Vincent Ayar: 6 Business Lessons From Building Ooze

Vincent Ayar is the Metro Detroit entrepreneur who co-founded Ooze, the Michigan cannabis accessory and vape battery brand, on April 1, 2015 in Oak Park, Michigan. In about four years, Ooze went from a 2,000 square foot warehouse staffed only by its founding partners to roughly 42,000 square feet and more than 50 employees.

How did a small Oak Park team build a brand that now reaches thousands of stores? Looking at what Vincent Ayar has said in interviews and at how the company actually grew, six lessons stand out.

Key takeaways

Vincent Ayar co-founded Ooze in 2015, three years before Michigan voters approved adult-use cannabis. Ooze sources every component of its products itself, down to the batteries. Vincent treats reputation, built on integrity and customer service, as the foundation of the business. Early profits went back into operations, R&D and marketing instead of the owners' pockets. Ooze Wholesale (now Cannatron) carries the brand to 500+ distributors and 8,000+ retail shops across the US and Canada.

1. Start before the market is ready

Ooze launched with a line of personal vaporizer batteries in April 2015. Michigan voters didn't approve adult-use cannabis until 2018. That head start gave Vincent Ayar and his partners three years to build products, supplier relationships and a recognizable brand before the state's legal market opened.

Starting early is a risk, because you're building for demand that doesn't fully exist yet. But it meant that when the market arrived, Ooze was already on the shelf.

2. Own every component

Many accessory brands put their logo on someone else's hardware. Ooze went the other way. "We source every single piece that goes into our products," Vincent Ayar told The Weed Blog in 2019, and that includes the batteries.

For a battery brand, sourcing determines safety and how long a product lasts. Controlling every part is also what lets Ooze back its 510-thread batteries with the Ooze Warranty Program. A company can only stand behind a product it truly controls.

3. Reputation is the real product

Vincent Ayar has described reputation as the foundation of the company's success, built on integrity and honest dealing. His reasoning is simple. Selling someone a product once is easy. Getting them to come back and buy again is the hard part, and that depends on how you treat them.

That's why customer service sits at the center of how Ooze operates. Vincent has said the team will go to great lengths to make a problem right, and he credits the brand's reputation to the effort of the people who work there.

4. Reinvest before you reward yourself

In the early years, Ooze's profits didn't go to the owners. They went back into operations, research and development, and marketing. Vincent Ayar put the trade-off plainly: "I'd much rather spend millions down the road than mere thousands today."

That patience paid for the growth from 2,000 to about 42,000 square feet, and from a partners-only team to more than 50 employees by September 2019. At the time, the company planned to hire 30 to 40 more people by the end of that year.

5. Design a system, not a single product

Vincent Ayar has overseen the design and development of Ooze and its brand since day one, and the brand's ethos reflects that: fun, function, interchangeability and portability. Products are meant to work together, not just on their own.

You can see it across the line. The Kettle rig grew into variations called Stack, Trip and Steamboat, each combining glass and silicone with a flower bowl and a banger for concentrates, and a dab pen can be inserted into the silicone stem. The Slugger Dabbin Dugout is a portable, unbreakable silicone kit for concentrates that includes a nectar collector. What began as a few products became a range that serves both flower and concentrate users.

6. Build the path to the shelf, and keep it local

A great product still needs distribution. Vincent Ayar is listed as a Partner at Ooze Wholesale, the Oak Park distribution business later renamed Cannatron. It carries Ooze and house brands such as King Palm, Truweigh, Stache, Loud Lock and Green Monkey to more than 500 distributors and 8,000 retail shops across the US and Canada. The company was named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in 2019 and 2020.

Even with that national reach, the business stayed home. All of Ooze's owners are Michigan natives, much of its shipping, marketing and design staff is local, and Vincent has described the company's expansion as being about creating jobs in Metro Detroit.

Where these lessons came from

Before Ooze, Vincent Ayar learned business on the retail side of the counter. He worked at Foodtown Supermarket, a Metro Detroit grocery, and is an owner at Shoe Rack Outlet. Retail teaches you which products move, which sit, and what makes a customer come back. Those are the same instincts behind Ooze's focus on quality, reputation and repeat business.

He studied at Walsh College in Troy, Michigan, and lives in West Bloomfield Township.

Giving back

The same long-term thinking extends to the community. Vincent Ayar is listed as President of the Ooze Foundation, a Michigan private foundation based in Oak Park that received its IRS ruling in 2020. It has made grants to organizations including the Shades of Pink Foundation, the Chaldean Community Foundation, The Shelby Jane Seyburn Foundation and Habitat for Humanity, and it runs Oozegiving community giveaways.

Sources

The Weed Blog, "Vincent Ayar, Co-Founder of Ooze" (2019) · Detroit Metro Times, "How Michigan vape retailer Ooze became a major player in the marijuana accessory game"

Originally published on vincentayar.com. More: About Vincent Ayar.