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With a name like Mountaintop Extracts, one might assume that delivering the highest high was the goal of the founders of this Albuquerque, New Mexico-based producer, but it was not. Their objective was to produce the purest, cleanest cannabis oil possible, and the inspiration to do that was not just to get people stoned, but as is so often the case in this industry, it was borne out of a deeply personal determination to help a loved one in dire straits.
“Mountaintop Extracts was started as a result of my mom being diagnosed with stage 4 fallopian tube cancer out of the blue,” explained CEO and co-founder Eric Merryman during a recent call with Cannabis Business Executive with his wife, Jen, who co-founded and serves as President of the company. Founded in 2016, Mountaintop Extracts remains for all intents and purposes a family-run business seven years later, but it has grown considerably over the years and today covers 80 percent of the New Mexico market. The company also employs 36 people producing products for four distinct categories: Concentrates, Vapes, Edibles & Infusible, and most recently, Water-Soluble.
None of this was particularly meant to be, however, and Eric could not have envisioned his life today prior to his mother being diagnosed. “I’ve been a general contractor most of my life in the residential sector, primarily focused on sustainable-energy mission building,” he said. “I had no experience or thoughts of anything cannabis in my life at that point. The way it came about was one of my boys called me and asked if I had heard of a product called Rick Simpson Oil, and I hadn’t. My mom was currently investigating different types of alternative treatments or therapies for her condition, and that opened up the research right then. After gathering the data, I felt I needed to talk to my mom more efficiently about it, so I sat down with her, and she decided to give it a try.”
His open-minded mother had opened up a whole new world of possibility for equally stricken individuals, and for her son. This was around 2013, seven years after New Mexico had legalized medical cannabis in 2007. “There were 34 or 36 licensed non-profit producers (LNPP) in the program,” recalled Eric. “Some of them were vertically integrated, others were just cultivators, and there were a handful of manufacturers and some dispensaries. But there was definitely a moratorium on cultivation licenses at that time.”
Unfortunately, the quality of the underlying source material used to produce the oil was not up to par. “Through my research, I had found a major concern in regard to the integrity of the biomass that was going to be used to make this medicine for my mom. Cannabis is a weed, and hemp is a weed, so it definitely remediates on the soil. Therefore, I was subject to what I was being told in regard to how that specific batch was cultivated, and what products were used throughout that cultivation, and the last thing I wanted to do was introduce, or even possibly introduce, anything outside of a pure herb mixture into my mom’s body.”
His evaluation of the biomass state of affairs was not just local, however. “It was based upon evaluating the testing that was going on, and not specific to New Mexico by any means,” he said. “I was doing broad research on a lot of stuff coming out of Israel, and I was doing a very broad investigation in regard to the efficacy and safety of not only the product that I needed to create for my mom, but how that product was being created.
“I had been looking closely at the CBD industry as well because I wanted to incorporate some CBD into my mom’s base medicine,” he added. “So, I had a lot of data to pull from in regard to history, the industry, and the major concerns, and what that led to was me becoming my mom’s licensed caregiver, which allowed me to cultivate the medicine for her. That was 2014.”
It was also essentially the point of no return. “That’s when I really felt that I had complete control over the quality of the plant being cultivated for the medicine and the process by which that medicine was being produced for her,” he said. He abetted his research with the formal instruction of the day. “I actually went to Oaksterdam University. I didn’t know anything about [cannabis] other than as a very young adult engaging at a recreational level, so I had a lot to learn. At that point in time, Oaksterdam was the major source of education that could provide a clear direction for me not only with cultivation, but with the production of that product for my mom.”
The co-founders of Mountaintop Extracts also brought lifelong skills to the table. He had been a general contractor, and she an air traffic controller. They are not skill-sets frequently associated with cannabis extraction, but in this case they turned out to be the very proficiencies required for the tasks ahead.
“What led Jennifer and I actually to get serious and decide to venture into this as an industry was that my mom ultimately went the chemotherapy route with her condition, and at that facility where she was receiving her treatments, there were other patients who were also receiving treatment,” explained Eric, who took a quick step back in time to make his point. “For the first five months of the introduction of the Rick Simpson Oil and suggested method of ingestion for her, there were positive results showing up on the blood test, and that created a lot of excitement and hope within the family,” recalled Eric. “That took a reverse turn slightly after month five, and that’s when she decided to go ahead and start the chemotherapy. What this medicine did through the last year and a half of her journey was to provide some peace and comfort, so it became a way for her to deal a little bit easier and kinder going through the process of this horrible disease.
“She began to talk with others at the chemotherapy center,” he continued, “and I quickly realized that there was a need, there was a want, for some relief, and that the last thing that someone with these types of conditions or similar needed was to ever have to question the integrity of what they were putting into their body as they were seeking some relief, and possibly a cure, for whatever the scenario would be. That’s the last thing they needed to worry about, and I saw a huge void and need based solely upon that, and what happened was there was simultaneously an explosion at one of the labs here in New Mexico, and coming from the building industry, a highly regulated industry for safety, and Jennifer coming from air traffic control, the first thing that came to my mind was that this should never happen.”
Time-wise, everything was falling into place, even with the state, which was on its own learning curve with respect to cannabis extraction. As Jen noted, ‘The state’s answer to these explosions was requiring everyone to do all their extractions outside.”
“I went to an extraction safety seminar up in Boulder,” added Eric, “and ironically they used the [explosion] video in the class. It was just unbelievable what I saw on that video, and it was in our own state. But, coming from the heavily regulated building industry and the safety that revolved around that, I’d also had the opportunity to help get a high-temperature solar thermal project done that required me to sit down with the building officials and basically walk them through the system, which had not been done in New Mexico in over 30 years. There was no one on staff who knew how to go through that process, and so I felt very comfortable coming in and making decisions to set the standards for, say, light hydrocarbon extraction in New Mexico, and then how to go about doing that with the state.” Eventually, he became New Mexico’s dedicated hydrocarbon extraction educator, walking state officials, engineers, and eventually even micro-breweries through the state’s new standards and processes that he had helped develop.
Eric estimated there were “probably eight significant extractors providing products to the market at that time.” The stars had aligned to present a need and a market opportunity, and now all that mattered was developing a differentiating process. “I think it was definitely an emotional coming to the market where we just wanted to have full confidence in what we were giving to Eric’s mom,” said Jen, “but it was also Eric’s background, his love for sustainability and building. I think extraction really called for you to have a clean and efficient process, and that’s really when there was a decision about what kind of extractors we are going to be. We really felt like process mattered in this particular instance to really focus on the efficacy of the plant and full-spectrum and everything we truly believed made it a holistic medicine, and that’s where the light hydrocarbon fit the aperture of everything that Eric loved.”
“It was definitely a process,” agreed Eric, “and I’m truly thankful that I had the foundation in construction to do all the necessary modifications to the property that we fortunately found through a real estate contract, because we didn’t have money and we don’t come from money, and we didn’t take anyone’s money. We got very creative and efficient, and the term reuse-repurpose lived at the forefront of every decision we made. It was very tight, and hands-on.”
Climbing the Mountain
They also got lucky. “We were driving in the warehouse district of downtown Albuquerque and there was this skinny slice of land with a tiny little adobe house on it for sale by owner,” said Jen. “The price range was the only thing that we could have afforded. Eric remodeled the entire thing on his own.” She took care of the business. “I secured the licensing and did the paperwork. To New Mexico’s credit, the medical program was very, very rigorous in terms of the paperwork and the SOPs, all the rules and regulations, and it truly made us the company we are today. It was difficult, a very hard lift, but I’m really appreciative for that and then Eric was doing the remodeling and researching what kind of equipment we could get.”
“Being a general contractor, I had the appropriate license to do the remodel and quickly bring a 650-square-foot space up to commercial standards,” explained Eric. “Luckily, the small adobe house had a detached 250-square-foot cinder block garage that worked perfectly for a Division 1 lab with minor modifications. It was just the perfect scenario to come about for an extremely limited budget. So, we got through that, and then I had already determined through Oaksterdam and much research that I wanted to go the light hydrocarbon closed-loop system route. I felt that offered me the largest potential toolbox, if you will, for creating just super-clean high-quality medicine. And so, we went to a show and got a nice discount on the smallest hydrocarbon unit they had, we worked out a payment plan with them, and that’s how that came about.”
They were limited to what they could produce at first. “High-quality concentrate oil, whether it be for ingestion and/or inhalation,” said Eric. “It didn’t have a crystal-clear direction or final product because the way the state was set up, we as a licensed manufacturer could not go out and purchase material to make product and then sell back to licensed distributors or dispensaries. We were subject to the 36 licensees that I had mentioned bringing us their biomass and telling us what product they wanted and creating it from that. So, we had very tight ropes around us in regard to our ability to get any type of R&D process going. We were basically in the business of cleaning up substandard material to make it into a gold-standard product, and that’s really where Mountaintop developed its processes to create this really clean, quality medicine.”
“It really was an interesting business dynamic for the independent manufacturers,” recalled Jen. “There were 10 to 12 of us at the end of 2014, and we really were servicing this small category of LNPPs.”
Their reputation was also growing by leaps and bounds. “Certainly, the oil and the concentrates were a fantastic hit on the market,” said Jen. “Originally, Eric and I had envisioned us just being an oil house, but one of the largest LNPPs knew that I had had a cookie company that I had done with a grassroots incubator kitchen. It was a really cool cooperative, and she said, ‘Please, we want some edibles out of Mountaintop.’ I was like, no. And actually, it was at her insistence and an actual blessing that I said, ‘Okay, we’ll give it a try.’ And me and our manager at that time got to work, we turned a small area into the kitchen, and that started our whole edible line. The company wanted to start with lollipops, we hand-poured our first 150 lollipops, and we were high-fiving. We did it, and we felt so accomplished. Susan Bailey called and said, ‘Those lollipops sold out in a day. We need like 1000 more of them.’ It opened up the door to something exciting and amazing.”
The growth happened fairly quickly. “I would say it was about nine months after we started to get clients, which was around February of 2017, when things started to click in for us and we really started rolling-out edibles in a strong way,” said Jen. “And it was just me and another one of our team players hand-pouring lollipops, so then we hired two more people, and we hand-poured for quite a while. That one employee’s record was about 900 hand-poured lollipops in a day, and we started looking around going, ‘We got to figure something out.’ We found this little hopper that just does a little pool pour, and we were able to finance that, and that was a game changer because the business was starting to be automated.”
Eric, who was focused on extraction, also had to bulk-up. “At that same time, I also started looking around for support in the extraction lab because I was the solo extractor for the first year, and that’s the hardest position to fill at the facility in my opinion,” he said. “We happened to have a lady working for us whose son-in-law was very technical, we brought him in, and he started working, helping with packaging the concentrates. I just opened up that dialogue, got to understand his technical abilities and his way of dissecting things until I felt comfortable enough to start training him. Hence, extractor number two was born, and he’s still with us, and is actually heading that department right now, which has grown to a department of five people.”
Amazingly, the company still uses its original extraction machine, sort of. We are still operating with one machine, but with double the capacity of that machine,” he explained. “Because of my work in biodiesel and solar and construction, I was able to have that machine engineered and adapted to run twice the throughputs that it’s advertised being able to run, and with much more efficiency. So, I wouldn’t call it the same equipment by any means.”
“He added on to the kit in such an ingenious way that we didn’t have to get rid of it and buy a whole new piece,” said a clearly pleased Jen.
The goal at Mountaintop Extracts is to continually improve. “I think that for someone to not just survive, but to thrive in this industry, one always has to have that at the forefront of their mind if they’re serious about this business and this medicine, and at Mountaintop, that’s something that we take to the core,” said Eric. “Whether it be in product development or a process, or a way of communicating to the general public about not just Mountaintop’s product line, but the industry as a whole, we are committed to always striving for that next level of expertise, of quality, and of commitment.
“There is one caveat to that in regard to the actual oil,” he added. “I assume that in the beginning everyone has a pretty large window in which to raise the quality of their product, and at a certain point in time, if you stay committed and are traveling that road, that window begins to narrow quite a bit. At that point, it basically lies in the apparatuses or the mechanical aspects of things where you can pick up some efficiencies and gain maybe a quarter or half percent in greater quality, if you will, but that’s where Mountaintop is right now. That window is very small and to get in and dissect and tweak is not nearly as easy as it was in the beginning, but it’s incredibly challenging and invigorating to be in that place.”
What is the state of biomass currently available to Mountaintop and its role in the process? “It is ultimately important,” said Eric. “Mountaintop is recognized in the state as a leading brand based on safety, quality, consistency, and transparency. When the state went adult-use, they opened up a series of what’s called micro producer licenses, and at the same time, they opened the state up to national brands. So, Mountaintop being birthed in New Mexico of New Mexicans, and being an agricultural state to a large degree, we had a commitment to working with a local cultivators and calling them for Mountaintop’s wholesale line of products.
“We seek the best of the best and thoroughly vet those cultivators, we have outstanding relationships with them, and at the same time, when Mountaintop opened his doors, the assumption was all the material we receive is contaminated to some degree,” he added. “And so, what we do is to ensure that that does not make it into the final batch of medicine. We custom-run every single batch of material that comes into Mountaintop, and what I mean by that is we have a pre-process where we evaluate and determine what is needed to get this product to a gold standard. And we create a custom media pack, which is a series of components that create a filter stack to remove the undesirables from that product.”
It is a form of remediation. “However, it is the lightest form of remediation required to get that product to that gold standard that Mountaintop holds,” assured Eric. “What I mean by that is that there are standard remediation packages that are sold on the marketplace, and you run a standard volume no matter what the input is. In doing so, if you have an input that is a higher quality than another input and you run that same remediation pack, you’re going to remove desirables. So, when I say we custom-blend each media pack for that run, that’s exactly what we do, because we want to make sure that we maintain as much of the of the original representation of that profile all the way through to the final product.”
Regarding the need for remediation in general, Eric stated, “It’s unfortunate that we have to even be concerned with that.” But Mountaintop’s reputation also demands more from cultivators. “When we rolled out rec, it was our first opportunity to have those relationships with cultivators,” said Jen. “So, most of our investment money went into creating our biomass department, to begin that relationship and to ensure that all the biomass rolling into mountaintops wholesale was something of the highest superior quality from ground up.”
Did it matter if it was grown indoor or outdoor? “It didn’t,” said Eric. “But my direction to the biomass department was certainly outdoor or greenhouse. Coming from the sustainable building industry, that matters to me, and I have seen outdoor on a par with any of the top-shelf indoor that I’ve ever seen cultivated. It’s truly dependent upon the cultivator in that region, and the environment in which that outdoor greenhouse has been cultivated.
“One of the things that we did at Mountaintop was implement in-house sulfur tests,” he added, “because there was no sulfur testing through any of the labs in New Mexico. We basically took a test that was created by Stanford University for the Napa Valley wine industry or grape industry, and it’s one of the first things we do when we’re vetting. The first thing is a questionnaire, full disclosure, and then when we receive the first sample of their product, we send it through our in-house sulfur test. If it passes that, we send it to the labs for analysis.
“And we’ve certainly had to vet the labs as well,” he noted. “It’s an interesting world out there with the labs, and so we don’t ever make any assumptions, and just do our due diligence and make sure that we’re getting results that are replicable by the labs, that are verifiable, whether that be through random tests sent out of the same strains.”
Building the Mountaintop Brand
From the beginning, even when Mountaintop was servicing the LNPPs, the resulting products were Mountaintop-branded. “We started out by branding the product lines that went into the dispensaries of the people delivering the biomass from the beginning,” said Eric, “so it would read, this is a Mountaintop product with flower cultivated by…”
It played perfectly into the identity Mountaintop wanted to create around the IP Eric had developed to remediate compromised biomass. “Most of the product we received didn’t pass state testing in the beginning, which is why I wanted to capitalize on the IP,” he said. “Mountaintop’s commitment was that process matters, and we wanted to be noticed for that.”
“And from the LNPPs perspective,” added Jen, “if they had 100 pounds of biomass, they had 12 manufacturers to choose from to send that biomass to, so it was beholden on Mountaintop to always try to produce the best and show the best yields, we were in competition for that service, and the LMPPs would pit the brands against each other, so most of the manufacturers had their own brands when they were going into the stores.”
The implementation of adult-use sales last year changed the game for everyone in New Mexico. “That was the first time that we had more control over the business and the branding certainly had different iterations over time,” said Jen. “We’re on our last iteration of the branding now to bring out a great cohesive package. Our direction is to really punch at the initial founding of 2016, and we want to be recognized as the go-to trusted brand that people don’t need to think about it, they know from soil-to-oil that this company cares about the cultivation, that process matters, they care about holistic preservation of the plant, they care about any sort of remediation, and they know that it has that Mountaintop seal. In terms of research and development and constantly pushing that bar, that is where we put pressure on Eric on the R&D side, and how we can develop our IP even more on the oil side so that these processes are pushing that envelope to just be the best, like the General Mills gold seal standard.
“The other thing that we evolved was really looking at our edibles, and how could we address the consumer market in terms of medicine,” she added. “That is our DNA, it’s always on the top of our mind, and even though it’s a recreational product, it has a medical basis. And one of the things that happened, which was a really beautiful iteration of how we were going to address medical needs, was that Eric and PhD chemists came together and created this water-soluble powder. The product is Oasis, but the technology is Solscend, which is a full-spectrum, water-soluble powder that allows an easy, discretionary way to add cannabis to any sort of diet. You can sprinkle it on your eggs, but it doesn’t have to come necessarily as an edible and that access was really important for us, because that’s where we are right now in terms of our marketing and that trust, integrity, and that we’re local homegrown.”
The repackaging will add to the current branding Mountaintop is known for. “The packaging that you’re looking at now will always stay our Mountaintop vintage line, but we do have a new line coming out that is the next evolution for us,” added Jen. “The marketing campaigns will focus on an enchantment of colors, and we’re trying to push education on what full-spectrum extraction means, and how it is different from a distillate and from CO2 extraction in terms it being a homeopathic medicine. Those are nuances that are being overlooked at the counter, and so our branding is going to be an expression of our education and our geography and how we extract and how we value medicine as a core of our identity.”
She said the medical community in New Mexico is resolute despite the introduction of adult-use. “I think that New Mexico medical patients are a very strong, loyal community and that is certainly showing in the purchases that are still being made in the medical market,” she said. “There’s been a slight dip in the number of card carriers, but I think that’s only a hiccup because there’s a transition from an actual card to a portal system, and that tends to be an older group that is sort of struggling with that technology. We don’t really think that that’s going to be an issue, and we do know that the core base of medical is still there.
“In terms of recreational,” she added, “New Mexico is extremely enthusiastic about adopting it in every corner of the state. There’s a very high number of licenses that have been issued with a lot of enthusiasm, and a lot of people are realizing their dreams to cultivate and talk about medicine. So, I think that’s really exciting, while at the same time, because of education, cannabis is becoming less of a stigma. Conversations are starting to happen where there’s a normalization, and for the most part it’s been adopted in a good way, and people are screaming for education.”
Mountaintop does have to be proactive in its outreach to consumers, however. “In addition to the sales and marketing department, we have an events division as well,” said Eric. “We spent a lot of time doing pop-ups and face-to-face events in an educational environment at these dispensaries so that they begin to grasp and experience the difference of Mountaintop. We’ve had that commitment from medical that we just carried that right into adult-use. Our message is very strong, it’s been very well received, and we have a very, very strong following.”
“But we’re still just wholesale distributors,” noted Jen. “We don’t have retail touch points, so our events and our pop-ups in the dispensary is the way that we interface with the people to get the data that I’m talking to you about.”
That connection with the consumer is especially important when it comes to creating new products, a time-consuming and expensive process. “It really is,” agreed Eric. “A perfect example of that would be Solscend, and why I decided to take that challenge. I saw an industry need. There was not a water-soluble on the market that wasn’t full of fillers, and being a medical-based company, I’m like, why not? I took the approach of a pharmaceutical mindset, if you will, in creating that three-ingredient, plant-based, water-soluble, full-spectrum THCA powder. I saw a void in the arena and knew that I didn’t have the chemistry background to create that. I had some base ideas of what I wanted to create, and what I wanted it to look like, and brought in Don Bellew, a PhD in Chemistry, to help me formulate it. We spent one year on that and perfected it, it’s been in the medical arena here in New Mexico for a little over a year, and we just had our adult-use launch of that product in a single-serving stick pack form on April 20 of this year.”
Oasis, as well as new effects-based products, will be available on a new company website that will launch soon. It’s another advance for a company that has always grown itself organically and for whom the future appears bright. “This door is being opened at a national level, conversations are happening, and it’s very exciting,” said Eric, enthusiastic about the effects-based products in development. “There are two effects-based products in the gummy market in New Mexico, national brands, and Mountaintop saw an opportunity to create something above and beyond what those products represent. We actually are launching our effects-based sleep gummy within the next 30 to 60 days, we have a live gummy quickly following, and then a balance gummy to be the final of the three effects-based line. We’re very excited to have gotten some really great feedback from the dispensaries so far in our test run on that product line, so we’re very excited about that.”
The questions is, does Mountaintop Extracts really want to become a national brand? “We’ve spent a lot of time in these kinds of conversations, especially as we evolved into the leading brand in New Mexico,” replied Eric. “And with the Solscend technology being patented in Canada and patent-pending here in the US, that certainly has come even more to the forefront of these conversations. So, the short answer is yes, and the longer answer is we need to have the proper partners. I’m currently engaged in conversations with people who have patented technology that they want to come into New Mexico, and they are multistate operators. And so, these dialogues are beginning to occur that are opening those doors, and we really listen to the gut, we do our research and have a dialogue as a team on what we’re seeing on the market, what we’re experiencing, and I absolutely believe that those opportunities will come, and we’re certainly open to them.”
Are there other IP aspects to the various processes that can be patented? “There are, and one of the things that is pretty intriguing about potentially expanding nationally is that basically this is a value-added proposition,” said Eric. “It’s some plug-and-play things on the front-end and the back-end that any competent light hydrocarbon extractor is going to immediately understand and be able to implement, because we have strong SOPs that go along with this. Jennifer mentioned the General Mills seal of approval, and there is the possibility of that becoming the standard for, let’s say, bulk, full-spectrum oil needed by others, maybe even outside of the license holders.”
“It’s like we’re looking at the national play as a parallel track,” added Jen, “where we see the Solscend technology being a kind of no-brainer out in the industry, and then also bringing in the Mountaintop IP oil brand seal of approval, and that kind of solves both problems, because as we talk to consumers and the industry, it goes back down to what’s lacking and what’s going on in the extraction process. And we want to influence that seal of approval because we’ve got the cleanest, full-spectrum oil that’s going into every single product.”
“We will carry the same foundational principles wherever we go, and that is that process matters and so does building with the locals,” reiterated Eric. “Although we may not be of that state or that country, those who we enter in with will be, and they will have that commitment to community, quality, and transparency. That is really going to be the determining factor of who we work with in those states, because there’s no reason for me to believe that it would be different in any other state at that foundational level with those principles.”
What matters at the end of the day is that the quality of the product they are putting out there is appreciated, and that people come back to buy it. “One thousand percent,” agreed Jen.
“I truly believe that people care what they’re putting into their bodies,” added Eric, “and what’s interesting about that consumer aspect is that in the beginning, our marketing approach was from the bottom up, because we knew we had very little influence over the LNPPs ability to get Mountaintop’s message to the consumer. We started from the bottom up, just boots on the ground, saying, ‘Here’s Mountaintop, we are the real deal, and here’s why, here’s how, come take a look, and come experience.’ And that has served us extremely well. We have a very cultish following that is growing on a daily basis, and we are very, very well-known and respected in the community at the local level outside of the business aspect of it.”
“Our approach with the customer was always to try those other gummies, explore other products, and what works best for you is always great,” added Jen. “So, the ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ and ‘just enjoy the ride’ approach is what we’ve taken, and to our joy, more often than not, they land right back at Mountaintop.”
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