How Founder of Edie Parker Flower, Brett Heyman, is Speaking to Cannabis Consumers in a Way No One Has Before
Founded in 2010 in New York City by Brett Heyman, Edie Parker, a luxury cannabis home and accessory brand, sprang from the founder’s love of mid-century style. Inspired by acrylic bags made in America in the 1950’s and 1960’s, Heyman collected the vintage handbags and researched their long-lost designers. When she could no longer find the clutches she coveted at vintage and second hand shops, she decided to remake them for a new generation.
Since the brand’s inception, Edie Parker has used the highest quality materials to create original pieces that speak for themselves. Produced exclusively in America and Italy by skilled artisans, Edie Parker crafts pretty things to make you happy.
They also have moved into the cannabis space more directly with Edie Parker Flower which offers fresh ways to entertain at home or light up a night out. We were lucky enough to interview their founder, Brett Heyman, and get her thoughts about the luxury cannabis space and learn more about how her brand is creating space for consumers who love high quality flower and high fashion accessories.
HH: What was your “a-ha” moment when you decided you wanted to start your brand, Edie Parker?
Brett Heyman: I had been working in fashion, I started working at Gucci right out of college and had always collected vintage. I grew up in L.A. and when I was in high school my mom used to drop me off at Melrose and Fairfax early on a Saturday morning. I would walk up and down Melrose for hours browsing and buying vintage. I was sort of obsessed.
When I moved to New York, my living spaces got smaller and smaller and I had to get rid of stuff but I always hung on to these acrylic clutches that I had bought in high school. Anytime I wore one out there was this real sense of nostalgia and recognition from people saying things like “my Grandma has a bag like that” or “that’s interesting, what is that?” I loved it.
Over the next several years, I accumulated all this fashion experience covering accessories for Dolce and Gabbana and Gucci. When I had my first child, who is named Edie Parker, I thought, “I’m always going to be a woman who works, but if I’m going to work so hard and be away from my child, I want to do it for something that feels more fulfilling and meaningful to me”.
I had a passion for anything acrylic or from the post war period in America. I combined that passion with the realization that no one in fashion was really focused on Evening as a category. I thought, “alright, I’m going to try this.”
HH: You mentioned that Edie Parker is named after your daughter, and I was wondering if that had any historical or familial significance to the brand’s ideology?
BH: None, basically. I just was exhausted from trying to name my child, (laughs) it was very hard with me, my husband, my parents and his parent’s all weighing in. Everyone had opinions. So, after I picked Edie Parker for my daughter, I thought, “well, I’m done for the year. I’m naming the business after her”. (laughs)
But obviously I love vintage, and the name Edie is very reminiscent of the 1960’s. Edie Beale, Edie Sedgwick, etc. So, I think it was evocative of what we were trying to do.
HH: The name fits so perfectly I have to agree. Can you tell us a little more about Flower by Edie Parker and how that came about?
BH: We had launched a few categories for Edie Parker, including a home collection in 2016, and were always thinking about other categories that we wanted to enter. We always wanted to go places where it didn’t feel saturated. We weren’t piling on or following, we were trying to do something new.
This idea of cannabis started coming up for us in 2018. We were cannabis users in the office and we liked cannabis and were excited about what was happening out West. So we started thinking about cannabis accessories as an extension of our home collection. We thought it would be really neat to have cannabis accessories that feel like Edie Parker. Which is to say, vintage-inspired, romantic, feminine, meant to be displayed, playful and meant to be gifted.
From there we started really working in earnest on an accessories collection. And as we were researching that, we went to a bunch of dispensaries and realized there was really nothing on the shelves, actual cannabis flower, that speaks to us as women or shares our ethos. So we thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we could have a line of flower?
Since we had been a brand for 9 years at that point, we thought people might feel comfortable buying cannabis from a brand that they know and trust. We felt like we had something different to say and could reach people who weren’t necessarily being spoken to. That’s really how it started.
Edie Parker Flower Pre-Rolls
“In the Spring of 2019 we launched a line of cannabis accessories nationwide and our first flower product in California, these Flower Pots that were basically these beautifully colored gram jars with gold foil. And with that we were off to the races.”
- Brett Heyman, Founder of Edie Parker
HH: That’s amazing. I tried your pre-rolls for the first time in Massachusetts, can you tell us a little about moving out into the Massachusetts cannabis market?
BH: Well, very candidly, California was really difficult for us. California is tricky to begin with, but we didn’t work with a distribution partner or a sales team, so we white labeled from an outdoor, organic sun-grown farm and then handled everything ourselves. Which in California is virtually impossible.
We started thinking it would be smart for us to focus East of the Mississippi, where we thought there was a lot of opportunity and a lot less noise. We hope to make our way back West when it feels a little less chaotic. So, yes, we work with a partner called Ascend Wellness Holdings and we make pre-rolls in MA and IL right now and we hope to be in New York as soon as we can. I think New York is going to change what the landscape of cannabis looks like.
HH: It’s gonna be beautiful, I can’t wait. We love your ashtrays and lighters! Do you have any personal favorites from your home line of cannabis accessories?
BH: I think of two different items on two different ends of the spectrum.
Obviously, the table top lighter and nesting ashtray is so beautiful. It’s what I would dream to find in a vintage shop. It just feels so kind of retro but so beautiful. It’s handmade in the U.S. and made to be passed on for generations, even if you don’t smoke. It’s a centerpiece for a table, it’s something you light a candle with. It’s a conversation piece. I love it. You can personalize it, but it’s also perfect on its own. I think it’s an aspirational gift or home purchase that just makes me happy every time I see it.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is our new heart glass pipes, which are one-hitters, and I love them because they are necklaces. We’re trying to pioneer new categories when we talk about the intersection of fashion and flower and that’s a perfect example to me. It’s an item that is meant to be worn and it’s really fun. It nods to these Lalique glass necklaces from the 90’s that I used to covet. So if you just love colored glass, it’s a necklace and you wear it and you never have to think about it again. But if you do love cannabis and you love a one-hitter, it's also a functional necklace. I think that’s so cool and I’m just jazzed about that kind of dual function item.
HH: What is next for Edie Parker and Flower by Edie Parker?
BH: Hopefully launching new cannabis SKUs. We developed a really beautiful disposable vape, so we’d like to launch that soon. And then just releasing a lot more accessories. We have some unbelievable glass in development. We have more ideas for a sort of hybrid fashion and function items.
We have a new handbag coming out that is more for the Flower girl, thinking about what the Flower girl wants out of a purse, how she wears a purse and where her cannabis goes in her purse. We see so many possibilities as more people are discovering cannabis. Cannabis is a lifestyle and we want to outfit it.
HH: We think it’s brilliant, and we love that you have a brick and mortar in New York on Bond St. in Soho where people can walk in and see things in person.
BH: Thank you. That space is really beautiful, it’s on a really charming street. It really is meant to be a place where you’d want to come and smoke and hang out. There are little touches everywhere and it paints a tangible picture of the brand.
HH: Is there any advice you would give to any new cannabis entrepreneurs?
BH: Don’t. (laughs) Look, it’s not hyperbolic when people say that cannabis is the wild wild west. It is crazy. It’s extremely exciting because a lot of us feel like cannabis is the future and there’s a lot of opportunity. There are also the health and wellness benefits and the incredible support in the community for social justice activism. But working in a field that is not federally legal and trying to launch in different states is extremely complicated and extremely capital intensive. Whatever cannabis looks like now and whatever cannabis brands exist now will shift over the next few years. The landscape will look very different.
So my advice is tread cautiously and honestly. I give this advice when I talk to people about fashion and entering fashion. I really feel like everyone should go get a job first, learn the business and learn what’s missing. Don’t just launch a business because you love cannabis. If you have something to say that’s different, or if you know the business and you know people, great. But you have to be very careful and thoughtful.
HH: Thank you so much for that. Is there anything coming up for your brand that you’d like to share with our readers?
BH: We recently launched this really cool 4/20 campaign and I’m really proud of it and excited about it. We were inspired by the old Virginia Slims ad with the most famous advertising tagline in advertising history “You’ve come a long way, Baby.” Even though they feel so retro and dated now, at the time when they launched in the 60’s, Phillip Morris was speaking to women in a way that nobody had ever spoken to women in advertising before.
They talked about feminist women, and women out of the house and professional women. So we interpreted that for the modern female cannabis customer and we shot these gorgeous high fashion pictures and they all say, “Weed’s come a long way, Baby.” They are just awesome and I’m very proud of them. There are out of home postings in New York, Chicago and Boston and there are billboards in LA and Chicago.
This is how we talk to consumers of cannabis. We think they’re really smart and want to see beautiful things. That’s what we aim to bring to the table.
HH: We can’t wait to see them!
Shop the full Edie Parker line of home accessories here, you should also check out Edie Parker Flower for some of the best accessories for flower girls. Be sure to follow them on Instagram for all the latest news about the brand.
