Pot Company Backed by Jay Z Planned to “Dominate” the Market With Half a Billion Dollars in Cash: It’s Now on Life Support

Despite hefty claims and a huge capital outlay, Jay Z’s cannabis brand couldn’t thrive in the California market.

“We’re going to dominate and consolidate the market,” boasted one board member of The Parent Company, which, in association with Jay Z, launched the ambitious weed brand, Monogram. With an alleged $575 at their helm, making Monogram’s launch the biggest story in the weed business in 2020, the top brass in the company reportedly aimed for $334M in revenue within the same year.

However, the reality couldn’t be more different, as not only did its chief visionary officer Jay Z end up parting ways with the brand in the following years, but the brand itself is now struggling to stay afloat.

Jay Z’s Monogram Failed To Live Up to Its Hype

Despite The Parent Company’s hefty claims about taking over the Weed market in California, it didn’t take Monogram long to succumb to its harsh market, which is dominated by high taxes and illicit businesses. While Monogram was launched as a luxurious joint, the end product left a lot to be desired despite its humungous pricing of $50 per joint. GQ noted that the joint apparently failed to stay lit “more than a few seconds”.

With the product failing to live up to its hype, in 2022, The Parent Company reportedly ended up incurring a net loss of more than $587 million. In the same year, The Parent Company merged with Gold Flora, another cannabis company from California, and ironically, The Parent Company only had a 49% share in the new merger. Not long after the new deal, Monogram officially separated from The Parent Company, thus ending Jay Z‘s association with the cannabis brand.

Expert Called Out Monogram’s Business Practices

Monogram’s quick downfall didn’t come as a surprise to industry veteran Seth Yakatan, a notable cannabis investor and adviser. Condemning The Parent Company’s approach to the market with its so-called luxurious joint, Yakatan expressed disbelief over Monogram’s huge spending upon its arrival.

He further added (via SFGATE) that the end product did little to live up to the hype, which stemmed from the Renegage rapper‘s association, stressing that most users felt the product was nothing “more than mid-tier”.

Like many other things we’ve seen in cannabis surrounding rappers, the hype hasn’t met the reality. Monogram was supposed to be an ultra-premium product, and I don’t know anyone who tried it and thought it was anything more than mid-tier,

Things aren’t looking well for Monogram lately, as Gold Flora itself is struggling to stay afloat in the California market, which has reportedly registered $56M in losses so far this year.