Meet Riley Brain, Founder of Wandering Bud, A Former School Teacher Who Has Built a Beautiful Line of Handmade Ceramic Smoking Accessories.

Today we are interviewing Riley Brain, founder of Wandering Bud, a ceramic design and production studio that focuses on bringing highly aesthetic smokeware into the home. Made by hand for the design-conscious cannabis consumer, their ceramic wares compliment home decor, hit like a dream and clean easily. In 2018, Riley left her job as a public school teacher to follow her passions of art and design to scale her line of handmade slip cast ceramic pipes, bong, and smoking accessories. Today, she employs an all-female team of artists and manages an often-viral TikTok with hundreds of thousands of followers and she does all this while living with chronic illness. We got to speak to Riley about how she scaled her brand, her plans for the future and the obstacles of marketing a cannabis adjacent accessory shop.

High Herstory: What was your “a-ha” moment when you both decided you wanted to start your company Wandering Bud?

Riley Brain: In 2016, I traveled from my home in Missouri, a prohibition state, to Oregon, a fully legal state, in hopes of finding a water pipe that was so well-designed that it could live on my coffee table. When I realized there wasn’t a bong in Portland, of all places, that didn’t scream “Hi, I’m a bong,” I knew I had to try making one myself.

High Herstory: Can you tell us about some of the obstacles you have faced as a cannabis adjacent brand?

Riley Brain: My biggest frustration in life is being looped into the same category as dispensaries. Social media platforms, website providers, banks, payroll providers and payment processors can’t seem to discern a difference between a store selling actual weed and a company like ours that only sells ceramics. For example: in 2020, our payment processor dropped us with no notice, leaving us unable to take orders on our website for an entire month. We’ve been banned from TikTok and Instagram after organically growing six-figure followings, and we are not allowed to run ads with Meta. At the beginning of this month, our payroll provider decided to drop us as of May 1st, and my search for a new provider is proving to be very pricey because we work adjacent to cannabis. Running an ancillary business feels like a high stakes game of whack-a-mole. 

High Herstory: Have you noticed a trend with your consumers in seeking out these types of ancillary products now that cannabis has become more accessible?

Riley Brain: I’ve thought a lot about this in the past few months with our home state, Missouri, going recreationally legal a few months ago. We have always shipped our pipes all over the country, with higher concentrations going to areas with higher population density. The legal status in an individual state does not seem to have much of a bearing on where our pieces are most in-demand. However, I do think we will slowly see the Boomer generation open their minds to cannabis consumption as legalization sweeps across the country. They are the group of people who withstood Regan-era war on drugs messaging the longest, and I think it has (and will take) legalization and the slow tear-down of cannabis stigma to bring more Baby Boomers into the well-designed cannabis space. 

High Herstory: We know that your personal experiences helped to inform your products, what would you say the ethos behind your aesthetic is?

Riley Brain: It’s no secret that I am an interior design enthusiast. My husband and I purchased our 1920s bungalow about 18 months before I started Wandering Bud, and it was my enjoyment of pulling together thoughtfully-designed spaces in my home that motivated me to start the business. I put a lot of thought into the antique furniture pieces I thrifted, the textiles and other accessories I sourced to fill my space, and I wanted my cannabis tools to feel just as curated. The shapes I’ve designed are most often inspired by furniture, interior architectural details, wallpaper, and textiles.

High Herstory: We also hear you are big on Tik Tok! Congrats, that is awesome! Are you finding that there are a lot of hurdles similar to promoting your products on Instagram?

Riley Brain: TikTok is a wild place! The censorship is even more extreme over there, which has its pros and cons. On Instagram, I am occasionally accused of contributing to cannabis stigma because I choose to self-censor for the protection of our account. Instagram is slower and less consistent about removing cannabis content. Even so, they still took down our account earlier this year, which was pretty terrifying. On TikTok, anyone who shows weed or uses weed-related terms will be reprimanded within minutes of posting a video. The viewership over there understands that. They know creators are doing their best to circumvent content moderation systems and are happy to follow me down a rabbit hole of algospeak terminology, which is often improvised. Those who get it, get it. 

High Herstory: What is your favorite thing about owning your own brand?

Riley Brain: Every day feels like a choose-your-own-adventure. There is an endless list of to-do’s, so I’m never at a loss for things to work on, and I can select which variety of tasks I’d like to tackle on any given day. No two days are the same, which, after six years of teaching, feels really refreshing. 

High Herstory: What have been some of your best sellers and why do you think these particular designs resonate with your customers?

Riley Brain: Our bestseller is the Billie Bubbler. I designed Billie in 2019 after my developing ceramic skills finally caught up with my original vision for Wandering Bud, which was pretty thrilling. No one else was really doing ceramic bubblers at the time, so I think our customers were ready for some water pipe reform. We were consistently sold out of Billies for a long time (and still have a hard time keeping them in stock despite scaling our team), and rave reviews have continued to pour in during the (nearly) four years since Billie’s launch. It really is the perfect balance between form and function with neither sacrificing for the other.

High Herstory: What is your personal go to ceramic piece from your collection?

Riley Brain: Haha, again I’ll point to the Billie bubbler for this one with the Sprout one hitter being a close second. Can you tell I have a favorite?

I am a lightweight who hates throat burn, and I designed Billie for myself. Water pipes cool the smoke, and the tapered mouthpiece shape enables you to better control the size of your hit. An evening sesh for me typically includes two hits from Billie before relaxing into the couch for an hour of TV then bed. Sprout is my go-to if I’m in a hurry on the weekend - it’s so easy to pack a quick bowl, and the small size means I’m not wasting anything. It’s also easy to collect a few, especially in fun limited edition designs, so I can rotate between Sprouts if it’s been a minute since I’ve cleaned them.

High Herstory: Where can we find Wandering Bud products currently?  

Riley Brain: You can find all of our products on our website - wanderingbud.com - which also includes a list of all the brick and mortar stores that stock our pieces around the US.

High Herstory: Do you have any advice for female entrepreneurs looking to start their own business in the cannabis space? 

Riley Brain: Everything is figure-out-able. We may encounter roadblocks that non-cannabis businesses never think twice about, but there is a solution for everything. And it’s likely Google-able. Make friends in the space so you can share information and encourage each other!

High Herstory: What’s next for Wandering Bud?
Riley Brain: We have the entire year planned out for the first time ever (organization isn’t my strong suit), so we’ll be dropping limited edition collections and collaborations every month this year. Our team is excited to get hands-on with some really fun design concepts! Next up in May is the return of our coveted citrus pipe, which looks like you’re taking a bite out of the wedge while you’re smoking.