THE WIZARDS OF MOTIF LABS

Mario Naric, the 30-year-old CEO of Motif Labs, understands that the consumer comes first when realizing gaps in the market. A chemical engineer who built his own lab, Naric presides over the three aforementioned brands and, ripping this spring, Boondocks—a lifestyle brand focused on the power of identity and purpose, with adventure, sustainability and portability as key pillars to its ethos. On a tour of his facility outside London, Ontario, a hub of activity from where he ships 0.5-million products each month, Naric explained how he came to produce the oil now in roughly 35% of vapes in this country.

“A product for people who don’t take themselves too seriously, who like to have a good time, that doesn’t chintz out on hardware or potency was missing in the market,” says Naric, who started his company at 25 and bet early, after doing research in the US, that extraction was missing in legal Canadian weed. “That BOXHOT release last fall created all this momentum and now, when everyone is pulling back, we’re doubling down. It’s a great time to be in cannabis for people who know their consumer—we create stuff that people want to buy.” Aside from producing Canada’s most exciting and innovative vapes, Motif is also a leading producer of Hydrocarbon extracts, minor cannabinoids and infused prerolls. They are now working with a variety of co-manufacturers to expand their brands into other key categories as well. Naric has a vision to build a powerhouse of brands that addresses a wide variety of market needs. The latest release in their leading brand arsenal will be Boondocks, which is dropping a sustainably designed set of all-in-one vapes, live-resin-infused blunts and ready-to-roll milled flower products with a focus on beautifully designed products, great flavours and a set of hardware and packaging that are manufactured sustainably. “Motif’s secret is that the people who run the place, and who make the product decisions, are deeply entrenched in the industry and passionate about exciting the consumer. We make products we, and our friends, want to consume, which is why our products resonate. This is not just a business built to make a quick buck. Instead, this is a group of people coming together to leverage creativity, science and consumer insights.”

Meanwhile, while still a leading white labeler and B2B supplier in Canada, Naric found gaps in marketplace. Part of the error in early weed was that senior leaders in our industry didn’t know their product. Naric represents a new generation of cannabis executives making products in feet moved to 40,000 square feet last year and will hit 125,000 square feet this fall. Doom and gloom in the marketplace of the industry we love? Not inside the ripping universe that is Motif Labs.

Canada with purpose. Naric represents a new generation of cannabis executives making products in Canada with soul.

“We’re expanding every single part of our business, and that means no less than doubling everything. Products like the BOXHOT infused prerolls could see as much as five times the growth,” says Naric, before joining KIND at his local dispensary, where we bought a big box of branded products to bring back to our Toronto office to share. With two years of profitability and 7000 kg of cannabis being extracted each month, Naric and his team at Motif Labs seem to be living the dream. “We create great products we can sell at scale and deliver them at a great price while not taking ourselves too seriously,” Naric says, with a smile. “We didn’t build Motif on speculation and we weren’t first to market, but we did remember that cannabis was supposed to be fun.”

“Motif works because we are the consumer and when we have an idea, we have to bring it to market because nobody else will,” says Naric, whose marketplace evolution will no doubt be sped along this spring by products such as 95% THC vapes and diamond-infused blunts with over 50% THC. “Our team is super excited about our products and it’s the team and our approach that’s behind our meteoric rise.”

The meteoric rise, as fast as it’s been, is still in its infancy and, seeing the lab through Naric’s eyes, it’s hard not to be caught up by the Motif Labs momentum. What started with 11,000 square