Wealthymr's blog: "The Original Indoor Grower"

Marketing The MH Grow Light

The First completed MH Grow Light systems came to me from the distributor in early 1978. The excitement of seeing what we drew on paper in completed form was overwhellming. Remember I was a teenager (Although to all business associates I lied about my age and said I was 21) who was new to the concept of product development and Strategic Marketing, but I was an ambitious type who never took no for an answer so sales came easy to me. The first thing I did was go to all my friends and try to sell them on a light, I sold two. The problem for most was Price...The cost to me was $125.00, I marked them up 100% to $250.00 and at that price my friends had to pass. The reality of having to find buyers that wanted and could afford a light hit me then...I had to find the Growers or I could never sell the lights, It's not like I could go door to door and sell them like I did with my Curb number painting business, I needed to be creative and fast, I only had 30 days until I had to pay the distributor for the lights.

I had been succesful with my other business ith leaving a "Notice" on there door encouraging them to contact me to paint their curb number, I had a God given talent with writing advertising copy (I am now recognized as one of the top Direct Mail marketers in the US). I decided to run Line ad's in the local papers, There was the Recycler and Easy Ad's in Southern California and most that wanted to buy a used or specialty item used them to find it. This is where I first used the Tag Line "GROW THOSE PLANTS YOU WANT TO CAMOUFLAGE 30% FASTER THAN GROWING OUTDOORS". I knew I could not advertise..Growing marijuana, so I came up with that advertising slogan and the papers let me place my ad's. I also started taking the Lights to local swap meets to show and sell along with the Lighting supplies and lamps I had been selling. This marketing efforts brought about five light sales a week....I was not going to get rich off that but it was a start.

I found out early on that there were three types of buyers, there was the consumable buyer who wanted to grow his own to smoke, not sell, there was the Get Rich Quick Buyer who only saw dollar signs and a way to make quick money and then there were the real "Growers" - These guys were the serious, hard core growers that you did not want to piss off. I realized as I would try and sell the first two groups a light, that they knew nothing about growing and expected me to tell them how to use the lamps. I was no grower, but knew that to sell any product you needed to know it well and believe in it so I went on a mission to learn all there was to know about growing....and the real Growers were my teachers.

This Article/Blog is not about how to grow but it is important to point out some facts that we, the Growers and I learned as we all were new to MH Growing. The first lessons we learned were how long to run the lights, how to mimic the growing season with time adjustments as the process of growing these plants indoors needed to mimic real life conditions to succedd. The learning process lasted a few crops but we finally got it right!! I found that as I learned more about growing the higher my closing rate was with my prospects. Although I did not grow my own crops, I was involved with every cycle of growing through constant contact with my clients. The obvious benefit to indoor growing on the economic side was that you could grow ALL YEAR Round...there was no growing season..and the growers saw this as the future of underground growing and would buy my lights on a regular basis.

I was selling about 50 units a month at this time and as a 17 year old naive kid that was alot of money, although as with any business that profit was going into inventory and other areas, like my self indulgence in other substances that the 80's became known for. I was so busy with the day to day side of the grow light business that my other income streams from the curb painting and fluorescent lighting sales dried up as I paid no attention to them. I was hooked on this Miami Vice type of business and wanted to do more, hence I needed a national audience...Thats when High Times Magazine came into play 

DRAFT DRAFT - More to write latter...I am to damn tired now..lol 

The Idea stage

I was a natural born entrepreneur and by age 17 had a steady income from a Curb painting business I had started. I married at 17 as well and was blessed with a child at the same age. This pressure to provide for a family had my mind open to any money making possibilities. My father in Law owned an electrical lighting supply company in LA and gave me an in on wholesale lighting supplies so I began selling Fluorescent lights to area businesses on a door to door basis to earn extra income to raise my family.

I was developing other areas of marketing these lighting products and received an order from a local business for an outdoor lighting system for his parking lot. My father in Laws company did not sell this type of lighting so I went to a distributor in Los Angeles that specialized in custom lighting products. I met with the owner of the company and we began to discuss my project. In our discussion we began to talk about a metal halide lighting system for my client, he then joked that a 1000 watt MH Bulb put out a light spectrum so similiar to that of the sun that you could grow plants with it. I joked back with him that maybe I'll buy one for myself to grow with, he said with a bulb like the MH you could grow a room full of plants. I laughed and told him how just a couple months ago I tried our fluorescent grow lights in my closet and tried to grow a plant and though it sprouted it got about 6 inches, fell over and died..., He smiled and said it's basic math, you cant take a 40watt bulb and expect it to give you the lighting necessary to mimic the sun, he said as a lighting engineer he knew that that 40 watt bulb needed to be inches away from the plant to get it to grow but it would never give enough light to reach past the plant top, He said in general terms consider you need 100 lumens of light per Sq Inch around the plant to get it to grow like an outdoor plant would....a 40watt bulb may give you 2 lumens of light....That made since and a light bulb went off in my head, I coukld sell the shit out of these bulbs to growers.....

I worked with him to develop a Metal Halide grow light system for growing indoors, The first challenge was the reflector hood, these bulbs we mainly used in Parking lots and warehouses. The bulb required a heavy duty ballast to power it and it was the size of a desktop computer case. The typical reflectors were not designed to cast light in a spectrum or area if you will, to grow plants. He then drew out a reflector that would work, It had a white enamel inner core and grey outside. He knew of a place that could make it so we had the deflectors custom made for our system. The next issue was Power...Warehouse lighting used a 400 watt bulb with the ballast attatched to the top of the diffuser, the problem is a 1000 watt bulb ballast was too big, besides who would want to have to get an electriction in to wire up a ceiling electrical socket to run it. our solution, we ran a heavy duty cord from the ballast to the light and reflector/hood assembly, this allowed the ballast to remain on the floor and plug into the exsisting wall sockets. The cord was 12 feet long which allowed for a 9 foot maximum height which we determined was the highest you could go to keep the 100 lumens per inch we needed for growth...The end product..The first Grow light made for indoor growing, which in short time was copied by many and is still the norm today.

In the 1970's, an underground group of people in California began a method of growing which was unheard of before, Commercial Indoor growing of Cannabis using commercial lighting and a new modular Hydroponics system that gave this type of growing the freedom it neded to make huge profits while hiding the plants indoors from those prying eyes.....This Blog will Chronical The founder of this Industry and the many challenges he faced to get his products in the hands of those discreet growers.

The 1970's - Concept and Social/Legal Climate

It is important to understand the climate and social changes that were occuring at this time. The act of growing Pot was illegal, smoking or possesing it was Illegal...yet most my age found the illegal aspect and the feeling we got from pot more important than a misdemenor ticket for having it in small quantities. In those days you bought a 3 finger Lid for $25.00 (If you put 3 fingers together against the baggy that was how you measured quantity back then) The product was usually Shake..That is no buds just the bottom of the barrel stuff. If you could find the Bud...it cost you big time to get it. This "Dirt Weed" was brought in from Mexico for the most part, yet we in Californai had Humboldt Gold from the outdoor growers in the north..This was Primo stuff but hard to find as outdoor growing was being targeted and many a crop was burned...Hence the need for a new place to grow that would be so hard to find and economically feasible...The Answer "Indoor Growing". 

PLEASE NOTE: This series of entries for the Original Indoor Grower are not edited yet, This will occur when I finish the whole series so please pardon any spelling or gramatical errors in these draft blogs