The Chanel of cannabis: founder of luxury marijuana brand Beboe on what fashion taught him about selling drugs
- The son of immigrants from Hong Kong, Clement Kwan created Beboe in California because he loves ‘the plant, the industry, and everything about it’
- Its products include rose gold vaping pens, lavender-scented cannabis pastilles, and facial masks and serum containing non-psychoactive cannabidiol, or CBD
A few years ago, Clement Kwan was in the awkward position of having to explain to his mother what he really did for a living.
He had just co-founded Beboe, a luxury cannabis brand, and figured he should come clean to his mother, who knew her son was some sort of entrepreneur.
“I said, ‘here’s the deal’, and then I told her not only about Beboe, but also that I grew and sold weed all through college to pay the tuition,” Kwan recalls. “Her reply was, ‘is it illegal?’ I told her it wasn’t, and she’s been fine with it.”
Kwan, whose family is from Hong Kong, certainly upends any conventional stereotypes about people dealing pot. He is elegant, highly educated and speaks fluent Italian – courtesy of the several years he worked with Dolce & Gabbana in Milan.
He has degrees in economics and finance from the University of California Davis and UC Berkeley, and is the former president of luxury e-tailer YOOX, which went on to buy Net-a-Porter.
Somehow, a premium cannabis brand was a natural extension of that. “I love the plant, I love the industry, and I love everything about it,” Kwan says.
