Bottoming out?

By JIM K INNEy jkinney@repub.com

When NETA opened in November 2018 it was not only the first legal marijuana shop in Northampton, the first in the Pioneer Valley but one of just two in Massachusetts.

It was also one of only two shops on the entire East Coast and eager consumers lined up around the corner.

Those days are over.

“It is no secret that it is very crowded at this point,” said Matthew Yee, chief operating officer of competitor Enlite Cannabis Dispensary in Northampton. “The whole green rush is over at this point. Everybody knows it.”

That means after a generation of activism, a statewide referendum in 2016 and nearly five years of legal dispensaries, the business of weed is, well, a business.

“It turns into regular retail. Whoever does a better job wins,” Yee said.

But that means doing a better job in an industry facing competition from the black

Swab

CONTINUES FROM PAGE J16 a long way since 1994, the year McGinnes began her career at Super Brush. Back then, the company had approximately $1 million in sales, and its focus was manufacturing swabs for eye shadow.

As the cosmetics business moved overseas to China, Super Brush was forced to look for different industries to serve. Procter & Gamble was its last cosmetics customer, and its last order was in 2003.

The company turned to doing trade shows to find customers who might want swabs, McGinnes said.

“To this day we do 10 to 12 trade shows a year. It’s where we get a lot of work,” McGinnes said.

Today, its customers buy swabs in a wide range of sizes for the aerospace, industrial, medical, printing, electronics and firearm industries. Medical customers comprise 85% of the business, McGinnes said.

In the medical world, Super Brush makes swabs to use in wart medication kits and to clean endoscopes, among other uses. Other swabs are used to clean surgical and laboratory equipment, and there are even swabs that are used to clean a dog’s teeth.

The company also does work for NASA and supplies swabs to labs so they can clean test tubes without leaving traces of lint.

“Q-tips are what we tried to replace because they leave lint behind,” McGinnes explained.

Super Brush swabs are made of polyurethane foam.

Any scrap foam created is sold back to a foam converter which then resells it to the “cheap foam market” where it can be used on the back of a carpet, McGinnes said.

“All of the foam goes back to