LUCHADOR is a recreational cannabis brand inspired by the enigmatic masked wrestlers of Mexico. Created by my company Ciencia Labs, it has been one of the most successful small cannabis brands in California, the most competitive cannabis market in the world.
Create a bold, striking, fun edible brand that leaps off the shelves and can blossom into something much bigger than just the products.
Ciencia Labs' founder is Carolina Vazquez Mitchell, a gifted scientist and product developer from Guadalajara. She wanted to create a brand that was a tribute to her home country of Mexico. It needed to be strong, bold, colorful, fun - everything she associated with Mexican culture.
We started the brand development with a handful of observations:
We also observed that the existing brands selling high potency tinctures—up to 1000mg of THC—were priced about twice as high as they should have been, and that even at a reduced rate we could have exceptional gross margins (80%).
I had more fun moodboarding and researching LUCHADOR than I have for any other project.
Lucha Libre is an incredibly vibrant, animated form of entertainment with good guys (Técnicos) and bad guys (Rudos), and we looked to the 1970s era to conjure up an aesthetic built on simple primary colors and anchored around a hero—Super Fuerte—the brand’s powerful mascot.
We developed unique sunburst aesthetic for the packaging which was designed to leap off the shelves, and stand out from a sea of bland edible brands trying to communicate “safety”. LUCHADOR screams “fun” and sends a tongue-in-cheek warning to the lightweights.
LUCHADOR is a rare omni-channel cannabis brand, in that it exists beyond just the products.
We host regular Lucha Libre shows in dispensary parking lots, and draw anywhere from 500-2000 people to the shows. My background in festival marketing and event production has enabled us to bring a unique experiential marketing strategy to the cannabis industry that others have tried—and failed— to emulate.
LUCHADOR has also been a rich content vehicle, utilizing the wrestlers to spread the word about the brand, pop up for in store experiences and host impromptu fights at industry events.
I can proudly say that there is no brand quite like LUCHADOR.
Everyone in California cannabis knows about LUCHADOR. It’s cited by many as their favorite brand for its raw creativity and abundant personality.
We have sold more than 200,000 units of product in two years, and are very proud to say that the brand is profitable and poised to grow much bigger in the coming years.
