All the time, products advertise themselves as mouthwatering, yet this is frequently only a metaphor. It is a fact in flint mints’ life.
The company is stimulating salivary glands while marketing to a nonspecific, hazy target demographic, catering to cannabis consumers, sex advocates, and those with medical needs by using the spilanthes flower of the daisy family. The strategy seems to be working.
From spilanthes to the Department of Defense
Russell Adler, the founder of flint mints, began his journey to Flintts in 2007, while working as a physics researcher for the US Army Corps of Engineers of the Department of Defense.
According to Adler, “I always imagined I’d be a career scientist.”
After a few years in his work, when his attention was more on creating and disseminating theses, that attitude altered. He began experimenting with food science. The first project involved rearing his own livestock and cultivating grain for an Eggs Benedict. Friends that he shared animals with also gave him some spilanthes seeds.
Adler’s attention was drawn by the sensation of a clean lips.
When Adler took one bite, “honestly, it seemed like everything kind of made sense for a moment,” she recalled.
The encounter fired him up. He left the DoD in 2011 and worked at a number of other positions while conducting R&D. He tried infused gum and tongue applicators, among other form factors, but none succeeded in capturing the desired aroma. When he made contact with a distributor who could provide him with spilanthes extract, things started to turn around.
Adler found a formula for bite-sized mints after spending the majority of his life money.
Flint mints
He collaborated with fine artist and designer Kiji McCafferty in the latter part of 2017. We continuously worked on the branding up until our 2019 debut, and we’ve continued to do so ever since, according to Adler.
The pair created a design based on the mandala’s radial symmetry, a geometric representation of a spiritual path or journey. The spilanthes flower also has a mandala-like shape. That served as the “glue” that joined all of these design ideas, according to Adler.
The company’s cheerful, neon-yellow mascot, Fugu, was developed as a result of the discovery that pufferfish also make mandalas when looking for a mate.
As soon as it was finished, the brand stood out on store shelves and conference rooms. The third partner for the company joined thanks to McCafferty’s efforts. Wesley Lau visited Flintts’ vibrant booth as it was on display at their inaugural industry gathering, the 2019 Cannabis World Congress & Business Exposition in New York City.
After leaving his job at a hedge fund in 2016, Lau founded the mobile app Warnable for emergency and event communication. But by 2019, he wanted to diversify into the cannabis industry. He attended trade shows like CWCBE, where the Flintts booth captured his attention.
Flint mints
He told Insider, “The branding, I saw so much potential with it. Lau finally rose to the position of third partner. The three then started a dispensary-focused sales strategy.
The pandemic compels projections to change and pivot.
The leaders of Flintts were in a difficult situation when the pandemic first started. However, the opportunity offered a smart turn. The group wasn’t sure what to do next.
Lau noted, “I’m normally positive, but I didn’t have any solutions.”
Before the pandemic, the company made, at best, hundreds of dollars a day through direct-to-sales and social media, according to Adler. They soon began running the company’s top-notch, slickly designed, psychedelic advertisements. Even so, Flintts saw their marketing spending rise while revenues stayed the same.
But according to Adler, “every day, it got a little better.”
Sales and new fan conversions started to result from the commercials. The murky fan base of the business provided another boost. Zachary Zane, a writer for Men’s Health who specialises in sexual wellbeing, claimed in an article published in February 2020 that Flintts had improved his oral sex experiences.
Adler noted that Flintts has never spent money on a public relations campaign and added, “It was truly like one of the sparks that kind of set our world on fire.”
Another boost came through TikTok and fan-reaction videos, but the group was initially unaware of TikTok’s popularity. We hired a social person who was considerably younger than us because, happily, she knew what was good, said Adler.
Currently, Flintts runs its business out of a location in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. More than 2,500 international cities and hundreds of nations are served by the business.
They don’t see any plans to bring in outside revenue because they own the entire venture. Despite the company’s expansion, Adler plans to keep all production there as well.
There are some things that are more significant than money, and Adler listed American production as one of them.
