A new company co-founded by a group that includes the former CEOs of Valspar and Piper Jaffray is selling CBD products for an unusual market segment: canines.
Minneapolis-based Coolhouse Botanics launched in July with its Kradle brand, which sells CBD to treat dogs with anxiety. Kradle's products are now available online and across the country, CEO Matt Scarlett said.
Coolhouse was founded by Scarlett, who is also the CEO and founder of California's Bread & Butter Wines. Its founding team also includes Gary Hendrickson, the former CEO of Valspar, and Andrew Duff, the former CEO and chairman of Piper Jaffray. Both are active board members as well. Other founders include Andrew Fraley, a former partner at Interlachen Capital and Zain Raj, the CEO of Chicago-based consulting firm Shapiro + Raj.
All five of the founders use CBD in their personal lives and believe in its benefits, Scarlett said. The founders felt they could set themselves apart in the animal CBD space; while other brands established themselves with CBD products for humans then branched out into animals, Coolhouse took the opposite approach.
"Many of the co-founders have dogs that exhibited anxiousness and had that feeling - what can I do? To put it simply, it's a pervasive everyday problem pet parents are dealing with and we wanted to address this very common need with a purpose-built CBD product," Scarlett said in an email to the Business Journal.
The Kradle brand launched last month to coincide with the July Fourth holiday, a time when dog anxiety peaks because of fireworks. Kradle is available through its own website or through a retail deal with Pet Supplies Plus which has put its products on the shelves of around 450 stores in 31 states, including Minnesota.
Kradle doesn't have any THC, the main psychoactive compound in cannabis, because it can be harmful to dogs. The company doses its products by dog weight and has multiple delivery methods, like chewables or drops that can be added to food.
Coolhouse Botanics has 20 employees, which include some who work full-time, some who work part-time and some who are interns. It plans to launch a line of CBD products for humans in the fourth quarter of this year.
