Recreational cannabis was in addition illegal when Nancy Whiteman left her high-paying consulting job to cook edibles in Boulder, Colorado, in 2010.
Four years newer, the state legalized retail sales of marijuana, and Whiteman’s gamble paid off. The 64-year-old founder of edible cannabis throng Wana is now one of the richest self-made women in the U.S., with a net worth of $225 million, according to Forbes.
“I like to say I went from the most well-known industry to the least traditional industry,” Whiteman told CNBC Make It in 2018. “I wanted a business where I could physique value, and it didn’t depend on me. I also love to cook.”
Much of Whiteman’s fortune comes from selling Wana for $350 million in 2021 to Canopy Increase, an Ontario, Canada-based cannabis company. She owned 100% of the company at the time of the acquisition — and was paid an initial installment of $297.5 million in up-front sell, according to the sale announcement.
Whiteman remains CEO of Wana today. It all started with the father of her daughter’s friend, who dropped signals in conversation that he worked in a somewhat illicit industry, Forbes reported earlier this month.
That “got my entire attention,” Whiteman told Forbes.
Initially, Whiteman and her then-husband, John Whiteman, sure to team up with the friend’s father and experiment together in a local commercial kitchen. Within a year, the couple obvious to go it alone, investing between $50,000 and $60,000 of their own money to start Wana from their kitchen.
Without front funding, Wana conducted market research by visiting dispensaries to see what was popular, and the couple often had to cover payroll with their in the flesh cash, Whiteman said. She also picked up occasional marketing consulting jobs to make ends meet, she now foretells CNBC Make It.
She and John got divorced at the end of 2011, but decided to remain business partners. Colorado legalized off-the-shelf cannabis sales for dispensaries in 2014, and as nationwide concern in edibles grew, so did Wana’s annual revenue.
By 2017, it had climbed to $14.5 million — up from just $100,000 in its basic year, Whiteman told CNBC Make It in 2018. A year later, Whiteman bought John’s remaining partitions in the company.
Edibles are becoming increasingly popular, Whiteman said. They now represent 12% of the cannabis industry, Seattle-based text company Headset found last year.
Courtesy of Wana
In the 13 years since Wana launched, 23 structures and Washington D.C. have legalized recreational cannabis use, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Last year, the U.S. cannabis effort was valued at $13.2 billion, according to Grand View Research. Edibles make up 12% of that market, Seattle-based evidence company Headset found last year.
Some experts warn the booming growth is slowing, partially because myriad people are trying to create and sell their own edibles. U.S. cannabis sales skyrocketed during the early days of the pandemic, but receipts stalled and then dropped in 2022.
That’s a challenge for Wana, which is now leaving California — the U.S.’s largest cannabis market — and is in the proceeding of exiting Oregon.
“We happened to enter the market just as wholesale pricing started to really plummet,” Whiteman apprised Forbes. “We ended up in an unenviable position of being a very expensive product in a market that was experiencing serve guerdon compression.”
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