Shine Papers Spins Gold into Growth

By Kennedy Weible

Is time spent smoking marijuana valuable? If you’re the parent of a teenager who should be doing algebra homework instead of getting high, the answer is probably no. If you’re the friend or family member of a cancer patient who finds pain relief and an increased appetite in cannabis, then the answer is probably yes. But these are emotional values. Is time spent smoking marijuana monetarily valuable? If it wasn’t, it can be now.

Shine Papers has found a way to put an actual value on the time you spend smoking, with its 24-karat gold rolling papers. Shine papers are about $4.60 apiece. For comparison, four packs of Raw rolling papers on Amazon cost $5.49. With 32 papers per pack that’s 128 rolling papers. That’s under five cents a paper. Shine papers cost 92 times what the average rolling paper costs. Would someone pay that? The answer, since the product was launched, has been a resounding “Yes!”

 

Whose Idea Was This?

Shine Papers emerged from another company called London Cut Cigars, which boasts a product called the Black Tie, a hand-rolled cigar wrapped in 24-karat edible gold. A single Black Tie costs $240 and as the name and price tag suggest, it’s special. “You cannot find a more luxurious, unique, or decadent cigar to punctuate the most stunning moments life has to offer,” the description reads on the London Cut website.

London Cut Cigars was co-founded by Dave B. That’s the extent of the name he gives, preferring not to use his last name. Dave said, “Our main business prior to Shine was cigar distribution and cigar manufacturing. We had come up with this concept of applying 24-karat gold to cigars for VIPs, for people in casinos, that type of market. It’s a very cool product and people really liked it but it was definitely priced in a way that was only accessible to a small market. So we were brainstorming and thinking, ‘What else could we do with this technology?’ It’s really cool, people really like it, they react so well to it, but we wanted to bring it into a bigger market with more mass appeal. And that’s when we came up with the idea of doing it with rolling papers.”

The product was born in March of 2013 and by April 20 of that same year, Shine Papers had a booth with product at the Cannabis Cup in Colorado and was on its way. “We very softly put it out into the world. We showed a couple people in person, we started a very basic Instagram account and it was very apparent very quickly that people desperately wanted the product,” Dave said.

The rolling papers, which retail for between $55 and $60 for a pack of 12, depending on where you purchase them, are made from edible gold backed with a light paper. According to Shine Paper’s website and anecdotal evidence, the gold papers burn pleasantly slow, leaving behind “gems,” the company’s parlance for the gold bits left in the ashtray.

“The gold is made from 24-karat edible gold, which is pure gold. Twenty-four karat gold, in any sense, is pure gold. When you get into lower karats, that means that it’s been cut with something. And while that cut product is safe to wear, it’s not safe to ingest,” Dave explained. “Edible gold is a matter of mineral purity.”

The Shine Papers website rather honestly admits there is no such thing as healthy smoking, but also references a Korean study that subjected rats to a six hour a day, five days a week, 90 days total experiment inhaling gold nano-particles. The experiment allegedly produced no statistically significant adverse effects. Also, as we learned in 11th grade chemistry and as a quick internet search reiterates, gold doesn’t actually burn. So is smoking gold healthy? Who knows? That’s not really the point, is it?

 

Tastemakers

Early on in the life of Shine Papers, a life that was already blessed by an enthusiastic response to the product, the company hit another windfall. Miley Cyrus requested Shine Papers as merchandise for her Bangerz tour.

“At the time we were working with someone on a marketing initiative and they just happened to be at a party where she was at,” Dave said. “He showed her the product and she loved it, she thought it was super cool. They exchanged information and she said, ‘I’m about to go out on tour and I want this product.’ So the next day we got a call from one of her 10 or 15 managers saying, ‘I’m supposed to call you about some gold rolling papers that Miley wants.’ And that was it. And that was huge for us. It gave us a ton of credibility.”

It didn’t hurt Miley either. Stories and blog posts about the insanity of the Bangerz tour almost always included a reference to the 24-karat gold rolling papers that were part of the available merchandise. Shine Papers seemed to perfectly encapsulate the gleeful hedonism of the Miley brand.

When Rolling Stone ran a piece on the eight most outrageous moments on the Bangerz tour, Shine’s gold rolling papers were number one. While Ms. Cyrus certainly would have gotten press without Shine, it was definitely a contributor to the circus, another piece of an extravagant cornucopia that included a giant hot dog and a tongue slide and helped Miley and the Bangerz tour make the media rounds. Dave noted, “It was a nice validation that we’re also bringing value to the brands we’re working with.”

Expanding its connection with artists, Shine Papers recently partnered with Tyga, the Grammy nominated rapper:

We wanted a really highly visible partnership with someone. This was always in our strategic plan for the company. Someone in marketing for Warner Brothers at the time gave us a list of people he could get in contact with. And Tyga was someone we had been attempting to get in contact with for a long time. He was one of the earliest people we identified. People know him as an artist but he’s also a very savvy business person. We thought he would be a great fit. And the person from Warner Brothers just happened to say, ‘I can get you in touch with Tyga.’ Within two hours I was on the phone with his manager. There was mutual interest from both sides and we closed the deal in November of [2014].

According to Dave, Tyga has not only invested $5 million into Shine Papers, he has also invested his time and energy:

This is a partnership. This is not just an endorsement or he’s a spokesperson. He is a partner. There’s a lot of collaboration that goes into the strategic vision of the company. How are we growing, what products are we working on, and he has the title of Creative Director of the company. He’s got some really fun projects that he’s working on for 2015 that we can’t talk about, but it will definitely bring Shine to a really large audience.

 

Selling the Dream

The first question that comes to a lot of people’s minds is “Who needs gold rolling papers?” The answer is nobody. The exact same answer to the question of who needs golf courses. Or night clubs, or ski resorts. Nobody needs these things. That’s why they’re expensive. That’s why they’re special.

Does time spent smoking marijuana have a monetary value? Yes, if you’re the kind of person willing to throw some money at it, and lots of us are. It’s why we toast special moments with expensive champagne, or give Rolexes as gifts to commemorate 20 years with the firm, or pay for bottle service on a bachelor party weekend. We can, and do, put a price tag on certain moments. This is the space Shine Papers fills for smokers, and since the special moments are the ones people tend to share, the rapid growth of the company can be partially attributed to its place in time, at the zenith of our sharing culture. Every time someone uses the product there’s almost a guaranteed mini-ad created in the form of a social media post. People want to show off.

“[Social media] has a massive impact on us,” Dave said. “We really built the brand from zero to a point where it was credible enough for an artist like Miley or Tyga to want to get involved with it because we focused so heavily on social media. The product itself is tailor made for it. It’s obviously visual. It’s something fun. People are more apt to use when they’re celebrating in some way. So you end up capturing all these moments in people’s lives; they’re going to a concert, they’re getting married. And those are the times when they want to share their experience with their audience. And Shine very quickly became a part of that. And we backed it up with a lot of in-depth research and analytics as far as what was working and what wasn’t.”

Shine Papers currently has a $5 million valuation and just got a big win in the intellectual property department. “We have the registered trademark now for the color gold on rolling papers, which is pretty significant. It protects the end product, ” Dave added.

The company is also looking for investment and amped to get bigger. “We grew 300% from 2013 to 2014 and we hope to do that again in 2015,” Dave said. And why shouldn’t it? There has always been a place for the Rolls Royces and Fendis of the world, the products that let one definitively say, “This is the top.”

“We are happy to be that singular experience when you want to stand out, when you want to show off a little bit,” Dave said. “That’s a really fun place for us to play with. Whether it’s something that you do on a regular basis, or something you do four times a year, there’s absolutely a market for being the best thing that there is.”

Guest Contributor designates a writer who is guest publishing content with MJINews.

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