From a Shine to a Blaze

From

a Shine to a Blaze

an interview with Shine Rolling Papers

Shine papers is the inventor of the world's first ever 25K Gold rolling papers.

The Shine guys came from the high-end cigar market, where gold-wrapped cigars were certainly an attention grabber, but the cost and limited reach made them a special event accessory.

"We wanted to find a different way to apply the technology of getting the gold to stick to the item without coming off on everything. It's a very difficult material to work with. And so we landed on the rolling papers, and gave a couple of the first prototypes to an employee. ‘Try this one, see if this one will work’. The picture he sent back to me was etched into my brain forever. This works. This is this is a real thing."

After some time doing research and development, they landed on the perfect solution, and Shine Papers was born.

PHOTO CREDIT : Shine Papers

crown jewel, that's always going to be the thing that lets us open some unique doors. But ultimately, it is a product that people, not all but most, use in a celebratory way. And so it's a Friday night, it's a Saturday night, it's a birthday party, it's a wedding."

But in all of that R&D, they discovered one thing that really sets the product apart.

And it’s not just the gold.

While the gold certainly puts the product over the top, the quality begins with the papers themselves. Thus, two new products came forth: Pure Leaf, which is hand-selected precut broadleaf tobacco, and Blaze, which is the same paper that they use in the Shine papers, but without the gold.

"What PureLeaf does, and Blaze papers does as well, is give us an opportunity to interact with our fans Monday

through Thursday, and give them products that are very high quality, and still stay within our family of products."

While the success of the company is booming now, it's been a bit of an uphill battle.

"Retailers were a little bit skeptical of the product, but we knew we had something because online sales were right. And it was a

big credibility statement for them, getting them over the fear. Because this is an industry that you do see a lot of you see a lot of

product innovation and invention. But there's only a small percentage of it that actually sticks and is sustainable.

The biggest challenge was, at the beginning, overcoming the objections of people being very used to products failing in this industry, while also giving them extremely obvious reasons why we would fail. They thought the price was insane, and they were concerned about the health. Of course we are too, we don't want to hurt people."

So how did they get past the walls of skepticism? Well, they went to the people.

"We had to spend a lot of time engaging with customers online, in the comments, explaining it from a health perspective, here's what we're looking at the actual science behind how the paper works, you're not actually inhaling the gold, you're not actually burning it, because the temperature that your paper gets to when you're burning, it is nowhere near the temperature where

"It was very interesting to watch us start at that place where 70% of the comments were negative. And six months later, it was maybe down to 20%. And now, nobody says anything about either of those issues."

In the process of talking with the customers and potential customers directly, Shine built up a community of support. Even if gold papers aren't your scene, they’re clearly here to stay with a number of innovative products.

"People just trust the brand now. They know that it's going to be high quality, they know that it's going to be innovative in some aspect, and now they're a part of the tribe."

Pure Leaf and Blaze papers are an exciting addition to the repertoire, and they're already selling fast around the world.