on my couch at first when he first started working and ended up getting an apartment up there. And what happened in the hemp industry in 2019 was that over eight times the amount of hemp that was needed for U.S. consumption was produced. Essentially 2018 happened. It was a huge boom.

farmers were making anywhere between $10,000 and $30,000 an acre, something that they couldn't make when they were doing something like corn or soybeans or other traditional crops. And so everybody told somebody else and those people told someone else and it led to an entire surplus. And so at the end of 2019, there was a huge price collapse and it was, I would say awful timing because it coincided with COVID.

Chris Abbenda (13:54.2)
Thank

Ramon Vela (13:58.102)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (14:12.343)
Hmm.

Owen Martinetti (14:24.462)
And that's where Chris and I decided to start to become business partners. We were talking about it in the hemp days, but we ended up becoming partners outside of cannabis in general. And we started a project called Level Up Sciences that, Chris, if you want to talk about that.

Chris Abbenda (14:43.852)
Yeah, sure. mean, as everybody suffered in 2020 with COVID, the hemp industry, pretty much every industry in the US globally was impacted. Pretty much everything stopped for the hemp industry. So Owen and I...

We're like, what can we do? We were living together in, just outside of Albany. And a friend of mine was talking to me about getting, selling PPE, procurement of personal protective equipment. And we said, well, what, like, what are we going to do? Like how, what can we provide to them? mean, hospitals couldn't get this stuff. Schools couldn't, know, schools were starting to close, but.

Ramon Vela (15:30.359)
Hmm.

Chris Abbenda (15:35.192)
people across the country like major supply chain, know, McKesson and large, large companies were struggling to, to procure, you know, testing kits, hand sanitizer, masks. And I don't really know how we were able to pull it off, but somehow we managed to over the course of 2020. And then again, in 2022, when there was a demand for

Ramon Vela (15:45.269)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Abbenda (16:02.316)
COVID rapid tests, Owen and I did $8 million in sales. In 2020 alone, we did $4 million by procuring PPE to four US states. And what we did was we're like, all right, gotta get, first we started by, we have to get in touch with these, the right people. So we started reaching out to the procurement offices, emergency management offices.

for US states and we actually started building MailChimp email campaigns to try to, we built a website, we tried to add some legitimacy, we did supply chain research, we like, where can we get this stuff from? And it was the first time that we were 25, it was the first time that I've personally ever dealt with, and Owen, the same, ever dealt with any type of international logistics at that scale.

Ramon Vela (16:57.868)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Abbenda (16:58.878)
And we were able to supply the state of New Mexico, the state of Tennessee, Missouri, and the state of Connecticut with these supplies to the point where the governor of New Mexico personally called and thanked us. And that really gave us the footing, I would say financially, both Owen and I come from, you know, middle-class background.

We don't have strong financial background to just go off and start any venture. That's what gave us, I would say, the capital boost that we needed to get to where we are ultimately now, which it allowed us to self-fund Snoozy, which is your question. One of your questions and issues is what is something that we're proud of that most consumers don't know?

We're bootstrapped. We've been bootstrapped since we started. Snoozy now has, we have 10 full-time employees that are all US based. We have several employees that work with us right in New York that we get to thankfully get together with. California, Florida, Nebraska, South Carolina and Virginia. And we're still to this day.

self-funded within profitable since we pretty much started this endeavor thankfully and hopefully will continue to to to be that way for as long as we can but that opportunity in twenty twenty allowed us to not only get snoozy going but it also allowed us on an ionic dispensary massachusetts of a licensed cannabis dispenser called potency it's been open now for the last two and a half years and

Yeah, I mean, it was a wild time, we made something of it. And I still to this day, I'm like, I don't know how two people in an apartment in Cohoes, New York managed to make that happen, but we did.

Ramon Vela (19:08.075)
Wow.

Owen Martinetti (19:08.096)
Yeah, we found what people were looking for when other people couldn't find it. And what was interesting is, know, Chris laid out that we, you we own this other dispensary. had the background from the hemp farming and manufacturing was all along the way. We knew that cannabis was going to be something very big. Hemp industry was going to be something very big.

Chris Abbenda (19:13.876)
Yeah.

Owen Martinetti (19:34.222)
You know, the timing of it is really interesting because it's the end of prohibition. And so I think the first step was the legalization of the hemp industry. And what's going to follow is these medical programs, state by state, and then people eventually getting around to the rec programs. And so when we decided to jump back into the cannabis industry after Level Up Sciences,

We got our dispensary going. We started to explore the idea of creating a brand because one of the things that did happen as being a manufacturer of products is when you're in a commodity driven business, you're very price conscientious of your competition. You're pitching people about all the amazing things about your product, but other people are making things very similar with the same specs.

Ramon Vela (20:17.792)
Mm-hmm.

Owen Martinetti (20:32.166)
And maybe they'll, they'll cut it in half and you have to, to either match that or be very close to it to be even competitive. And, you know, someone's always coming out with another piece of equipment that can produce four times as much material as, as your machine can and for half the costs. So it's a very difficult business to be in unless you have lots of capital. but what we noticed was the retail brands and the consumer facing sides weren't

Ramon Vela (20:50.326)
Hmm.

Owen Martinetti (21:01.708)
really impacted anywhere near as much as the supply chain. In fact, they actually benefited and they benefited because they had more competition, lower price points. But from the consumer standpoint, the prices on retail product didn't drop anywhere near like they did on the supply chain, which was 50 to 70%. They dropped maybe like five to 10%. And the brands, the retail stores, they were able to capture more of that margin.

Ramon Vela (21:24.471)
Hmm.

Owen Martinetti (21:32.238)
And so that was something that was a takeaway from being on the supply chain side. And then when we really started to look at the data of who's consuming what and for what reasons, the thing that stood out the most was that when it came to edibles, 30 % of people were reporting that they were taking this product to help them sleep. And that was kind of a...

Ramon Vela (21:56.342)
Mm-hmm.

Owen Martinetti (21:59.85)
an interesting blip in the data. And so we were like, what's going on with sleep? And we started to look at it a little bit further and we're like, my God, like America's not tired. It's exhausted. know, 70 million people are suffering from sleep issues in this country. 8 % of people are on sleep medications. 2 % of people are on, taking melatonin to help with that as well. And so this is a huge issue and we're just starting to hear about

Ramon Vela (22:03.734)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (22:10.795)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (22:24.469)
Yeah.

Owen Martinetti (22:29.794)
the potential medical benefits of cannabis and hemp. And so we knew that was the problem that if we were gonna create a consumer packaged good, we wanted to focus on. And the other problem that we noticed that was happening in the industry was you had all these companies trying to be everything all at once. They wanted to sell flour products, they wanted vape.

Ramon Vela (22:33.462)
Mm-hmm.

Owen Martinetti (22:55.79)
products, wanted topicals, edibles, chocolates, whatever it was. And they were targeting everything all at once. And you didn't really know who to go to for the specific problem that you had. might, might've had a brand that you trusted and maybe they carried one of these products amongst another hundred or 200. And so we, we simplified the concept and said, Hey, let's just focused on sleep. Let's make one product, target sleep.

And that's how we initially got our foot in the door in the industry was focusing on that one pain point and that one product.

Ramon Vela (23:33.259)
Yeah, being the best in your lane, right? Like just being the best in that one area. By the way, what you were describing in terms of facing the commoditized market when you're growing, kind of reminds me a little bit of this, of like what farmers go through, like just in general, like in terms of the non-corporate ones, like the family farmers and so forth. They have to deal with these price.

these price fluctuations and sometimes they make money, sometimes it's hard to make money. And I had a brand called Painterland Sisters on the show and they were frustrated with the ups and downs of the dairy market. And they decided, you know, let's try to stabilize this and let's create a product from the dairy. So it kind of reminds me a little bit of what you guys were going through.

And it's really interesting to me when you talk about COVID and your kind of like your temporary switch there, which is fascinating story, by the way. It kind of reminds me of that movie, the one with Jonah Hill and yeah, war or something.

Owen Martinetti (24:38.83)
War dogs. War dogs. Yeah. It was similar to that. I mean, we saw everything. saw fake certifications, price gouging, seizing of shipments. know, we were getting things from India, China, and sometimes, thankfully never happened to us, but those governments weren't letting gear leave their country because they wanted to keep it within their country.

Chris Abbenda (24:42.236)
Sir, it's...

Ramon Vela (25:06.667)
Yeah.

Owen Martinetti (25:08.502)
Yeah, at the end of the day, was Chris and I behind our laptops in an apartment and, you know, trying to, trying to play the part and follow through on what we said we were going to do. And it worked out.

Ramon Vela (25:19.263)
Yeah. Well, that story is fascinating. I mean, that can probably take a whole show by itself because I don't know. I think that's pretty entrepreneurial of you guys to do that.

Owen Martinetti (25:32.718)
Appreciate it.

Chris Abbenda (25:32.914)
think if there's anything I learned out of that scenario is how underprepared America was in terms of manufacturing. We relied so heavily on these supplies. They're low skilled manufacturing manufactured goods. And obviously we produce all these things overseas and in an instant like that where they were needed in such short demand.

As Owen said, there were countries like, we're not, we're not supplying that. And then you saw, said here in the United States, you saw a lot of manufacturers try to turn over like there's production, what they could. Some started producing a textile company, started producing mass. We got our hand sanitizer. Interestingly, we can pivot was the hand sanitizer that we were manufacturing was shipped up, manufactured in the South and shipped up in.

in large totes, like 270 gallon totes on freight trucks and bottled in New York State by another friend of ours who's in the hemp industry. it just, everybody was trying to turn over whatever they could and it was just a very interesting time for sure.

Ramon Vela (26:52.597)
Yeah, that's fascinating. And it's actually interesting when you're talking about the price collapse happening right around COVID, because it feels to me like COVID, I mean, people must have been using cannabis and hemp like crazy because they were, mean, alcohol, know, sales went through the roof. Obviously people were home, you know, they were anxious during, you know, lot of, mean, it just would, it...

I guess the surplus was so great that people didn't feel it for a while, until the market sort of right-sized itself up again.

Owen Martinetti (27:31.758)
Well, I think there was two things going on. So you had the cannabis industry, like the other markets that you described, alcohol were doing very well. The legal, recreational cannabis products that would give you a buzz got, did very well. I think that was actually some of the best time period for sales. The CBD side of things, not so much, just because there was so, there wasn't as much of a boom.

Ramon Vela (28:01.335)
Mm-hmm.

Owen Martinetti (28:01.974)
being locked in, and then coupled with that over, know, over saturation of product, just was a recipe for disaster. mean, there were farms in this country that produced as much product as certain states in the South. Like it was just, it was just too much all at once. yeah, it's compounding issues leading up to it.

Ramon Vela (28:18.55)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Abbenda (28:24.666)
combination of

Ramon Vela (28:27.093)
Yeah. yeah.

Owen Martinetti (28:29.1)
And then another big one, a lot of people within the hemp industry were hopeful for was FDA approval of these types of products. And they still have not approved these products. even companies like ourself, we're marketing it as a dietary supplement. We can't make certain claims about our product.

tried to lean more into the anecdotal information from our customers, sharing reviews, and avoiding any type of claims as much as possible because FDA just hasn't stepped in. because of that, it just hasn't become the market size that people thought they wanted when it came to hemp products.

Ramon Vela (29:06.039)
Sure.

Ramon Vela (29:18.059)
Yeah. Well, you know, it really boggles the mind. mean, I think I understand it, but it boggles the mind that lawmakers and policies haven't reached the point where people are. Because if you just look around, more and more people, it's like there's already like a huge education about it around CBD. Like, I know so many people who maybe haven't smoked.

anything in a long time, but they're open to CBD products. They're open to like, know, roll ons and, you know, things like the sleep aids and all sorts of other stuff. And just there's a consciousness in the culture that this is all acceptable, that this is, you know, like, hey, let me try this, you know, like a lot of people, even my mom, you know, she's, passed away already, but when she was,

you dealing with her kidney disease, like she would, you know, use CBD products. I mean, people and hemp products as well. more and more people are using them. They see the benefits of this. And I just don't understand like what the, why these lawmakers haven't caught up. It's almost as if they have these, these old fashioned dogmatic views and that just hasn't caught up with the, with the majority of people. Cause I don't know. I just think more and more people are just doing it. I just.

You know, and if you have a great product that does what it says, like snoozy, I'm sure, then, you know, people will find it. People will tell their friends about it because sleep is definitely a challenge for a lot of people.

Chris Abbenda (31:01.551)
I think when it comes to regulators, there's good intention on their part. You have to look at it too. The CBD, the hemp industry has become a lot more than just CBD now. It's hemp-derived THC, as we were talking about previously, which our products do contain low doses of THC.

Owen Martinetti (31:27.682)
Hey Chris, it might be a good idea to just explain to the listener like what that is exactly. They might not have heard that before, like what this product is or what the loophole is.

Chris Abbenda (31:38.714)
Sure, so with the 2018 Farm Bill that Owen discussed earlier that legalized industrial hemp, is a, when it comes to the legal level of THC that can be found in a product, the federal government came up with a number and that number is based on a percentage of by weight of how much THC can be found in a product.

And that number is 0.3 % THC on a dry weight basis. It's not really clear where that number came from, but that's the number that the federal government decided to stick with. And through that has created this, what is still a gray market for products like ours, for beverages, for pretty much every hemp derived product that contains THC. As long as they have product tests and falls within this

this legal weight limit and it allows you to sell the product federally. As we were talking about, you know, we had a call previously before we started our podcast that there are states that have now enacted, whether it be an emergency regulation or have passed laws because this has been going on for some time to prohibit or greatly restrict M-Drived and then you have markets.

access to hemp-derived THC and then you have markets like Minnesota that have actually embraced it, which is why you see such a surge of, over the last year or so, you've seen such a surge in hemp-derived beverages being made available in that market. And it's really on a state-by-state basis where you either have regulators that are looking to put in a legal framework to protect the hemp industry,

Ramon Vela (33:19.735)
Hmm.

Chris Abbenda (33:35.391)
or you have states like texas right now which is this is a hot topic in texas which ironically is the biggest market all the u.s. there are so many stores that across the state that sell these products and the state is you know going around the lieutenant governor is going around saying like you know

It's like prohibition. It's like reefer madness with the way that they're going about talking about these products, but they've been in their state now for years, and there are brands like ours that try to do the right thing. We lab test all of our products. We have adequate warnings listed on our packaging. And rather than come up with a solution to regulate the market, they're flat out trying to ban it.

Ramon Vela (34:03.393)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Abbenda (34:30.285)
So this is an ongoing debate in Texas and has been an issue throughout multiple states. it's, like I said, I think in some instances it comes from a good place. Like, of course, everybody should understand like access to THC should be restricted for adult use only. And of course there are bad players and bad actors in any industry.

And there are also a lot of products that have made their way into the market, hemp drive THC products that definitely push the boundaries of, or flat out break the rules of what is federally allowed. And that does not help the industry to whatsoever move forward in a good way.

It only sets to hurt everybody that's actually playing by the rules or trying to play by the rules. And the rules are constantly changing and the rules are different in every state. it makes, make it hard. And then it's also, there's an also an angle where it's hard to tell when it comes to these, the regulators and within each state, like what their interests truly are. they protecting?

Are they protecting the adult use market? Are they trying to protect the medical operators in the state? So it's hard to tell sometimes what the actual true agenda is.

Ramon Vela (35:58.871)
Yeah.

Um, yeah. And let me just make sure the audience knows if you want to talk, uh, see what we're going to be talking about right now terms of the products, you can go to get snoozy.com get snoozy.com. That's the word get and then snoozy s n double O Z Y.com is what we're going to be talking about in a second. Um, but, um, but yeah, I mean, that's tough. It's fascinating because I, like I said, it's just, it's

As I started in the very beginning, you guys entered a market that just was so difficult. mean, do you guys ever like, know, every now and then I'll interview a founder and I'll say, Hey, like, what would you tell your younger self? And sometimes, well, actually I asked this of a beverage, of a alcohol beverage founder. And she told me what I would do is I would ask myself, why did I get into this?

Do you guys ever ask yourself like, wait a minute, like there are much easier ways to make money.

Chris Abbenda (37:03.051)
all the time. I think over the last two years, this has been the first e-commerce project for Owen and I. We launched Snoozy as a wholesale focused brand because we were playing to our strengths. We knew how to pick up the phone and call and that's where the two of us started when it was just a team of two and now we're a team of, as I said, a team of 10 full-time employees. But on the e-commerce side,

We've run into numerous challenges and Owen's always like, well, why, if we had picked any other product type, like we can't send SMS texts. Like that's an issue that we, you know, we would just an example of, you know, we can't find a provider that can, that will take on our product, even though it's federally legal, they can still run into issues. Like it's just, there's small little things that come up all the time, especially on our advertising side, which

Ramon Vela (37:42.785)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Abbenda (38:03.048)
is crucial. We've had, whether it be Google Ads, Facebook, we've had ad accounts lost. And then we're like, we just picked another easier product, which leads into where we've taken. So the brand has started as a brand focused on containing cannabinoid ingredients.

Ramon Vela (38:30.423)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Abbenda (38:31.399)
CBD, CBN, THC. what we've done recently is we've launched, our brand has always been focused on sleep and we'd like to continue to be focused as a sleep focused brand. So we launched a new sleep skew called Bedtime Buddy that we're in the process of getting, it's on Amazon, you can order it right now, we're still in the process of revamping our.

our listing but we're trying to build out the line of products that we've made, creating non-infused versions of all those products so we can just really be a general wellness brand so that we can enter into these channels, more traditional channels that right now we're limited to getting into potentially because of the product type that we carry.

Ramon Vela (39:23.787)
And in terms of these challenges that you're facing because of the product, I think that's smart what you guys are doing because you can still offer the other ones, but you can promote these. so I think that's definitely really smart. What has been, like, so what's your mix right now? Because is it now, obviously,

I feel like there's a lot of education already out there. So is it more about the awareness of the brand and what it does versus like, educating people on sleep? Because I don't know, I kind of feel like people already kind of know like, this CBD or this TH or this mushroom or whatever it is can help in terms of sleep wise. So I don't know. I feel like education is no longer a barrier, but what do you guys say?

Ramon Vela (40:18.721)
So I think you're muted.

Chris Abbenda (40:18.75)
muted on.

Owen Martinetti (40:21.102)
I completely agree. It's not an education issue at this point. I think most people know about these types of ingredients within health communities or within the cannabis industry. The biggest thing that like Chris had pointed out was the restrictions around this category. so companies like Metta have policies that restrict cannabis companies or products containing CBD or THC from advertising.

to really be a barrier to growth when you have these types of products. And so as Chris said, we started as a wholesale company first, which meant that we kind of outsource the education to the stores. But about a year into it, we started to invest into our own e-commerce program. First starting with SEO, we ranked for key terms like THC Sleep Gummies, Gummies for Sleep.

things like that and got position one through three for a lot of these keywords. And what we started to find was that we just needed to get the product in front of people because it was solving the pain point. were coming back. We had about 75 % of people that try our product come back within three months at a minimum. And so after we did the SEO, we said, okay, how can we figure out

Ramon Vela (41:42.336)
Mm-hmm.

Owen Martinetti (41:51.182)
the ad side, because if we can start running ads when other people can't, that seems to be a competitive advantage about this industry that maybe could be a blessing and it has been. So we've been successfully running Meta, Google, other platforms, trying to do it as compliant of a way for over a year and a half now. And it's taking off. mean, we had a 16 % jump in sales in May.

another 6 % jump last month. And that's really just been our focus is how do we get this product in front of more people now in different advertising channels.

Ramon Vela (42:31.287)
And how about like influencer or or loyalty program or affiliate? Yeah, or even affiliate.

Chris Abbenda (42:38.537)
affiliate.

Chris Abbenda (42:45.289)
you wanna.

Owen Martinetti (42:46.222)
Yeah. we've been working, so our affiliate program that we rolled out at Snoozy, we first started with a refer a friend program and then tried to move to converting customers into advocates and actually paying them for sales. And that worked pretty well, but it didn't work as good as the referral program. so, you know, given, you know, the bandwidth at the time,

being bootstrapped, know, Chris and I were doing most of these things in the beginning. And thankfully we've got a marketing team of five people now and, Mariah has been handling social media and out affiliate outreach. so we've been building relationships with, micro influencers, and other people that, are interested in this type of product and starting to build out an affiliate program. It's, it's more of a new channel for us.

Ramon Vela (43:39.415)
Mm-hmm.

Owen Martinetti (43:44.014)
Meta is like, I say 75, 80 % of all of our marketing spend followed by Google. They're the tax man in this e-commerce industry.

Ramon Vela (43:50.901)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (43:54.423)
Well, I do feel though that kind of based on what you said too, plus my own experience, so like using some of these products is once you find a product that really works, that's really beneficial to you, it's like you want to tell everybody or like, you you bring it up to people like, know, geez, like you have trouble sleeping. I've taken this product, blah, blah. You know what mean? Like that's a natural extension. it's in sleep is one of those things where

If you have trouble sleeping and you find a product that really works, it's like, boom, it's like night and day. It's like, you know what mean? Like it's, it's profound for a lot of people. and that's the kind of stuff I think, I don't know, at least from my per se perception that people would want to share and, you know, talk about.

Owen Martinetti (44:43.118)
100 % and something that we developed was a subscription program. And that's, that's really taken off. So we have over 3,500 subscribers growing anywhere between 900 and a thousand a month right now. And what we're trying to do is trying to alleviate the pain points for customers of consistently buying a product like this.

Ramon Vela (45:12.588)
Mm-hmm.

Owen Martinetti (45:13.102)
It's not cheap. Our average order value is anywhere between 60 and $80. And for someone that needs something that's helping them sleep, that can be expensive. And so we're trying to figure out ways that we can reduce this as much as possible through a subscription program. And that's actually one of our top things. We actually had a meeting about that today was figuring out how to

better structure our subscription program to alleviate that concern.

Ramon Vela (45:48.759)
So this is fascinating. Why don't we switch over to the website and really if someone's listening to this, they love the story, they love you guys and your passion around entrepreneurship. And again, by the way, that story you guys tell about during the time of COVID, that's a fascinating story. And one of these days maybe we should, we'll schedule something if you guys don't mind, we'll talk just about that because that is...

Chris Abbenda (46:13.764)
Sure.

Ramon Vela (46:14.625)
I think that's a crazy story, but it's so cool at the same time though, this is way you guys made it work. Says a lot about you guys, so I'm inspired by that. So someone can go on getsnewsy.com, getsnewsy.com is the website. Someone loves listening to this, they are interested in sleep, they're interested in this type of product. Where do you want them to start in their journey with the brand? Is there anything on the website, anything that you want them to?

or do something that you wanna highlight that they should look into.

Chris Abbenda (46:47.953)
mean, for sure. Obviously, knowing that our products are, you know, we try to source the cleanest ingredients all domestically. Owen and I were, that was when we first launched Newsy, was trying to find the right manufacturing partner. And it is very hard. And it also, because of the, you know, where we started, the size of the productions that we were looking to do,

We toured some of the biggest gummy manufacturers in the country and it was about for me and him finding the right partner that we could trust because we're selling a consumable product. And thankfully we've been working with consistently the same manufacturer for the last two plus years. And we have really tried to make sure that

everything that's going into our product. We're always looking to iterate, like we're trying to figure out how we can reduce our sugar on our product, because it is a sleep gummy at end of the day. So knowing that the things that we're putting in our gummies are healthy. The second place I would tell a customer to go to is our reviews, because they really do speak for themselves. Sometimes we don't always get the most

detailed reviews like we do sometimes customers email us and they'll give us a really truly personal story which is just like reminds us every day like what we're selling is really helping people but if you come onto our website and you go to our any of our products but if you just go to our you know our footer and you go to our customer review section we've accumulated over 3,300 reviews at this point

across all of our products that mostly cater to our corporate purchase are are stupid benefits company and if you read the testimonials from those people if people told us i was on you know and the in three years and like this nothing was helping me or you know i'm them on some other prescription medication the the testimonials from these from these customers really does show that

Chris Abbenda (49:06.594)
this product helps, this product works, and it should be made accessible to people. And it's unfortunate that in so many states right now cannabis is being scrutinized to the level it is. And people don't want to be on prescription drugs to help them sleep. They want a natural, healthy alternative. And that's what we're trying to provide.

Ramon Vela (49:29.815)
Yeah, no, I 100 % agree. just for everyone out there, you can go to get snoozy.com, get snoozy.com. I love the names that you guys have here. Sleep with Benefits. And you got a ton of reviews on that one. You've got the Good Night Sleep. You've got the Micro Dose Sleep with Benefits. You also have other products like the New Morning Highs, the Love Is All You Need, the Stress Free Mind. And then the one that you mentioned earlier, the Bedtime Buddy.

Owen Martinetti (49:30.422)
And

Ramon Vela (49:58.667)
And then you've got a bunch of bundles, I think is cool if people are, you know, want to try out some different products, the Balance Life, the Rise and Thrive Bundle, the Dreamland Bundle, the Fresh and Reconnect Bundle. You also have a discovery kit, which I always love when brands provide a discovery kit for those who kind of want to try it out. And then, yeah, and then I'm just, I was looking right now at the reviews.

If you don't mind, I just love to read a couple that I just saw right here. Insomnia relief. The person says, I've been suffering on and off with insomnia for some time now. I was reluctant to try these, I had tried, let me just, it moved before I was able to finish. Let me just get there real quick. Okay. I was reluctant to try these, but I'm so glad I did. Slept for 10 hours, highly recommend, blah, blah.

Another one is Never My Wildest Dreams, Toe Curling Experience, Zero Grogoness, Great Gummies. It just feels like you just have, goes on and on and on. All these amazing testimonials that you guys have there. So yeah, and I love the website. So nice and colorful and so forth. And I love how you mix in all the video, the user generated videos.

Owen Martinetti (51:18.221)
That was.

Owen Martinetti (51:23.406)
Appreciate that. Yeah, one other thing I would say, because depending on the listeners, is we have different strengths and different sleep formulations depending on the individual. If someone like myself, I don't take our sleep with benefits extra strength, the 10 milligrams, I tend to go to the bedtime buddy or the good night sleep. It doesn't have any THC in it.

but then we also have like a micro dose version that has two and a half milligrams of THC and the extra strength with 10. And, you know, one way to try them is we have like a sleep bundle pack, which gets you everything. And then you can, you can try, can mix and match. and also, you know, have a, try them out at a, at our highest discount. So something that we did was we wanted people to try our products. So we offered a 30 % discount off on, on bundles.

Ramon Vela (52:18.839)
Mm-hmm.

Owen Martinetti (52:19.85)
If you aren't happy with the product either, we make it super easy for people to try this is we, we refund everybody. Like you, reach out to us. If it's truly not the right product for you, that's okay. Like we're not going to be the right product for everybody, but we wanted to make it super easy. All you have to do is reach back out to us through our customer support on our website and, you get a full refund. And so.

We think that's really important because it just shows, you know, we are confident in our product. But we also don't want people to be hesitant of trying something.

Chris Abbenda (52:57.476)
.

Ramon Vela (52:58.933)
Yeah. I love that by the way. And that is a great trust building technique to use. You you're eliminating risk and you believe in your product. So you obviously wouldn't offer it if you didn't think people were going to really enjoy it. So I love when a brand does that. And I appreciate it from a consumer standpoint. Thank you. So this has been amazing. I want to be respectful of your guys time. We've covered a lot of

ground here in terms of just the challenges that you're facing, the legal aspects of it, the products, and then the variety of different products that you've mentioned. Is there anything else that you want to make sure that you leave with the audience?

Chris Abbenda (53:44.836)
going.

Chris Abbenda (53:49.444)
I'll leave something. If you are a consumer of cannabis products and hemp products and you live in a state where these products are being challenged, definitely let your local government and your state government know and let your voice be heard that you want access to these products because this is being challenged. And it's a possibility that it could change on a, you know,

you know, we don't know. it just, and that would affect a lot of people that are benefiting from access to these products.

Ramon Vela (54:25.515)
Yeah, yeah, no, I get it and that's a good thing. And people really do need to kind of speak out about this if they enjoy these products. So thanks for mentioning that. But I really love your story and I love the product and just from a branding standpoint, I love the colorfulness of it all. You can go to the website, getsnoozy.com and then the names of course are pretty cool.

Chris Abbenda (54:37.742)
Chris.

Ramon Vela (54:54.007)
Is there, what's your social media handle?

Chris Abbenda (54:58.058)
It's at SnoozyGummy on Instagram.

Ramon Vela (55:00.533)
Okay. Great. Well, this has been fascinating guys. I really appreciate you guys time. As I mentioned, I love these types of products. I am fascinated by people who start these companies because as I mentioned, it is a difficulty, but you know what? Here's the other part of it too. And this may or may not make you feel any better at times when you guys are frustrated is that eventually all this stuff is going to be sorted out. I'm pretty sure, right?

because I personally feel that a lot of the roadblocks that are put in place are because of old thinking, ways of thinking. And eventually all this is going to be sorted out, who knows when. It's five years, 10 years, whatever, maybe last, maybe a more, who knows. But I look at you guys as pioneers to this. You guys are pioneering an industry, a product set.

that eventually will break through, but you guys are the pioneers, you guys are early adopters, you guys are doing it. And I appreciate it because without you guys, these products would not be available. And so I, one, appreciate people like you who are doing this and who says life should be easy, right? mean, you guys are really brave to do this, but I really want to thank you guys because like I said, this actually makes the difference in people's lives.

I've seen it with my mother. I've seen it with other people. I've seen it with my own, you know, when I've had issues with sleep and so forth, a good quality product like Snoozy really does help and it can make a profound difference for somebody. And that's me saying it. That's sort of my testimony around it in that it could be very profound, especially if you're having trouble sleeping. When you find that product that works, it's like life changing. So thank you for doing what you guys are doing.

Chris Abbenda (56:57.484)
Thank you.

Owen Martinetti (56:58.222)
Thank you.

Ramon Vela (56:59.445)
So thank you again for being on the show. I truly appreciate everyone out there. We have just had Chris Abenda and Owen Martinetti who are both co-founders of Snoozy. You can go to getsnoozy.com is the website. I would recommend going to their website, signing up for their newsletter. That way you keep up to date on all the new products, promotions, things like that that I'm sure they do throughout the year. And that way you keep up to date.

If anything, just go to the website, check it out because it's a really cool website. And if you're interested at all in these type of products, if you have trouble sleeping, this is a place, it may not be for you, who knows, but go check it out. They've got this really cool bundles that you can try and samplers that you can try. So I say, why not? And I'm telling you from my perspective, when I've tried products like this, when you find a good one like Snoozy, like I said, it could be profound. And so go try it out.

So thank you guys. I appreciate your guys time.

Chris Abbenda (57:59.074)
Thank you, Ramon.

Owen Martinetti (57:59.992)
Likewise, thank you.

Ramon Vela (58:01.653)
Yeah, everyone out there, thank you for your time and we will have the links that we just mentioned on our podcast description on Apple, on Spotify, and pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts, simply type in the story of a brand show and you should be able to find it. Beyond that, everyone, as I always mentioned, stay safe, stay sane, stay healthy. And in this case, staying healthy is getting a good night's sleep. And if you're having trouble sleeping, go check out Get Snoozy. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

And then one last thing, we've all been going through a lot of stuff, stuff that's making us anxious, the wars and politics and COVID and everything else for the last few years is probably why you're having trouble sleeping. But let's do ourselves a favor. Let's just remember that everyone is going through something and I know that if we can be a little kinder to each other, we can make this human experience a better one. Beyond that, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to another episode of the story of a brand.