With a focus on flavor and a willingness to go where few edible companies have gone before, Oklahoma’s Kosmik Brands is taking its gummies out of its home base to explore and colonize strange, new markets around the country.
With chef-inspired recipes and dosages that range from 10 milligrams of THC all the way up to a mind-bending 2,000-milligram package, Kosmik blasted off from its home base in Edmonds in late 2019 and was the first Oklahoma brand to expand beyond state lines. It now has products available in five states, with six more scheduled to come online this year, both in medical and recreational markets.
“This brand comes from passion,” says chief marketing officer Cari Carmona, noting that the team’s disparate backgrounds have helped create a brand of products that offers a little something for everyone’s tastes.
Finding the Flavor
According to Carmona, Kosmik’s quick rise through the Oklahoma market is based on quality and consistency of product, something it has been focused on since the beginning.
However, the company’s first attempts at creating an infused gummy didn’t work out. The branding and packaging were great, but the product would melt in the packages and, worst of all, it just didn’t taste good, Carmona says.
So the company pulled tens of thousands of dollars in inventory from shelves and destroyed it, invested in research and development and hired a new chef, who has helped ensure that the product’s texture is pleasing and that its flavors keep customers coming back, instead of turning them away.
Today the company offers a standard line of Blasters and Sour Blasters flavors, all with space-themed names, and has become known for its Specialty Blasters that bring more out-of-box selections, like the Banana Gamma, Full Moon Float and even Peanut Butter and Jelly, a grape gummy with a peanut butter center, among others.
“We typically tell people to bite them in half so you can get that whole experience,” Carmona says. “The Karamel Apple really tastes like you went to the fair, and the S’mores is a marshmallow gummy with a chocolate center rolled in a graham cracker crust.”
The company’s higher-dose products, beginning with the Supernova line, all boast “classified” flavor options, differentiated by colored packaging.
Expansion
Today, the company focuses on ensuring consistency across multiple state markets through licensing agreements with local manufacturers. The goal is that a gummy someone buys in Nevada or Arizona is the same product one can get in Oklahoma. The company sends its partner companies what is essentially a “cake mix” to which they add their own, locally sourced THC oil. There are also extensive training procedures from the company’s executive chef to help even out any state-to-state differences.
“The formula changes from state to state because of altitude and humidity,” Carmona says. “The Big Mac tastes the same everywhere, right? With our gummies it’s the same philosophy.”
Kosmik has also standardized the look of its product across state lines, opting to go with a standard disc shape for all its gummies to ensure the products do not run afoul of any state laws against appealing to children.
“Once you get into the realm of making rockets and weird stuff like that, you just run into problems,” Carmona says.
Kosmik has also made a name for itself by keeping a keen eye on potency. It has developed a proprietary THC-measuring process to ensure accurate dosing at every product level, from its Blasters line of products ranging from a low of 10 milligrams of THC (25 milligrams in Oklahoma) to its Supernova line with 50 milligrams of THC, followed by the top-selling Black Hole, a unique, double-poured gummy with a “classified” flavor and 100 milligrams of THC packed in each piece and sold in packs of 10.
The beautiful thing about the Black Hole gummies is that patients don’t need to eat 10 pieces at a time, Carmona says.
“All they need to do is take one,” she says. “It’s definitely one of our most popular.”
The company has even gone bigger, releasing the 200-milligram Abyss in the Oklahoma and Missouri markets, also with “classified” flavors and sold in packs of 10, creating a single 2,000-milligram edibles package, believed to be among the largest in the country.
According to Carmona, the future is bright for Kosmik, with plans to “plant flags” in new states and markets, including Canada, while looking to expand to other edibles products outside of gummies, and even non-edible products.
The company also sees itself positioned as a lifestyle brand, connecting with “Kosmonaut” superfans through social media and events like its Club Kosmik VIP Lounge, complete with a special “Black Hole vortex” to get in.
“And maybe 10 to 20 years from now we open up the Planet Kosmik storefront or something,” Carmona says.