Supportive Cannabis Community Inspires Entrepreneurship and Research

As a mother experiencing a painful loss, Swati Gupta transformed her recreational cannabis usage into a powerful tool for healing. This experience sparked conversations with other mothers also using cannabis to support their health and well-being, which became a passion project for Gupta.

“More recently, I’m seeing a lot of women come up and talk about what cannabis has done for them. It’s very liberating,” Gupta told The Green Letter.

Gupta’s family started MoonDust Paper in India in 2015. In 2020, she left her career in education to headline the North America business arm – MoonDust USA – with legacy knowledge and experience in addition to her drive for uplifting other women.

Building a business in the cannabis space has allowed Gupta to also build relationships with like-minded women, and support women working in the industry. Nearly 80% of MoonDust’s factory staff are women, and providing a sense of belonging and ownership to these women are top priorities for the company.

Offering quality products, premium experiences, and genuine relationships has allowed MoonDust USA to thrive. More than that, offering custom designs helps boost the awareness of their client’s brands. Gupta’s vision is to leverage the success of her company to learn more about what makes women’s experiences with cannabis unique, and how they can be best supported on their journey.

Gupta sat with The Green Letter to discuss how MoonDust’s values and products intersect to elevate women’s experiences with cannabis. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is your background as an entrepreneur in cannabis?

I’m Swati Gupta, and I founded MoonDust USA, which is a B2B company that builds customized cones for cannabis companies. These are the smallest, most catchy, and the least amount of money you’ll spend on marketing is somebody holding a pre-roll that’s got your brand on it. It’s good quality and a forward to your product; that’s what we want and that's what we deliver.

My background is not in cannabis. We started in 2020, and prior to that, I came from a background in education policy. I worked for a decade in K-12 education, and I was a recreational user. I had an experience in 2020 that felt like that usage was more than recreational, and it got me really interested.

My family owns a pre-roll manufacturing business – it’s a family business owned by my mom and my father; we all worked in this. I’m a mom of two. They’re little and they’re growing, and I’m growing as a mom and as an entrepreneur.

Can you tell me more about the relationship between MoonDust and your family’s business?

What I do is run the North America business line for them. We’ve had clients prior, but now having a presence in the U.S. and Canada helped us expand. MoonDust USA is an independent company, and we’ve translated a lot of the expertise from our family legacy. We do more business on the pre-roll side, but we also have other paper products like booklets. We could do a couple of other things, but in the U.S., we specialize in pre-roll customization.

You said you had an experience in 2020 that led to the founding of MoonDust. Did that have anything to do with the pandemic?

My journey is really tied to being a mompreneur and to my motherhood journey. I had a loss, and it was very isolating. It was at the start of COVID. My family wasn’t around, and at that time, I really needed to slow my thoughts. I got a benefit from cannabis. Then, I started speaking to other moms who use cannabis for health reasons, and that got me hooked in. I needed to learn more, to get into it.

When I just started, I loved the community. Everybody’s so passionate, so innovative. I got to learn, and I got to make the best of friends in this community. The quality relationships are prime for me. Every customer that I’ve had has repeat orders with us because they’re all true relationships. 

What products does MoonDust offer, and how do you sell them?

We are making a branded cone. I’ve had different products, but that’s the one we focus on. There are different kinds of papers we sell – a white, which is bleached; a brown, which is more natural; and then we have blunts and wraps like rose, mango, and blueberry. There are different varieties of paper, and there are different tips. There’s different kinds of innovation around that. We could do it with a glass tip; one of the fast selling ones is a rose petal cone with a glass tip.

Why is the rose petal so popular?

First of all, it begins a smoking experience that is very uniquely designed to make sure it’s very clean. The rose petal itself has a beautiful smell to it. It burns super slow, and you don’t have that smoking aftertaste with it. It’s a very popular product with the glass tip; we do that in a paper tip as well, but the glass tip is a very premium experience for sure. It’s pressed rose petals and a premium product, and in terms of volume, it would be about 10% of our sales because paper runs faster, but what really drives the business is the bleached and unbleached paper.

Is there something special about the paper, or is it just a commodity?

We use the best quality products, and the relationships come first. Because of that, and the sheer volume of how it moves, our clients really love our product. It’s very streamlined. We also give them design services along with that, and we give them shipping services. We are not one of those companies that have hidden costs for every little thing.

In terms of design and delivery, we want our focus to be on customers' products so their production goes up. That’s our primary driving factor, so that’s why we sell quickly because we make it streamlined and easy for them. Customers just tell us 'here’s the logo,' we add the design on, and they know there’s going to be nothing hidden. They don’t have to watch their backs. It’s simple; it just shows up!

What keeps customers coming back?

I think the top would be the quality of the product. It meets standards; we provide the lab report and everything so they don’t have to stress about anything. They know we’re so committed to the product quality itself, and if there are any changes, they know we’ve got them. That’s what keeps the customer coming back to us.

I would say the second is always the relationship. I know all the people personally by now because they’re great clients. I know them personally as well, and ‘people first’ is always our approach. Also – our prices are unbeatable.

Do you know how many states your clients are in?

We’re in about 10 or 11 states right now. Colorado is a big one for us. We’ve made cones for the top paper companies in the industry, like the top three midpoints for them as well. It’s very hard to say exactly; they’re everywhere.

What kinds of challenges have you faced growing MoonDust?

I thought there would be a lot of challenges, but contrary to that, the community is supportive. I’ve had less challenges than expected. In terms of trajectory, 2020 is when the idea was conceived. We have production experience since 2015, but the U.S. business started in 2020 and the first exhibition was in 2021 when we set out to go to customers at that time. A lot of the brands are doing so many things, it’s just kind of hard to get the attention from the procurement person of the organization. We have competitors in the market, and we keep it pretty slim right now.

Every time we start talking about digital – it’s hard to get to the business. A lot of the digital marketing is B2C, so every time we’ve had conversations, we realize the platforms are not as effective for B2B.

How are you overcoming those challenges going forward?

Y’all are part of the solution. The Green Letter is part of the solution. We’re doing more speaking, more of featuring ourselves and getting out there. We’re also actively looking for options to market. Since we make our products for other brands, we’re in a very interesting space.

What has been your favorite part of building MoonDust and being an entrepreneur in the cannabis space?

It’s made me have a mid-life career change. That’s how motivated we are here. More recently, I’m seeing a lot of women come up and talk about what cannabis has done for them. It’s very liberating. We’re exploring how we can get more into that space, how the experience of consuming cannabis differs based on gender, and what are the different ways we are using it. The stories I’m hearing are very different, and the purposes we’re using it for are very different.

It’s the personal stories people have shared. I met people that like it for a lot of healing purposes, but there’s just this thing with all the women — it feels different than a male person who’s consumed the same product. You’re all experiencing the same thing, but it’s different.

Another interesting space is a lot of moms using it and not talking about it. As a result of that flying under the radar, we don’t know the right product to use because it’s not discussed. A lot of women are sending friends who are males to buy — there’s still that happening. If you have to market to women, you cannot just reach out in the stores for brands that are very well-known. You can’t do it in stores because they’re not walking into the stores. A lot of times, they’re the hidden customers. Knowing what’s the right product to use and how that experience is going to be is still defined by the people openly talking about it, and a lot of them happen to be male.

As a company, we’re beginning to think about how we can tap into that – maybe some research collaborations with universities. That also taps into my experience of doing a lot of research and education. What I want to lean into is if we can create some studies about what the differences in experiences are like, and put those stories out there to help the invisible audience of women and moms.

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