At CANNA we’re excited to share passionate grower stories from across Canada that resonate with our community and inspire us to “grow big or grow home”.
GROWER SPOTLIGHT
Good day, good day. David Bowl, President and CEO of Origine Nature.
Can you share the journey of how Origine Nature was founded?
Dave: Yeah, so I got into the industry because of my father who was deathly ill with liver cancer. When he was diagnosed, a chef in one of my restaurants started making pot cookies for him and it became a much better treatment than the morphine that the doctors had prescribed and that's how we did his end of life treatment. After he passed away, I fell in love with the industry. And that was in 2016 and then really started building out the Origine Nature project ever since. We established in 2017 and here we are today.
Entering the cannabis industry as a newcomer, what surprising fact or aspect about the cannabis plant did you learn?
Dave: I think it's that cannabis doesn't sleep. It's a plant so we expect it to grow on its own. But we really watch it 24-7, our crews are ready to go in at midnight or one in the morning if we need to. That was definitely something that we didn't put enough focus on at the beginning, and if we want to have a stable product, it's a must.
What's an aspect of managing a licensed production facility that caught you off guard or was unexpected?
Dave: I mean, for me, the glaring one is just the consumer packaged goods aspect.
I'm from the restaurant business. I really didn't know much about bringing G-tins and SKUs to market, and that's really a big, big part of what we do every day. So our packaging team is actually now bigger than our agricultural team, and I would have never thought that.
What unique qualities or practices make Origine Nature stand out among other licensed producers?
Dave: For us, I think it is our core values and our team; street smarts and social consciousness, family and obviously passion, just like CANNA.
“We don't believe you can grow beautiful plants if there's no passion.”
The product is always going to be inferior unless you're doing it because you truly love the plant and you're passionate about what you're doing every day.
What achievement fills you with the most pride?
Dave: There's a lot. I think it's just to see 84 employees work as a family and as a team and, you know, we have unexpected things happen all the time, just like any other LP, but it's how the team really forms together and solves them, which is a true point of pride for me and the entire team.
What's a current goal of yours for Origine Nature?
Dave: I think it's continued growth and continued stability of our brand. I think it's a very hard industry to promote a brand and to get the consumer to really develop brand loyalty. And I think we're getting there, right? So as long as we can keep going in that direction and continue to see that growth, continue to deliver consistent products to our consumer base, who seem to enjoy them. I know I do as a consumer. So as long as we keep that going, I feel like we're going in the right direction.
Is there a particular motto or guiding principle that steers the course at Origine Nature?
Dave: Our motto is to make everyone feel great and every decision we make at Origine Nature, we take the time to see how our employees feel, how the leadership team feel, how our shareholders feel, how our consumers feel, how our partners feel. It sounds silly but when your goal is to make everyone around you feel great, then the outcome is usually pretty positive and we may not succeed every time but it's definitely our mission every time.
Looking forward, in which areas do you hope to see continued progress within the cannabis industry?
Dave: The issue that I continue to see hurting our industry is the stigma around cannabis. There's just so much so many people out there that still look at it as the devil's lettuce and I just you know I've always had a very positive experience with it in my history and I just see the plant is having so much positive potential and it would be great to see society as a whole start to be a little more accepting of of the cannabis plant.
In your opinion, how important is knowledge-sharing within the industry?
Dave: A must. A complete must. I mean I'm a founder of the AQIC, when I founded the Quebec Cannabis Association It was exactly for that: knowledge-sharing. I believe that we're just a small community of people all striving for the same goal and we all need to be there to help each other out. I know when I started this business David Hyde, Ivan Ross, Jason Stanley, all these people helped guide me in the direction to get me where I am today and I would have never been able to do it without that shared knowledge, and I feel like I have to continue to pay it forward.
