Meet Patrick, Jamie and Margo Stephenson of Newt Brothers Artisanal

Today we’d like to introduce you to Patrick, Jamie and Margo Stephenson.

Patrick, Jamie, and Margo let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Newt Brothers Artisanal began with a big dream and a lot of prayers in 2014 with my brother Jamie, our mother, Margo, and myself, Patrick. Our motivation was to create a connoisseur line of meticulously crafted cannabis products, much like fine wine. When Colorado voters made the historic step to legalize cannabis in our great state, I was eager to jump into the legal cannabis industry being a long-time cannabis enthusiast myself. I began working in the industry as a trimmer and worked my way up to become a lead cultivator, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Our mom loves to garden as well, so we ended up working in several of the same grows. We all thought that was pretty cool. 

Cultivating became a passion, and I immersed myself in learning all I could regarding plant science and advanced cultivation techniques. Eventually, I was working for one of the leading industry consulting companies helping other business owners make their cannabis dreams a reality. After working in the legal cannabis industry for years, my mother and I noticed a lack of high-quality cannabis in the market as large corporations expanded their operations, and sacrificed quality for profits. As a medical marijuana patient, this bothered me. 

So, the family began to discuss the idea of starting our own cannabis company. My brother and I had grown up playing hockey and enjoyed success on several championship teams. On those teams, Jamie played center, and I was a goalie. A hockey center needs to be a big picture guy who knows where each player is but more important where they will be in a few milliseconds so he can set up the play. A goalie needs intense focus to concentrate on exactly where the puck is at any given time to block the shots and prevent a goal. We had complementary skills and learned to work as a team at a young age. In the process, we learned what it took to build a winning team. These were valuable lessons. 

Fast forward to today, it has been a whirlwind experience with lots of blood, sweat, and tears, and more than a few sleepless nights, days, and weekends. We are incredibly grateful to our fantastic team of employees and the loyal customers that have supported us on this journey. It amazes us how far we have come and all that we have accomplished. Our team is proud to produce the cleanest cannabis in Colorado, and we are in love with our connoisseur-quality products. It is exciting looking forward to expanding our operations. The company will double our cultivation and manufacturing capacities in the next few months, all the while maintaining our credo of quality first. 

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
You could certainly say there have been struggles along the way. As it turns out, starting a cannabis business is incredibly expensive. After spending months finding a location, designing our facility, paying rent on a building as we waited for building permits and going through the build-out, it became apparent that we would need additional funding from outside investors. We hadn’t anticipated this new challenge and spent several months talking with investors, many of whom didn’t share our vision. 

Fortuitously, our angel investors ended up coming from an unexpected source, a friend of Jamie’s wife, Mandy, was looking to invest money into a business. She heard we were looking for investors, so we set up a meeting. Mandy and her husband looked over our business plan, and after a few more sessions, took a leap of faith and decided to invest with us. Without them, we would not be where we are today! 

We built our facility for the most part from the ground up, and the one-year construction project was certainly a learning process. When we finally received our Cultivation and Marijuana-Infused Product Licenses in October of 2016, and as a result of all the delays, we were playing catch up. Prices had already started to decline because of oversaturation, and we found getting into stores around Denver was almost impossible with a new, unknown brand. With a shoe-string budget, we had little to spend on advertising compared to some of the mega-corporations who have seemingly unlimited budgets to promote their brands. 

We relied mostly on word-of-mouth and let the high quality of our product do much of our brand promotion. We gained a good following of medical patients in Colorado Springs, and a year later were able to apply and receive our recreational licenses. It was still an uphill battle trying to break into the Denver market, but we kept pushing, and finally, our quality stood out in the industry. Our name is gaining popularity with cannabis connoisseurs in Colorado.

Newt Brothers Artisanal – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Newt Brothers Artisanal has always been about quality, quality, and more quality. As they say in the industry, “Fire In – Fire Out.” You cannot start with a low quality flower and expect the end product to be anything but low quality. The foundation for growing the highest-quality premium cannabis flower starts with your cultivation facility and your cannabis genetics. We work tirelessly to perfect the facility design and procedures to provide the cleanest and most efficient facility in Colorado. For example, all employees shower immediately on entering the building and don medical scrubs before they start their shift. We have HEPA filters throughout the warehouse and run equipment and supplies through a sterilization process before they enter the production area. We do this to prevent any invasion by molds or insects into the growing environment and ensure our cannabis plants stay healthy and happy. Happy plants mean delighted customers.

Also, we are one of the few facilities in Colorado (and the country) to use LED lighting exclusively. LED’s, though initially much more expensive, dramatically cut our energy consumption by half and reduce our cooling requirements by up to sixty percent. We have implemented automated watering to feed our plants and recycle the condensate from our cooling units to capture over fifty gallons of water per day for reuse. We are proud to be a leader in sustainability in the cannabis industry. Our result is a cannabis flower which is incredibly clean and safe. 

Of course, you can have the best facility in the world, but if your plant genetics aren’t on point, then nothing you do will create a fantastic cannabis product. For us, breeding is a passion. The majority of the strains we are cultivating are in-house breeds. From these, we create and sell uniquely excellent products, and they are only available from Newt Brothers Artisanal. 

We are probably best known for our line of highly refined concentrates, which we call AXOLOTL (pronounced ACK-suh-LAH-tuhl). It is a premium cannabis concentrate with high potency, a full-terpene profile, clean taste, and smooth smoke. This product is filtered five times with an all-natural filtration process which removes unwanted lipids and moisture that are left behind with traditional extraction techniques. Our extraction artists work their magic to produce a full line of concentrates that include Live Resin, Live Badder, Wax, Shatter, and Live Caviar. We also create a high-end line of chocolate truffles featuring four amazing flavors (Caramel, Crème Brûlée, Peanut Butter, and Peppermint). These decadent chocolates are created using only the highest quality ingredients, including the world’s finest Belgium chocolate. We then hand paint these truffles to provide not just mouthwatering chocolates but also beautiful edible art. We recently received the First-Place award for our edibles in the Rooster Classic cannabis competition. 

We are proud and thankful that every day we have the opportunity to create connoisseur-quality cannabis products for the Colorado community. As Colorado natives, this makes us very happy! We are proud of the quality of our products but equally proud of the team that produces them. We have assembled a stellar team of cannabis professionals who share our dream and enjoy making it a reality. 

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
We don’t even want to think about it. We couldn’t start over as the past is gone. We’ve survived so much, worked so hard, learned, changed, and learned some more. We learn every day. Now, finally, we can see Newt Brothers Artisanal growing into the company we dreamed it could be!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.NewtBrothers.com
• Email: info@newtbrothers.com
• Instagram: newt_brothers_artisanal
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/NewtBrothersArtisanal

Image Credit:
In-house

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