You know Georgina Bailey by three things: her big personality, stunning shades and cannabis products from her company, G’s Teas.
On any given day, she’ll put out PSAs like, “Of course CBD is good for your pussy!” Or, promote matchajuana tea over drinking coffee to reduce the inevitable caffeine crash. Plus, she says it reduces the asshole tendencies that can emerge from java.
However, behind the blue, risqué comedy and quirky characteristics is a diligent entrepreneur with a purpose to continue making cannabis-infused teas and accessories geared to women’s lifestyles, needs and choices.
According to the Harlemite with Jamaican roots, her cannabis-tea making journey started as a way to help an ailing sister. Recounts Bailey “I got into teas when my sister got sick with cancer. We used to smoke together and she couldn’t smoke anymore. Then we did edibles and she couldn’t do that anymore. So I started making teas and it worked.”
From 2012 to 2014, her sister worked to heal, but ended up passing. Nevertheless, Bailey continued making cannabis concoctions of tea leaves and herbals for her friends. Three years later, somebody told her that she should start a business from her innovative elixirs. So she did, launching in 2018, a modest line: matcha, Jamaican hot cocoa, chai tea and infused-honey sticks.
Teabagging by hand in a manufacturing unit in Crown Heights then slanging it out of her office in Harlem, Bailey has been making her rounds at any cannabis event where she can find her target customer.
In her start up, Bailey focuses on women because “women are primarily ignored in the cannabis industry,” she explains.
“If you look at the way it’s advertised, it’s geared towards young men. Women are also afraid of the stigma of smoking weed; especially grandmothers and moms. So the reason why I’m focusing on that is to end that stigma, so you don’t have to smoke, you don’t have to vape, you can drink it, and it’s okay.”
In learning about her customer base—women between the ages of 25 and 50—Bailey discovered that women are more adventurous than men when it comes to the growing industry.
“We’re more likely to try different things made from cannabis [such as] beauty products, or things for our hair. We’re more likely to experiment different ways with it other than ingesting cannabis, so the industry will expand off of women’s buying power.”
Already, G’s Teas adverts stand out by using cartoons indulging in tea sipping rather than models. It is colorful and humorous like Bailey, while also showing women of different body types, ages, occupations and hues.
Ranging from moms to grandmothers who want to try something other than pain or sleeping medication, servicing Bailey’s female clientele derives from observing her grandmother create herbal remedies often centering marijuana.
“One of my [tea] flavors is Jamaican hot cocoa. I would watch [my grandmother] make cocoa tea with a grater. Watching her do that and watching her soak weed in rum then use that rum to rub it on her chest. So just paying attention to how she did things is how I picked it up.”
Tapping into that ancestral knowledge and plant medicine paves the way for Bailey who aims to franchise her G’s teas with the growing female cannabis consumer.
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