When one Hamptonite sought to pivot professionally, she found her future in the weeds.
Rebelle founder Charlotte Hanna
It’s hard to believe that Charlotte Hanna’s legacy venture got seeded at a Monday night drumming circle session in Sagaponack and germinated at Crow’s Nest, where the serial executive and entrepreneur joked with friends and strangers sitting nearby how fun it would be to sell cannabis to soccer moms. But that’s exactly where the idea to launch her woman-owned ganja business got started. “You can imagine the faces of my two adolescent sons when I sat them down to tell them, ‘Kids, mom is getting into the weed business!’” Hanna says. But Rebelle, the cannabis enterprise she launched in Massachusetts, is so much more than just a dispensary. It’s a growing, vertically integrated cultivation, manufacturing and retail startup with a focus on social justice and wellness.
Rebelle offers a wide selection of aromatic cannabis flower
“I’ve read a lot about Paul Tudor Jones’ views on just and equitable capitalism, and I believe we are one of the most socially innovative enterprises in the cannabis space today,” Hanna explains. To that end, employees of Rebelle and its parent company, Community Growth Partners, have the opportunity to earn equity and build wealth. This standard startup protocol offers incentive strategies to those who haven’t had access to them before. At Rebelle this wealth growth impetus is coupled with alliance with Roca, a nonprofit partner that works with young people caught up in the criminal justice system, usually because of minor drug possession charges.
The brand’s elegant dispensary elevates the cannabis experience.
Altruism aside, the commercial aspect of Hanna’s venture centers around a hygge-inspired retail dispensary, claimed to be at this time the closest of its kind to New York State. The shop carries more than 60 varieties of flower, prerolls, vapes, concentrates, edibles, tinctures, topicals and accessories in a Hanna-designed space that feels light, modern and warm. “There is something inherently feminine about cannabis,” she adds. “After all, cannabis is a female plant!” That may be true, but the industry, albeit in its infancy, is still a male-dominated endeavor. Nevertheless, Hanna remains optimistic about shift in gender parity, a sentiment empowered by the number of women dominating the wellness space that exhibits a natural detente with the cannabis market.
As this industry becomes a strong revenue generator in the post-COVID recovery economy (Massachusetts will collect over $200 million in tax revenue in its first two years of recreational sales), New York’s newly legalized cannabis market may soon eclipse California. Hanna sees herself setting up shop on her home turf out East, the concept incubator of her growing empire. “That is what the Hamptons community is all about,” she says. “You strike up conversations with people and draw inspiration from each other; it fosters creativity and spawns bold ideas.”
Photography by: PORTRAIT BY DEAN ISIDRO; PHOTOS COURTESY OF BRAND
