Fernway takes its name from fernweh, a German word for the longing for faraway places. Five years after its first vapes landed on dispensary shelves in Massachusetts, the brand is living up to it.
Fernway says it became the No. 1 vape brand in Massachusetts by the end of 2021, its first year on the market, then claimed the top spot in New Jersey and, this summer, New York. It holds the No. 3 spot in Illinois, according to the company, and is already “climbing really fast” in its newest market—Missouri—says co-founder and chief marketing officer Liam O’Brien. Next up are Arizona in December and Pennsylvania in the spring. “It has been a real rocket ship ride,” he says.
What fueled that ride wasn’t doing more—it was doing one thing, obsessively well.
Four Friends, Something Missing
Fernway started with four friends: O’Brien, CEO Christopher “Kit” Gallant, CFO David Van Vlierbergen and COO Kevin Wu. O’Brien went to high school with two of them and roomed with the third in college for three years. “We shared a room and we still decided that we wanted to go into business together,” he says.
In 2017, all four were working in other fields, with O’Brien in marketing, Van Vlierbergen at a hedge fund, Gallant as an attorney and Wu as a management consultant. “We weren’t unhappy. We weren’t uncomfortable in our roles, but there was something missing,” O’Brien says. “We were working for other people. We didn’t have the chance to build something for ourselves.”
Massachusetts voters had legalized adult-use cannabis in 2016, and the market was preparing to open. In March 2018, the friends attended NECANN, a Massachusetts cannabis convention, and committed to building their own vape brand. Then came the waiting that every cannabis startup knows. Fernway, now based in Northampton, Mass., didn’t ship its first product until February 2021.
“You Deserve the Best”
The founders built Fernway around what they wanted as recreational consumers. To them, cannabis “makes the good life even better,” O’Brien says. “It makes the things that you love even more enjoyable, whether that’s your favorite food, hanging out with your favorite people, seeing a gorgeous sunset, listening to your favorite album.”
They also saw a problem to fix.
Early legal-market vapes often cost a premium but tasted off, clogged or came in cheap hardware, O’Brien recalls. So Fernway started from scratch, custom designing its hardware, packaging and flavor blends. “We’re somewhat obsessive perfectionists when it comes to product and when it comes to quality,” he says. That standard is behind the brand’s tagline, “You deserve the best,” and the slight price premium that comes with it. “We never wanted to engage in this sort of race to the bottom.”
The same thinking shaped Fernway’s recycling program. Launched in 2022 alongside its rechargeable all-in-one Traveler, the program is available in every state where Fernway sells. Customers drop finished vapes in lockboxes at participating dispensaries, and a specialized recycler reclaims the lithium, cobalt, plastic and steel. Where state rules allow, customers also get a discount. People feel strange throwing away a full battery, O’Brien shares, “because they know deep down that it’s not actually disposable.”
Perfectionism doesn’t mean Fernway takes itself too seriously. One April Fools’ Day, the brand released the Pickle Traveler Pro, timed so fans would assume it was a prank. It was real, and it became one of Fernway’s most successful limited releases. “It’s got this gorgeous dill note to it,” O’Brien says, adding that getting attention alone was never enough to justify it. “It’s also actually got to taste good. That has always been our guardrail.”
Limited drops like the pickle vape reflect what O’Brien sees in Fernway’s customers. “The cannabis consumer both seeks consistency and they crave novelty,” he says. As for whether the pickle returns: “I’m not going to spoil anything, but I think it’s probably going to come back again next year.”
One Thing, Done Well
Fernway is deliberately lean. It doesn’t run dispensaries, cultivate or extract. Instead, it focuses on product development, hardware, formulation, packaging, sales, marketing and distribution.
That focus was tested in 2023, when Fernway launched pre-rolls infused with its best-selling flavors in Massachusetts and New Jersey. They sold well, but without a vertically integrated supply chain, pre-rolls were harder to scale and less profitable than expected. Fernway couldn’t keep them as reliably stocked as its vapes, so it stepped back. “I think that has been one of the best decisions that we ever made,” O’Brien said. “Doing one thing well versus trying to do everything is one of the things that a lot of successful cannabis operators have in common.”
Fernway made a similar call on hemp. At Revelry NYC in September, Conor Denehan, the company’s Northeast VP of sales, told Cannabis Now that Fernway once considered entering the hemp market and chose instead to focus on licensed cannabis.
O’Brien doesn’t rule out new formats down the road, as long as they meet the same bar. “If there was an opportunity to expand in another medium and still offer that premium experience and keep that promise to customers, I think we would pursue it,” he says.
Passed Along by Friends
For all its growth, Fernway still flies under the radar, and O’Brien is fine with that. In a young industry, he said, even great brands face a discoverability gap: “You can be the No. 1 vape in New York and not necessarily be a household name.”
What closes that gap, in his view, is word of mouth: budtenders who recommend Fernway, and customers who pass the name along when a friend asks what to buy. O’Brien says retailers who take on the brand tell Fernway that customers keep coming back and asking for it. “That type of loyalty is not something that you can buy. You have to work it.”
Fernway Heads West
For its first five years, Fernway sold only east of the Mississippi. That’s already changing.
Missouri put Fernway across the river this summer, and Arizona is next. One thing that excites O’Brien about that market is how much its vape category has grown. Nationally, he says, the category has nearly doubled since Fernway launched.
The brand’s home market faces a test first. On Nov. 3, Massachusetts voters will decide Question 8, which would end adult-use cannabis sales in the state starting in 2028, while keeping medical sales legal. At Revelry, Denehan warned that a repeal there wouldn’t stay local. “If they try to do it there, they’re going to try to go to other markets as well,” he said.
For now, Fernway is staying the course: one category, built to its own standard and carried by the customers who keep recommending it. As O’Brien put it, “We’re honestly having too much fun with vape to be able to branch out at this stage.”
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