I was first introduced to Love CBD through Jon, from Nature’s Health Box, a brand he was selling in huge supplies, with a massive demand in the UK. They’ve certainly become one of the biggest players in the industry!
Products By Love CBD
I’ve so far only reviewed one of the Love CBD products, but I hope to see this increase over time!
500mg Love CBD Dutch CBD Oil
This is a spray that makes the consumption quantity dead easy when compared to the traditional drop method. While I love MCT oil in CBD, my girlfriend has diabetes type 1 and therefore isn’t allowed MCT. The Love CBD oil contains olive oil instead, therefore this has now become her go-to product.
The History Of Love CBD
Love CBD began in 2014, initially out of a one bedroom flat in a small corner of Newmarket.
The founder of the company, Dan, had not actually intended to start a
CBD company at all, but rather to meet with a guy from as far as we are
aware, the first trading UK CBD company. The plan was to offer him a deal: in
exchange for a job with them, Dan would redesign their website for free and
make it altogether more professional and easier to navigate.
It was a simple plan on Dan’s part, one which failed entirely. the company owner
didn’t appreciate that his beloved website, which he had slaved over,
was being critiqued in a not too flattering way.
Instead, Dan mulled it over and opted to use the design ideas he had
created for them, and create a new website of his own. After
much brain storming between Dan and his brother, Phil, the name Love
CBD was thought up.
Love CBD started off by selling a 7% CBD oil which came from a Dutch
bloke called Ron. He might have run a company over there but honestly
I doubt it. His oil was good though.
Initially we bought 4 bottles, which cost us £40 per 10ml bottle and
we sold for £60. They had no label, were not tamper evident and no best
before date (sorry Trading Standards).
While the product looked… rustic… it was based on an actual
philosophy. We didn’t want to be like the CBD oils that were being
sold at that time: products like “Cibdex”, which was still a thing
back then. Dan had tried a bunch of CBD products that year and
most of them were rubbish. Nearly all of them came from the USA
and were made with hemp stalks because the flowers were illegal.
Whatever they were made from they were useless and expensive. And
given that Love CBD was focused on getting wider cannabis legalisation
to the UK as soon as possible, it was irrational to be selling
products of that kind. They would reinforce the belief in people that
cannabis had no other uses besides recreational, and that without the
THC there was no value carried by the plant at all.
This central belief: that a cannabis oil without THC (or at least one
with only trace amounts of it) could be really useful to a lot of
people was a driving force behind the company. But it was therefore
pretty obvious we needed to get the highest quality oil we could get
our hands on. Enter: Ron.
And that’s the way it’s been ever since. We’ve changed our suppliers a
number of times, but we’ve never stopped focusing on the quality of
the oil. To do anything else never made sense to us. We wanted to
prove a few things about cannabis and we need the best oil to show the
wider public what it can do.
2015 was a difficult year overall for the company. When we first
started out, there was a real concern that the police would knock on
our door (or perhaps knock down our door) and ask how come we were
selling cannabis oil. Even if our oils only contained trace amounts of THC
the fact is we were selling a product known for being a “dangerous drug”,
and it wasn’t as if we were hiding what
we were doing or who we were.
But we just carried on regardless, with the hope that if they did raid us that
they would realise that no-one was getting high from our products and
they might even be getting benefits.
We were convinced that the longer we were allowed to trade the more
safe it would become. The more customers we had, the more people who
were saying, “we didn’t get high, but it was otherwise beneficial”
the
more secure we felt. And with other companies coming into the
marketplace during 2015, that also helped reassure us that we were
going to be okay legally.
We had 4 credit card processors during 2015. All four companies had
initially approved us… and then soon after changed their minds – or
perhaps Visa changed their minds for them, we’ll never know. But it
made selling CBD a real challenge when customers can only pay by bank
transfer – especially as a large percentage of CBD customers are
pensioners, many of whom won’t even know what BACS stands for.
Finally, in January of 2016, we found Clearhaus, a wonderful little
Danish bank who didn’t care that we were selling CBD oil because, you
know, CBD oil is legal, so why would it be a problem?
Our business was growing and prospects
improving, when in October
of 2016 we received a very unwelcome letter from the MHRA. This
stated that they had determined that CBD was now a medicine and
that we had a month to either get marketing authorisation or cease trading.
Clearly the first option was not possible and ridiculous. It is fair to say
that
the industry very quickly acted and formed the CTA. We were able to put
in place the first set of industry regulations which is what has enabled the
growth industry that we see today. It is a shame that since then division and
hostility within this industry has occurred, as we continue to face challenges
and opposition which would be better
faced together.
There are so many more CBD companies out there now, with so much more
awareness in the general public about the merits of CBD. However, we’re
equally
aware that there are still millions of people, in the UK alone, who
would benefit from CBD and who aren’t yet using it.
Today, five years after we started
selling CBD, the Love CBD Range has
expanded – if somewhat cautiously. We never wanted to have too many
products, to clutter up our range in a way that might confuse people with
an over abundance of choices and products that might be difficult to tell apart.
Today our products include capsules, a
range of sublingual sprays, balm and e
liquids. They are available through 7 national distributors in the UK
and Ireland and another who supply EU wide. We supply direct to in the
region of 500 shops and our website sales continue to increase every
month.
These are exciting days for us all, and cannabis has the prospect of
being massive boon for a troubled economy and a troubled world.