When High Quality founder Brock Binder was young, his mother told him that he would either become president or find a cure for cancer.
“I think I did both with this company and working with this plant,” Binder says. “I’ve always conducted myself as a high achiever, no pun intended.”
Five years ago, Binder opened High Quality in Corvallis, Oregon as one of the youngest dispensary owners in the country. While most Oregon retailers rely on their own grow to stock their shelves, High Quality has largely abandoned the vertically integrated model to focus on building a better retail experience.
The company has expanded steadily over the past five years, having completed more than a quarter-million transactions, growing its employee roster to 20 and recently adding a sister, CBD outlet, The Lifestyle Store.
Binder draws on his experience as a former operations manager at Fred Meyer, a Northwestern chain of department/grocery stores, to “create more one-stop-shop experiences and bring everything together under one umbrella.”
“I’m working on what I’m calling our High Quality campus which will include our dispensary, our CBD store and a CBD and hemp café aspect,” he says.
High Quality is also notable in that Binder is one of the few men in a management position.
“We are actually a female-dominant company; 70% of our management team are women,” Binder says. “That’s been great. Obviously there’s been a big push for women to establish themselves prominently in the workplace. I’ve been blessed to have some extremely strong women that have come to apply to this company.”