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Fernway<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n Fernway says it became the No. 1 vape brand in Massachusetts<\/a> 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 \u201cclimbing really fast\u201d in its newest market\u2014Missouri\u2014says co-founder and chief marketing officer Liam O\u2019Brien. Next up are Arizona in December and Pennsylvania in the spring. \u201cIt has been a real rocket ship ride,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n What fueled that ride wasn\u2019t doing more\u2014it was doing one thing, obsessively well.<\/p>\n Fernway started with four friends: O\u2019Brien, CEO Christopher \u201cKit\u201d Gallant, CFO David Van Vlierbergen and COO Kevin Wu. O\u2019Brien went to high school with two of them and roomed with the third in college for three years. \u201cWe shared a room and we still decided that we wanted to go into business together,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In 2017, all four were working in other fields, with O\u2019Brien in marketing, Van Vlierbergen at a hedge fund, Gallant as an attorney and Wu as a management consultant. \u201cWe weren\u2019t unhappy. We weren\u2019t uncomfortable in our roles, but there was something missing,\u201d O\u2019Brien says. \u201cWe were working for other people. We didn\u2019t have the chance to build something for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Massachusetts voters had legalized adult-use cannabis in 2016<\/a>, and the market was preparing to open. In March 2018, the friends attended NECANN<\/a>, 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\u2019t ship its first product until February 2021.<\/p>\n The founders built Fernway around what they wanted as recreational consumers. To them, cannabis \u201cmakes the good life even better,\u201d O\u2019Brien says. \u201cIt makes the things that you love even more enjoyable, whether that\u2019s your favorite food, hanging out with your favorite people, seeing a gorgeous sunset, listening to your favorite album.\u201d<\/p>\n They also saw a problem to fix.<\/p>\n Early legal-market vapes often cost a premium but tasted off, clogged or came in cheap hardware, O\u2019Brien recalls. So Fernway started from scratch, custom designing its hardware, packaging and flavor blends. \u201cWe\u2019re somewhat obsessive perfectionists when it comes to product and when it comes to quality,\u201d he says. That standard is behind the brand\u2019s tagline, \u201cYou deserve the best,\u201d and the slight price premium that comes with it. \u201cWe never wanted to engage in this sort of race to the bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n The same thinking shaped Fernway\u2019s recycling program<\/a>. Launched in 2022 alongside its rechargeable all-in-one Traveler<\/a>, 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\u2019Brien shares, \u201cbecause they know deep down that it\u2019s not actually disposable.\u201d<\/p>\n Perfectionism doesn\u2019t mean Fernway takes itself too seriously. One April Fools\u2019 Day, the brand released the Pickle Traveler Pro<\/a>, timed so fans would assume it was a prank. It was real, and it became one of Fernway\u2019s most successful limited releases. \u201cIt\u2019s got this gorgeous dill note to it,\u201d O\u2019Brien says, adding that getting attention alone was never enough to justify it. \u201cIt\u2019s also actually got to taste good. That has always been our guardrail.\u201d<\/p>\n Limited drops like the pickle vape reflect what O\u2019Brien sees in Fernway\u2019s customers. \u201cThe cannabis consumer both seeks consistency and they crave novelty,\u201d he says. As for whether the pickle returns: \u201cI\u2019m not going to spoil anything, but I think it\u2019s probably going to come back again next year.\u201d<\/p>\n Fernway is deliberately lean. It doesn\u2019t run dispensaries<\/a>, cultivate or extract. Instead, it focuses on product development, hardware<\/a>, formulation, packaging, sales, marketing and distribution.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t keep them as reliably stocked as its vapes, so it stepped back. \u201cI think that has been one of the best decisions that we ever made,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cDoing one thing well versus trying to do everything is one of the things that a lot of successful cannabis operators have in common.\u201d<\/p>\n Fernway made a similar call on hemp. At Revelry NYC<\/a> in September, Conor Denehan, the company\u2019s Northeast VP of sales, told Cannabis Now that Fernway once considered entering the hemp market and chose instead to focus on licensed cannabis.<\/p>\n O\u2019Brien doesn\u2019t rule out new formats down the road, as long as they meet the same bar. \u201cIf 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,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n For all its growth, Fernway still flies under the radar, and O\u2019Brien is fine with that. In a young industry, he said, even great brands face a discoverability gap: \u201cYou can be the No. 1 vape in New York and not necessarily be a household name.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019Brien says retailers who take on the brand tell Fernway that customers keep coming back and asking for it. \u201cThat type of loyalty is not something that you can buy. You have to work it.\u201d<\/p>\n For its first five years, Fernway sold only east of the Mississippi. That\u2019s already changing.<\/p>\n Missouri put Fernway across the river this summer, and Arizona is next. One thing that excites O\u2019Brien about that market is how much its vape category has grown. Nationally, he says, the category has nearly doubled since Fernway launched.<\/p>\n The brand\u2019s home market faces a test first. On Nov. 3, Massachusetts voters will decide Question 8<\/a>, 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\u2019t stay local. \u201cIf they try to do it there, they\u2019re going to try to go to other markets as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n 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\u2019Brien put it, \u201cWe\u2019re honestly having too much fun with vape to be able to branch out at this stage.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Five States and Heading West: Fernway<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":598,"featured_media":87388,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,7827,99,20127,20164,12664],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87387"}],"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\/598"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87389,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87387\/revisions\/87389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Four Friends, Something Missing<\/h2>\n
<\/a>
\u201cYou Deserve the Best\u201d<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Recycling-Instagram-1-scaled-1-1024x1024-1.jpg\")
<\/a>One Thing, Done Well <\/h2>\n
![\"Live](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/blogs_posts-DSC07552-1024x792-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Passed Along by Friends<\/h2>\n
![\"Friends](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/553A9257-2-1024x1024-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Fernway Heads West<\/h2>\n
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\nRead More: Five States and Heading West: Fernway<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"