Husband and wife duo, Scott and Cally Macdonald, set up Happy Hemper in the belief that people can benefit from CBD.
The Happy Hemper CBD subscription box company was born out of the pair’s own beneficial experience with CBD. Living with anxiety, Scott and Cally began using CBD after looking for help from doctors and not finding results. The pair say that CBD seemed to provide a solution to their daily stress, and when their baby arrived, they utilised the compound to stay on top of their day-to-day lives.
Scott says they wanted to tap into the CBD market – and realised that with 50 per cent of Brits saying they use or have used subscription box services – this could be the perfect way to help bring CBD to UK front doors.
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The boxes have been carefully curated by the couple, who include a wide range of CBD products including body scrubs, hair masks, lotions, bath bombs, capsules, drinks and more – varying from month to month.
“We first started taking CBD around about four years ago, and found it to be really beneficial. We both suffer from anxiety and depression. So, it was finding an alternative because we went through the leaps and bounds of doctors which was just a nightmare roller coaster. So, we were trying to find something that works,” said Scott.
“CBD seems to help you manage your day a lot easier and its all-natural.”
Cally said: “We started taking it more of when our now four-year-old was born. It started us off on an even keel and we get along better. It has been a really interesting journey, and learning more about CBD and its capabilities brought us on to figuring out what we could do – that’s how Happy Hemper came about. We were surprised nobody else was doing anything like this.”
“Around 52 per cent of the population say they use a subscription box or are using one,” added Scott. “With Covid-19 we had the opportunity to really make a push for it. The response from the public and industry has been quite overwhelming.
“It is so exciting. There are a lot of big fish in the pond who want to know how they can get involved and tell us it is a really good idea. It is really important to us – we want to build that connection with the suppliers and our customers and get the message out there that CBD can help.”
Happy Hempers’s hampers come in different size options at different prices – all offering customers the chance to save from £60 to £70 per box. The pair do everything themselves, and Cally says with the usual price of CBD products, the subscription hampers allow customers to use up all of their product without worrying about making it last.
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For the hampers, Happy Hemper works with a number of different brands, picking products that will be recognised by its customers as well as smaller CBD brands, and now brands are beginning to approach the company. All of the products that Happy Hemper uses are lab tested
“We’ve learned that you build really good connections because brands have already established on their own lane. It’s not really “pick and choose” – we’re trying the product and seeing what works best,” said Cally.
“We always want to make sure that we take less profit and have more savings for our customers and that they are getting good products because it’s about building connections rather than taking money. We want to be in this for the long term because we believe in it.
“We want it to be as afford affordable for everybody. We don’t want it to be a luxury – we’re trying to get out to the masses.”
Customers can use Klarna to spread the cost. The pair point out that their progress has not been without hitches. As many CBD companies discover on their journey, finding payment providers can be one of the problems they have to contend with due to the risk surrounding the product.
Scott commented: “It was a really easy process to get Klarna and we spoke to them prior to make sure it would work. We’ve been through the process before with payment providers – we were building our own website and the payment provider that was incorporated within that website didn’t accept CBD companies. It was a learning curve for us – it was good to be knocked down to then build ourselves back up again.
“Payment providers are the issue and I think that’s where most issues are when it comes to what CBD companies are faced with, because cannabis companies are deemed to be high risk. A lot of payment providers don’t want to touch cannabis. The payment gateway was the most difficult obstacle to get over so we’re talking to more and more companies to try and get more advice.”
Marketing the company has been another huge obstacle say the pair. Contending with the likes of Meta and Google can make marketing CBD companies extremely difficult, because although CBD is legal here in the UK – social platforms tend to take a global approach to risky markets.
Scott said: “It’s hard to get paid ads to Facebook and Instagram and the main platforms So, there’s a lot of other sorts of twists and turns you need to try and go around to get people looking at your website, because that’s what it’s all about.
“We’re just going to keep pushing on what we’re doing try and get our brand out there. We want to be able to build our website and the subscription box. Until then, markets are a good way to get our brand awareness out there.”
Happy Hemper has won the ‘Commended award’ in the Beauty Shortlist at the Wellbeing Awards, and was a runner-up in ‘The Heat’ – Scotland’s equivalent to Dragons den where Scott delivered a three-minute pitch in front of five judges.
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