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A poster of a Lamborghini on his childhood wall says all you need to know about Brett Stevens. The man knows\u00a0 what he wants and gets it done. The CEO and co-founder of\u00a0Fohse, the white-hot lighting company that has wowed the cannabis industry and made Stevens nothing short of a rock star, drove up to his office on his day off in a $550,000 silver Lamborghini with his girlfriend. Somehow pulling off the look consisting of turquoise shorts, brown sandals and black Fohse T-shirt, the not-quite-yet-40-year-old isn\u2019t resting on any laurels. Despite his undeniable success at Fohse, he still puts in the time and clearly wants more.<\/p>\n
Stevens came into an industry that was pre-set and showed how it could be done differently with best-in-class standards and the results are self-evident: Cannabis growers seemingly cannot get enough of Fohse lighting for cultivation.<\/p>\n
Calling itself the future of horticultural science and engineering, Fohse is the leading manufacturer of high-performance LED grow lights that increase productivity from 30 to 60 percent. And Stevens isn\u2019t stopping at cannabis. He and his team are developing technology that he expects to boost food production around the world. That, of course, would be a global game changer.<\/p>\n
Born on a military base, the son of a US Marine, the Stevens family, which consisted of nine siblings, moved from the sunshine of San Diego to an Iowa farm when he was ten. They raised pigs, cows, horses, ponies, chickens and grew wheat, hay and leased land for soybean production. Stevens grew up with a strong work ethic crystalized by his ritual of getting up at 5am during his middle school and high school years to clean pig pens and any number of farm chores. In the summer months, Stevens worked in the fields.<\/p>\n
Stevens\u2019 roots as an entrepreneur started early and at 21 he opened a club and soon bought another. He eventually sold them and used the profit to pursue his passion to fight mixed martial arts. It took an injury and finding a fighter to take his place in Ireland where he made a couple of thousand dollars before he realized that he could manage fighters (and not get beaten up in the process). It was his first multimillion-dollar company he started in his early 20s which he again sold in 2007.<\/p>\n
Stevens went back to fighting, managing fighters and doing other ventures before seeing another business opportunity a decade ago to sell makeup at music festivals under the brand Plur.<\/p>\n All the requisite late nights, the heavy partying and constant traveling by bus across the county took a heavy toll on Stevens. He moved to Las Vegas in 2014 and pressed \u201cpause\u201d to all of the eclectic madness when some friends got busted for weed and went to prison. With the money he made from his makeup business, Stevens contemplated his next move.<\/p>\n \u201cWe always wanted to get into cannabis,\u201d Stevens tells me as we sit in his Las Vegas office. \u201cWe\u2019ve been working in the cannabis industry essentially while we were doing other things, and that\u2019s why they got arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2015, Stevens launched Fohse. It came about from investing in a local motorcycle shop when he met someone in the cannabis industry seeking a medical license in Nevada. Stevens invested $1 million to build an indoor cultivation facility only to discover that Ben Arnet, an acquaintance of mutual friends, invested his money too. They would eventually hook up to launch Fohse.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew right away that we\u2019re pumping all the AC in the room just to cool the lights down and why don\u2019t we just run an LED light,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cLEDs are the future, but there were only two or three companies making them at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n When they first tried the LED lights, which didn\u2019t work to their satisfaction, the business partners looked for a solution. They turned to an inventor friend of Arnet in Minnesota for a light that was high power, low energy consumption and would run cool below 100 degrees\u2014what was considered a unicorn and took two years to come up with a fixture in 2017. At the time, everyone was running into the market with a cheap light that fell apart, but Stevens said they wanted to bring the industry something that would create value.<\/p>\n \u201cWe both divested from everything we had,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cWe sold our cars and lived in a house where we worked together. It took millions of dollars to get this company off the ground, and the only people putting money in it were Ben and me. We put $2.6\u00a0million into the company before we even saw\u00a0a dollar back. We put all of our chips in and\u00a0then sat there and waited.\u201d<\/p>\n And what a wait it was.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew we were coming in with something that was market disrupting, and we knew we were coming to the market with the most high-end and premium fixture in the world,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cWe put a ton of time and money into testing everything. It\u2019s a 1,500-watt light that nobody had anything like in the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n Fohse\u2019s first sale in 2017 was a $21 million contract in Canada spread out over four years. Overall, the company delivered $14 million in lights in 2018, $28 million in 2020, $40 million in 2020 and $50 million in 2021. The company is on track to do more than $70 million in 2022 and could soon approach $100 million, Stevens said.<\/p>\n Today, Fohse works with many large cannabis companies, including those owned by celebrities\u2014NFL player Calvin Johnson, actor Jim Belushi, boxing champion Mike Tyson, singer Toby Keith, actors Cheech and Chong and many others. All of Fohse\u2019s success came after the founders turned down a $40 million check for the company before it sold one light. The duo wanted to run the company and weren\u2019t in it for that amount of money, Stevens said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason why our light is so popular is because it does what it says it\u2019s going to do,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cIt actually grows more products than our clients did before. It\u2019s reliable, and it\u2019s built like a tank. It\u2019s not like a cheap private label, but this light has been drawn from the ground up by guys who are insanely passionate about it. We\u2019re not the most profitable company. We could build our projects cheaper and make way better margins, but we don\u2019t want to. We want to make the best product in the world and make sure every single time we hang our lights, people come back and say \u2018those are the best lights we ever hung. That was the best investment we ever made.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n With an eye towards philanthropy, Stevens says Fohse has donated to groups advocating for legalization, but the focus remains on The Last Prisoner Project, an organization dedicated to cannabis criminal reform. The company is also concerned with the planet as it strives to leave a low- or no-carbon footprint in its wake. Fohse donates a portion of the its profits to pro-Earth charities.<\/p>\n And speaking of charitable work, Stevens says Fohse is prepared to help in a more significant way. \u201cWe want to go beyond cannabis and feed countries,\u201d he says. \u201cI want to grow kale, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers and every microgreen ever made and everything that grows. I want to build specific lights to grow every single specific plant in a way that\u2019s most beneficial to that plant and most efficiently like we\u2019ve done with cannabis. We\u2019re in an organic farm in Nevada, and we\u2019re crushing it right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Stevens was born to be an entrepreneur given his start at an early age and says he\u2019s confident his 18-year-old self would definitely approve of what he\u2019s accomplished.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019d say I knew you were going to do it,\u201d\u00a0he says with a smile. \u201cI had a picture of a Lamborghini, and I wanted it from the time I was in fourth grade. From the time I was little, I knew there were things I wanted to do. We struggled growing up. My parents had a lot of kids so for me as the oldest male, I always wanted to help my family. My dad was an entrepreneur. He was a very smart man. He started a magazine company and sold that. I saw him work on the farm and work so hard. I wanted to be the 2.0 version of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Stevens said he\u2014and Fohse\u2014aren\u2019t done yet, not even close. Fohse will always have its headquarters in Las Vegas, \u00a0he says, but they\u2019re looking at branching out to Florida, and\u00a0 he\u2019s personally considering relocating to Europe next year. Stevens also wants to see Fohse reach $200 million revenue a year with a $1 billion exit strategy. He has other goals, too,\u00a0 like his desire to get married.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a lot of things that I\u2019m not ready to say. I have a lot of things I want to do that are big\u2014big.\u201d <\/p>\n Stevens is sitting near the top of the cannabis hill and shows no signs of\u00a0coming down. Brett Stevens is lighting up every step of the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n This story was originally published in the\u00a0print edition<\/a>\u00a0of Cannabis Now.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Brett Stevens Lights It Up<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A poster of a Lamborghini on his childhood wall says all you need to know about Brett Stevens. The man knows\u00a0 what he wants and gets it done. The CEO and co-founder of\u00a0Fohse, the white-hot lighting company that has wowed the cannabis industry and made Stevens nothing short of aContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":542,"featured_media":60093,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16734,15446,15447,50,5,15303,85,16761,228,3501,3751,15450],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60094,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60092\/revisions\/60094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabisnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Brett-Stevens-Fohse.jpg\")
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