Northern Colorado Hemp Company Looks to Shake Up Area CBD Pricing

Co-founders of Fort Collins-based Plants Over Pills Colorado Cat and Matt Gibson offer low-cost, high-strength products to make their hemp products more accessible to customers with lower incomes.

An increase in hemp production has flooded supply lines and driven down the raw materials’ cost as CBD has gained more and more popularity. Many companies have allowed profit margins to grow, while Cat and Matt have seen the drop in production costs as a way for them to help those in need who earn less.

“More and more people are using CBD as a medicine, and it’s too expensive for most people to use every day,” said Matt Gibson. “You shouldn’t be locked out of something that really works because of your income,” Matt said.

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration prohibits hemp companies from making specific claims regarding the medical efficacy of CBD or other cannabinoids, countless consumers nationwide have come to rely on cannabinoids for relief from pain, anxiety, sleeplessness, and other ailments. Many prescription medications designed to treat those same conditions carry the potential for addiction or death.

It was the Gibsons’ first-hand experience with prescription painkillers that drove them to found their company. 

“Catherine’s dad died of a doctor-prescribed pain medication overdose opiates,” said Matt. “We wish those people had an opportunity to use these hemp cannabinoid products instead of opiates,” Matt said.

They knew their effort would be for naught if their products weren’t strong enough to be effective. Though low-cost CBD and hemp products are widely accessible, most contain vanishingly small concentrations of cannabinoids, and others contain isolates prone to damage by harsh or questionable extraction techniques.

Working with botanists, laboratory specialists, and other experts in the cannabis industry, the Gibsons developed high-strength CBD, CBG, and CBN products that are pure and undamaged.

“Most people didn’t have the time to talk to us at the level that we could afford to come in at,” Matt said. “So we talked to a couple of guys that we were introduced to by a friend—kind of hippie guys—and they gave us smaller amounts that would allow us to enter the industry on a small budget,” Matt said.

It was the desire to learn every part of the hemp production process that led Cat and Matt to start growing their own hemp in 2020 and to purchase their own hemp oil extractor. With full vertical control over their products, which they formulate, bottle, and label, they would be better equipped to control quality and pricing.

While they do have bigger aspirations for P.O.P. Colorado, right now, their focus is on local expansion. As the epicenter of hemp science and production, Northern Colorado seems to be the ideal place to gain a foothold.

“I think if we can win over the educated, hemp-savvy customers of Northern Colorado, then we can do it anyplace,” Matt said. “We have one of the most educated markets because we’ve been at the forefront of cannabis production as a state, and this is an agricultural area of Colorado,” said Matt.

For more information regarding POP Colorado, visit https://popcolorado.com.