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An Interview with Brett Stevens, CEO of Fohse Inc. By Stephanie Shehan OHSE “Future of Horticultural Science and Engineering,” based in Las Vegas Nevada is a oneof-a-kind lighting technology company currently focused on set-ups within the cannabis industry. After investing in a local cultivation, the FOHSE team quickly realized the need for high quality light options that could increase yields while decreasing costs. Recently, I had the chance to sit down with the company’s CEO, Brett Stevens to discuss what they are working on here in Nevada.
STEPHANIE SHEHAN: You and your team came to Nevada from Minneapolis, MN. Why Las Vegas? BRETT STEVENS: We originally came to Las Vegas because we had invested in a local cannabis cultivation. SS: Were you actually working at the cultivation or were you purely an investor? And, was that when you decided to move into lighting and start FOHSE? BS: I am hands on in whatever ventures I invest in. Our team came here and not only invested in a cultivation but also worked within it. I insisted on being on the ground within the grow assisting with and assessing what we were doing. We are passionate about the cannabis industry and had been discussing entering it for quite a while. Working within the cultivation setting, we figured out quickly that the lighting just didn’t make sense. The excess of heat being put out by the existing lights and the amount of air conditioning that needed to be pumped through to cool just didn’t seem like the best way to operate. The catalyst came when we froze all of our air conditioning condensers because they were being run non-stop. It was then that we knew we had to come up with a better solution. FOHSE was born six years ago, purely out of necessity. We knew there needed to be a high power LED option within the market. Our CTO and Co-Founder Alex Gerard is an engineer that specialized in lasers and LED for over a decade while working with massive companies like Medtronic and Boston Scientific, as well as with US military contracts. All the other competitors were racing to the bottom, they were looking for shortcuts and looking to make the cheapest product possible with the largest margins. We, on the other hand asked ourselves, how do we maximize a grower's productivity per square foot? The answer to that was that we had to make the best product possible. No shortcuts. We did a huge amount of research before developing our products. We knew the importance of value and did not want to bring anything to market that did not have value. Our main goal was to be able to offer lights that were better than anything out there. Allowing our customers to waste their money was not an option for us. Two years and a vast amount of money went into fully understanding lighting and developing the products we offer. Currently, we hold 14 different patents and we own all of the intellectual property on our lights.
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Photo By Keene Dadian
SS: What sets your lighting company and methods apart from others? BS: We have the most powerful, and most efficient LED on the market. Over the last five years we have consistently out grown every other competitor on the market. We design and engineer all in-house, we didn’t just find a product online and private label it. We also draw, design and create all of our fixtures in-house. We pride ourselves on our reliability, we operate on less than a 1% failure rate. SS: Tell us about your team. BS: We are a family run company. Our team is very passionate. Our core team has worked together for over a decade through multiple different ventures. We currently have 20 employees. We have specialists in every field, engineering, automation, construction, cultivation, and marketing. SS: What is the importance of a good lighting system for cannabis cultivation? BS: Lighting is the capital decision when designing a cultivation facility. All of the metrics of a facility are built around the lights. From HVAC and soil to the amount of nutrients the plants are going to take in, the heavier amount of light the plants are going to take in, the more the plants are going to need food and water. Our lights are extremely powerful and when light intensity is increased, plants soak in more water and then aspirate more. Therefore, after installation, our clients typically need to amp up their de-humidification processes to accommodate higher amounts of humidity. Lighting choices within cannabis cultivations determine which way the grow is going to go. The decision begins with whether to use HPS, HID or LED lights. Once that is determined, if LEDs are chosen, the question becomes, Light Intensity LED or Heavy Intensity LED. Once that decision is made, a cultivation must consider their own grow methodology and then they will be able to choose the lighting system that will work. SS: Do you work with both large scale and small scale cultivators? What about home growers? BS: We do. For licensed cultivations, our team will come in and work with the cultivation to develop a lighting system that fits their needs. Smaller growers and home growers can purchase FOHSE lights locally from Grow Generation. SS: You recently installed lighting at Green Life Productions in Pahrump. What was the biggest challenge you saw at the Green Life facility? And, take us through the process of installing there. BS: Green Life just didn’t have enough room for the product they were going to grow once the new lights were installed. Once we completed the retrofit of lights there, they increased their bottom line by up to 100% in some rooms. They more than doubled their yield in some rooms. At the Green Life facility, Steve had been using low quality fixtures. He went to our A3i lights which are likely the most powerful grow lights on the market. Going from the low quality he had to our lights enabled the large increase in yield. This is not typical. Most grows that we are installing in are seeing
