24 JULY 20-26, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | REAL ESTATE | RENTALS | HEALTH WELLNESS | SERVICES | EMPLOYMENT | ADULT | MUSIC | CLASSIFIED | FIND MORE MARIJUANA COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/MARIJUANA In the Pink BY THOMAS MITC HELL When Waka Flocka Flame took the stage at Denver’s 4/20 festival in April, a joint with multiple ounces of cannabis stuffed inside quickly made its way through the crowd and into the rapper’s hands. It wasn’t the base- ball-bat-sized joint that stood out, though: That’s common in Colorado, whether it’s 4/20 or a random Friday night. What caught our attention was the joint paper. It was bright pink, and other double- stuffed joints smoked by performers that night were rolled in the same paper. Since then, a number of much smaller pre-rolled joints have surfaced at Colorado dispensaries in those pink papers. Finally able to look at them more closely, we were able to see the name on them: Blazy Susan. It’s hard to miss the Colorado brand’s pink booths, papers, clothes and smoking accesso- ries in pot shops, at events and concerts or on Instagram nowadays. Celebrities like Drake, Bella Thorne, Jimmy Kimmel, Wiz Khalifa, DJ Khaled and Berner have all shouted out or been spotted using Blazy Susan products. The company has grown quickly off that publicity, but there is no actual Susan behind it. Blazy Susan was founded by Will Breakell, a college student who grew tired of how messy his pot-smoking roommates were. Breakell wanted to create something to organize all of the pipes, grinders, lighters, rolling papers and jars of weed on the living room table, so he crafted a spinning circular tray with grooves and holes to hold a home’s cannabis necessities. Taking inspiration from the ro- tating tabletop serving tray, he dubbed it the Blazy Susan, and colored it pink to honor his mother’s victorious battle with breast cancer. “I think the unique part of the brand is that we really do try to be cool. It’s not just a paper brand, and we’re not out here telling people our papers are better than the others. They’re papers,” Breakell says. “We’re just cool. We know stoners, and we try to make cool stuff for them.” All that cool stuff started with the original revolving tray, though, and Breakell barely got that invention far enough to keep the brand alive, let alone thriving. He was on fi nancial fumes almost immediately after starting the company in 2017, and was about to run out of money when his fi rst show business shout-out came on New Year’s Eve that year. CNN correspondent Randi Kaye was in Denver that night to report live from a can- nabis-friendly tour bus, Colorado Cannabis Tours. Breakell paid $200 to someone on the bus to put a Blazy Susan tray on board in hopes of getting caught on camera, and that’s exactly what happened. Jimmy Kimmel ran the CNN clip on his late-night show soon after and joked about the Blazy Susan’s name — and how much he wanted one. That was enough to keep Blazy Susan alive, Break- ell notes, but his time in Hollywood wasn’t over. Breakell was even- tually asked to make a cannabis tray for music producer Scott Storch and a handful of other big names. Even if every ce- lebrity didn’t shout Blazy Susan out on their social media, he saw the value in making a reputation with the cool kids — only he couldn’t dedicate enough time to wooing celebrities while also scaling a busi- ness, so he partnered with Trey Deck to make sure Blazy Susan’s glittering reputation didn’t go away. Deck doesn’t have a background in music promotion or entertain- ment, with most of his business experience in the cannabis industry. He does know how to get backstage very effectively, though. “Why wouldn’t I bring a couple back- packs of Blazy’s and a pound of weed to get backstage? They all love you, and once they see the Blazy Susan gear, then they want to order those in their city,” Deck explains. “We don’t pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to access one celebrity, so they’ll hold out product for thirty seconds. Even by just leav- ing your product in the green room, they can blow it up for you with one post.” The “pound of weed” is a “made-up num- ber,” Deck adds, and he says he doesn’t spend any company money on cannabis. Instead, Deck convinces local dispensaries to provide “large samples” when certain musical acts come to town, and then connects with the artists’ managers or secures a backstage pass. Most of those samples come with plenty of Blazy Susan rolling papers, clothes, and maybe even a customized tray. “It’s cool to be seen on stage with a giant joint and meet all these people, but at the end of the day, the real business goes down afterwards. Sometimes it’s signing a deal, or creating new products or social promotions. Sometimes it’s just setting up a green room before they get there,” Deck explains. “If you were an artist and you’re playing tonight at Red Rocks, your tour manager might know me, and we stay ready to surprise you.” This underground marketing strategy has put Blazy Susan onto the phone screens of plenty of potential customers, and Breakell believes the company has done a good job pouncing on the free publicity so far. Blazy Susan nearly hit $2 million in sales in 2020. This year, it’s on pace to break $23 million, according to Breakell. The bulk of those sales comes from Blazy Susan’s pink joint papers, which now require a lot of space to store. Breakell estimates Blazy Susan papers are sold at about 800 dispensaries in the United States right now, and in smoke shops in sixty different countries. He and his team also recently partnered with owners of the Grateful Dead’s intellectual property on licensed Blazy Susan trays and joint papers, launched a line of CBD wellness products with reality TV star Cynthia Bailey, and founded Blazy Builds, a custom fabrication business. Blazy Builds was spun off the tray production line and is still getting off the ground, but so far the facility has restored Airstream trailers and a 1964 Chevy, and it’s now building bars for cannabis events and non-cannabis events such as the Aspen Food & Wine Classic. Still, the original Blazy Susan is what most excites Breakell. “The original was fi ve pieces with a mag- netic bottom. I still want to build that one day,” he remembers. “The current version is the sixth iteration, but we just love creat- ing new products like that. We’re defi nitely rooted in the build.” Email the author at thomas.mitchell@ westword.com. Blazy Susan founder Will Breakell (left) and business development director Trey Deck (right) with DJ Infamous. BL AZY SUSAN MARIJUANA T O K E O F T H E T O W N
