Jared Stanley is chief operating officer (COO) of Charlotte’s Web, the company he co-founded with his six brothers. The Stanley brothers started the pioneering hemp genetics company with a $30K loan and now Charlotte’s Web is a publicly traded company. As COO, he oversees operations, cultivation, R&D and government affairs. At the center of the great rebirth of the American hemp industry is an unassuming operations guy overseeing a group of some of the country’s most talented hemp farmers, scientists, and engineers. Stanley is a driving force behind one of the world’s most successful hemp CBD brands and the company known for pioneering and establishing the CBD market.  

Area Code 420 (AC 420): How is Charlotte’s Web fairing during what is perceived as a slowdown in CBD sales?

Stanley: We’re doing ok. While sales have softened, our business is stable. We still hold the leading market share, and our brand awareness and customer loyalty are unmatched. We lead in retail sales and e-commerce sales. Approximately 37% of overall CBD industry revenue is generated through e-commerce.

AC 420: Did becoming the official CBD of MLB help boost sales? Do you also consult with teams about player use?

Stanley: The partnership with Major League Baseball (MLB) gives Charlotte’s Web valuable exposure, relevance, and credibility. To support the partnership, we’re launching ReCreate, a brand of products that are NSF Certified for Sport—the gold standard of certification and the only broad-spectrum CBD to have achieved this certification.

We’ve been excited to activate extensively in 2023 for the inaugural season of our partnership, starting with the All-Star Game in Seattle. Already in our partnership with MLB, we’ve been able to spend a lot of time with the league, their teams, trainers, and players, both to understand their needs and to educate them on best practices for optimal results and recovery.

AC 420: What demographic uses CBD the most and for what reasons?

Stanley: We see older Americans, 50 and older, lead adoption for a variety of CBD products, due to their benefits for age-related aches and pains, and sleep. That certainly describes our core Charlotte’s Web consumers. With that in mind, we developed our new lifestyle brand, ReCreate, with mainstream pricing that focuses on two other large CBD buying demographics, Millennials and GenZers. These two demographic groups make up nearly half of the CBD market. Dialing in on the top need states that these groups experience and the fastest growing product format, ReCreate will launch four new NSF Certified for Sport gummies that include broad spectrum CBD blended with functional botanicals to address their desire to balance everyday mental, physical, and social wellness. This will allow ReCreate to enter new sub-categories of health and wellness through cultural, lifestyle verticals. These are consumer need states that align with MLB players and their fans. 

AC 420: Do gummies continue to be the popular go-to CBD form of use?

Stanley: Definitely. Gummies are by far the preferred format for CBD consumption now, primarily due to familiarity and ease of use. According to a November 2022 report by Vantage Market Research, the global CBD gummies market is expected to reach $6.8 billion by 2028, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.2% from 2022 to 2028. 

AC 420: Do you feel the CBD market is oversaturated? 

Stanley: The absence of regulations allowed for a competitive landscape filled with lesser-quality brands that got into the space to ride the wave of consumer interest, many of which did not bring quality, life-changing products to consumers.

Due to competitive crowding, insufficient capital, and brand equity, we are seeing a thinning out of the crowded market—from approximately 3,500 players in 2020 to around 2,000 in 2022. We anticipate further market consolidation as we await regulatory oversight from Washington, D.C., and when it does occur, it’s likely that many of these brands will struggle to meet the regulatory requirements.

AC 420: Where do you envision your company’s most significant growth will be in the next 2-3 years?

Stanley: Recent activity and progress in Washington give us hope that federal regulations could be finalized within the not-too-distant future, which will provide the necessary confidence for those retailers who have been on the fence to finally, fully embrace ingestible CBD for their consumers. This will change the landscape significantly for the leading brands who have been able to weather the storm of regulatory indecision and who can meet the regulatory requirements once they’re established.

This regulatory resolution will drive mass retail uptake of CBD in general. For example, today, retailers carry primarily topical products. Regulations will reverse this trend and facilitate the acceptance of ingestible products across mass retail.

Additionally, the partnership with MLB will provide wider awareness and credibility of Charlotte’s Web and ReCreate CBD products, which we expect will grow each year of our partnership. And finally, it’s worth noting that out of the $4.4 billion CBD market, $1 billion is attributed to the one FDA-approved botanical CBD drug. To that end, we are also pursuing a botanical drug through the FDA based on our proprietary hemp cultivar to enter this segment of the CBD market. This is in addition to our current consumer business. For all the above reasons and more, we’re very excited about the future potential of Charlotte’s Web.

AC 420: What’s the status of the recent joint venture with AJNA Biosciences and British American Tobacco regarding FDA approval?

Stanley: We’ve made significant progress in pursuing the botanical IND (Investigational New Drug) path through the FDA, leveraging partnerships with AJNA BioSciences and British American Tobacco (BAT). We expect Phase I trials to be completed in less than a year and to move into Phase II in early 2024.

AC 420: It took years for the government to approve the use of stevia in foods. Then Coca-Cola stepped in. As the largest CBD company, are you able to influence legislators to act in approving CBD legalization?

Stanley: Over the past year, Charlotte’s Web has been at the forefront of FDA regulatory efforts in Washington, working to bring all stakeholders together including industry, consumers, FDA, and Congress. We compiled industry-leading safety and toxicology data to educate and empower Congress, addressing the concerns the FDA noted in their public statement this past January. This proactive engagement is generating positive results, and we’re now working toward uniting the industry to advocate for favorable regulations.

AC 420: As COO, does anything keep you up at night?

Stanley: A lot of things do. Often the biggest sleep disruptor is the ongoing lack of federal regulations which has encouraged inconsistency within the industry and consumer confusion as well as the emergence of bad actors making unsubstantiated claims.

Companies hawking synthetic, intoxicating delta-8 THC and high delta-9 THC products because of a regulatory loophole are undermining the entire hemp industry that was built to serve the health and wellness needs of our communities.

Another sleep disturber has been the varying state-level regulations being developed to address these issues in the absence of federal leadership. This has only added to the inconsistency and confusion. All these factors weaken consumer confidence.

However, I am pleased to share that we have been behind successful legislation in various states and are actively engaged at the federal level. We’ve witnessed more progress in the past few months than we have seen in years. So ultimately, we are optimistic and see a light at the end of the tunnel.

AC 420: As a company co-founder, what do you hope your business legacy will be?

Stanley: Wide consumer access to quality hemp extract wellness. My brothers and I built this company not as a business but as a mission to bring botanical options to health seekers worldwide.