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In this educational episode of the Legacies Podcast, hosts Tom Ritchie and Wesley Bowles discuss personal health management and retail trends. They analyze a recent domain registration dispute involving Cronos Group and domain aggregator Mera Holdings regarding the domain name kronosgrp.com under UDRP guidelines. They review product craftsmanship and quality standards, highlighting a compliant product selection received from Alexandre Poulin of Jubilee, noting the importance of product design, dense CBD/THC fruit bites, and pure extraction methods for consumer value.
Later, they welcome Rama Mayo, co-founder of Hall of Flowers, who discusses his entrepreneurial background booking punk rock concerts in Central Massachusetts and launching record labels (Cast Iron Hike, Dim Mak). He explains how the B2B fashion trade show Agenda provided the blueprint for Hall of Flowers, details their strict curation application process, and outlines the compliance structures required to run direct-to-consumer sales via on-site dispensary partnerships in California. Second guest Chris Crosbie, founder and COO of Atlantic Cultivation, shares his journey from training martial arts in Newfoundland to living at the Shaolin Temple in China, training Muay Thai in Thailand, and Jiu-Jitsu in Brazil. He explains discovering commercial cultivation in California on an MMA scholarship, returning to Canada to build a vertically integrated company with local investment, operating a 40,000-square-foot facility, and direct-shipping to their Atlantic Cannabis retail stores.
Tom Ritchie Says: Hey, what’s going on, everyone? Check out what’s coming up this week on Legacies.
Tom Ritchie Says: Happy birthday, Mr. Jay Schwartz! Yes, indeed, happy birthday.
Rama Mayo Says: He writes down ’16 x 300′ on a piece of paper. And I was like, wait, you want 300 of these shirts? And he goes, ‘300 of everything.’ It was like $35,000 or $60,000 in cash handed right over!
Chris Crosbie Says: At that point, I didn’t know what powdery mildew was. I was like, ‘Look at all these crystals!’ I was literally smoking pure powdery mildew!
Tom Ritchie Says: Hey, welcome to Legacies, everyone! I’m your host, Tom Ritchie, joined by Wesley ‘The Wizard’ Bowles. Wes, good morning!
Wesley Bowles Says: Good morning!
Tom Ritchie Says: Don’t forget, Legacies is proudly powered by Breadstack! Retailers, if your e-commerce game and local SEO are lacking, it’s time for an upgrade. Reach out to Breadstack and tell them we sent you.
Tom Ritchie Says: My back is acting up again this morning, so if I start dozing off in the chair, just nudge me! I woke up early, did some yoga, meditated, and took some CBD chews with a muscle relaxer.
Tom Ritchie Says: I’m rocking my Ganja Glam shirt today. Brandon and Chino over at Ganja Glam put on the Lake & Bake boat cruise, which was a massive success. Heavyweight, 100% cotton—super comfy apparel.
Wesley Bowles Says: We have a whole collection of cannabis brand shirts at this point!
Tom Ritchie Says: Wes, have you ever heard of the firmament theory or simulation theory?
Wesley Bowles Says: I’m definitely a bigger fan of simulation theory. Creators create creators. If humans are on the cusp of building high-fidelity simulations with AI, the statistical odds that we are in a base reality are remarkably slim.
Tom Ritchie Says: Did you see the viral TikTok trend where people thought Chase Bank had an ‘infinite money glitch’ by depositing fraudulent six-figure checks and withdrawing cash before clearing?
Wesley Bowles Says: People were literally lining up around ATMs committing felony bank fraud on camera, only for Chase to freeze their accounts and place them tens of thousands of dollars in the negative days later.
Tom Ritchie Says: When I was ten years old, I used a bent bottle cap to alter a scratch-off lottery ticket from a spade to a club to claim a $1,000 prize at Royal Bank. The bank teller stalled, called the police, and officers sat me down to explain federal fraud. It scared me completely straight!
Wesley Bowles Says: When I was fourteen on my paper route, I’d drop empty deposit envelopes into the ATM to float my account. Back in the day, young kids were sent door-to-door collecting cash for newspaper subscriptions like a mini collection racket.
Tom Ritchie Says: Following our discussion last week on whether cannabis sales and marketing professionals need to consume product, about 70% of audience comments agreed that personal familiarity is critical.
Wesley Bowles Says: An interesting perspective shared on LinkedIn pointed out that non-consumers or light consumers can sometimes design better mainstream products—like micro-dosed beverages or balanced topicals—because heavy daily consumers often design solely for ultra-high tolerance prosumers.
Tom Ritchie Says: I also want to ask cannabis medical researchers and clinicians: how does nighttime THC consumption affect REM sleep cycles, dreaming, and physical joint recovery? If there are doctors who have studied cannabinoid sleep architecture, reach out—we’d love to have you on the show.
Wesley Bowles Says: A huge shoutout to Glen Coyle and Six One Charlie! They launched three new vetted craft cultivars on Mendo Medical today.
Tom Ritchie Says: And a massive Happy Birthday to Jay Schwartz from Mendo! Glen sent over pictures of him sealing bags in the facility. Supporting veteran-led craft brands is what this platform is all about.
Tom Ritchie Says: StratCann reported that Cronos Group lost a domain dispute against Mirror Holdings, who had acquired CronosGroup.com and offered to sell it back for $18,500 USD.
Wesley Bowles Says: Under UDRP domain arbitration, you must prove bad-faith squatting. If a corporate holding company acquired the generic name legitimately, proving extortion is difficult.
Tom Ritchie Says: For a publicly traded licensed producer, spending $18.5K to protect primary digital IP is far cheaper than the legal hours spent fighting and losing arbitration. Pay the money and protect your brand.
Tom Ritchie Says: We finally unboxed the care package from Alexandre Poulin at Jublee. Their Chili Kush hot sauce—both the Honey Hot and Habanero—is delicious with authentic culinary heat.
Tom Ritchie Says: Unlike tiny micro-gummies, Jublee produces substantial 20g whole-food fruit bites with organic functional ingredients, plus 100mg CBD wellness chews with less than 1mg THC. Alex also sent traditional Montreal-style pressed hash. Real culinary integrity and legacy craftsmanship.
Tom Ritchie Says: Today we have a special two-guest double-header!
Tom Ritchie Says: First up is Rama Mayo, co-founder of Hall of Flowers, punk rock concert promoter, and advertising trailblazer. Following Rama, we are joined by Chris Crosbie, founder and COO of Atlantic Cultivation in Newfoundland.
Tom Ritchie Says: Rama, welcome to Legacies! You’re tuning in live from Ventura, California.
Rama Mayo Says: Thanks for having me, Tom and Wes! The beard is oiled up, and we’re just sixteen days away from the next Hall of Flowers.
Tom Ritchie Says: Walk us through how a kid promoting underground punk rock shows in high school ended up founding Hall of Flowers.
Rama Mayo Says: In the early ’90s in Massachusetts, I went to a vocational high school for mechanical engineering. I was skateboarding, listening to punk rock, and going to DIY shows without barriers or security where kids sold zines and vegan cookies.
Rama Mayo Says: My buddy Dickie Cummings and I started renting VFW halls for $50, packing 100 kids into 60-capacity rooms, printing flyers, and booking bands from payphones using frequency tone dialers from RadioShack. We started Big Wheel Recreation to sign a local band, Cast Iron Hike.
Rama Mayo Says: By the time I got to Northeastern University on an engineering scholarship, I dropped out of engineering to study music business, ended up lecturing the classes because I had eight live shows booked every weekend, and organized the New Bedford Fest for 3,000 people from all over the world. We put out early records for Jimmy Eat World, The Hives, At the Drive-In, and worked with Dashboard Confessional.
Rama Mayo Says: Bands survive on t-shirts and tickets. I bought my own screen-printing equipment to print merch for touring bands in Boston. That led to working with Steve Aoki when he ran Dim Mak as a punk label, and connecting with Aaron Levant, who founded the Agenda apparel trade show in San Diego and Long Beach.
Rama Mayo Says: At Agenda, Aaron gave me a booth for my punk merch. I didn’t have order forms or line sheets. A Japanese buyer walked up, pointed to a skull t-shirt, and wrote ’16 x 300′ on a piece of paper. He wanted 300 units of every design—handed over $35,000 cash in a hip pack on the spot with a double-handed bow. That order opened my eyes to wholesale trade economics.
Rama Mayo Says: We launched United House, a satellite show next to the massive Magic convention in Vegas, bringing in indie streetwear brands like Supra, Skullcandy, and Jeffrey Campbell footwear. My business partner Ryan Walker later left to play drums for Imagine Dragons. I partnered with Danny Diamond, who ran Capsule and Liberty before selling to Reed Exhibitions.
Rama Mayo Says: In LA, I joined Darren Romanelli at Street Virus and The Pancake Epidemic, handling creative marketing for Beats by Dre, Disney, and DreamWorks. At a trade show, I met Chris from G-Pen (Grenco Science)—who turned out to be my literal next-door apartment neighbor on Detroit Street sharing a bedroom wall!
Rama Mayo Says: We brought G-Pen into the agency and treated portable vaporizers like Beats by Dre: luxury packaging, high-profile music integrations, and Coachella sponsorships. That momentum drove dozens of cannabis brands to our door.
Rama Mayo Says: In 2018, Aaron Levant, Danny Diamond, and I launched Hall of Flowers. Unlike typical trade shows where anyone with a check gets booth space, Danny strictly curates the floor. We turn down hundreds of brands to protect the retail buyer experience.
Rama Mayo Says: We supply standardized, high-end booth architecture and furniture. We don’t permit towering custom banners, aggressive booth gimmicks, or obtrusive DJs. The floor is built entirely around retail buyers evaluating curated products with optimal foot traffic.
Rama Mayo Says: For our upcoming show, we’re introducing Day 2 for consumers and prosumers. In California, brands cannot sell direct-to-consumer without a licensed dispensary partner, so we built on-site dispensary pods to facilitate compliant transactions.
Rama Mayo Says: Brands can capture qualitative feedback and consumer survey data from 3,000 verified cannabis superfans, while enjoying carnival rides, movie screenings, art exhibits, and food trucks in our outdoor consumption park.
Rama Mayo Says: Gary Vaynerchuk partnered with us early on and delivered our first keynote. He recognized Hall of Flowers as the South by Southwest of cannabis.
Rama Mayo Says: Look at legacy events like MJBizCon in Vegas: you can’t have cannabis on the show floor, and consumption is relegated to a smoking pen outside. Hall of Flowers normalizes consumption in a dignified, beautifully designed environment.
Rama Mayo Says: It took five years of attending Ventura City Hall council meetings until midnight to secure our beachside venue permit. Danny’s production standards are unmatched.
Rama Mayo Says: At our Santa Rosa show, heavy rain turned the outdoor Shade Park consumption lawn into mud three days before opening. Danny spent thousands of dollars overnight to strip and re-sod the entire field with fresh grass before attendees arrived. That relentless dedication to quality is why Hall of Flowers stands alone.
Tom Ritchie Says: Rama, thank you for sharing your story and setting the gold standard for cannabis events worldwide. Best of luck in Ventura!
Tom Ritchie Says: Now welcoming our second guest: Christopher Crosbie, founder and COO of Atlantic Cultivation!
Chris Crosbie Says: What’s up, guys? Happy to finally be here on Legacies!
Tom Ritchie Says: Chris, you are an east coast boy from St. John’s, Newfoundland with an incredible story. How did you get started?
Chris Crosbie Says: Growing up in Newfoundland, I started smoking hash and brick weed at thirteen while training intensely in martial arts. I taught Jeet Kune Do—Bruce Lee’s philosophy of using what is locally practical.
Chris Crosbie Says: At nineteen, obsessed with Kung Fu cinema, I found an Angelfire website and moved to central China to live with a Shaolin monk in Dengfeng near the Shaolin Temple. We rode twelve hours between unheated train cars, trained in long johns in cement rooms, heated our quarters with charcoal, and competed in traditional Wushu festivals before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Chris Crosbie Says: When winter set in, I moved to Thailand for four and a half years. In the mountains of Pai, I tracked down a French master living in a bamboo bungalow teaching traditional Muay Boran.
Chris Crosbie Says: We ran ten kilometers daily into the jungle, kicked down wild banana trees, built bamboo bongs, and sourced garbage bags of whole-plant landrace sativa from the local Lahu hill tribe. We lived without electricity, waking with the sun, training twice a day, and smoking bamboo bowls with the community.
Chris Crosbie Says: In 2007, I moved to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, living with the Gracie family and training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under master Vinicius ‘Draculino’ MagalhĂŁes to earn my blue belt.
Chris Crosbie Says: In 2008, I earned a full-ride athletic scholarship to American Sports University in San Bernardino, California for their collegiate MMA team. I obtained a California Prop 215 medical recommendation for martial arts injuries.
Chris Crosbie Says: Stepping into California dispensaries and smelling Blue Dream, SFV OG, Tahoe OG, and Granddaddy Purple completely shifted my obsession from martial arts to cannabis cultivation. I built hydroponic bubbler cloner boxes out of storage totes, documented grows on Rollitup forums, and set up a 10-light perpetual medical collective in a condo under Prop 215.
Chris Crosbie Says: A guy from the forums claiming to be a grower moved into the collective to help. He had an obedient police-trained dog and brought in CO2 equipment. After an argument over his erratic behavior, I kicked him out.
Chris Crosbie Says: Weeks later on Super Bowl Sunday, an ATF task force raided the house, seizing all plants, ballasts, and laptops. Because I maintained meticulous Prop 215 patient records, doctor recommendations, and zero excess cash, I avoided federal prosecution as the statute of limitations expired.
Chris Crosbie Says: I engineered a recirculating deep water culture (RDWC) system with Riverside Hydroponics, but when California’s early recreational ballot initiatives failed, I returned home to Newfoundland in 2015 to regroup.
Chris Crosbie Says: In Newfoundland, cannabis had severe social stigma, so I worked in offshore oil and gas. When Trudeau announced federal legalization plans, I obtained an ACMPR medical license, designated my parents’ private property, and taught my mother how to grow.
Chris Crosbie Says: I submitted a multi-thousand-page physical application to Health Canada in Ottawa and received a conditional Letter of Readiness—the first in Newfoundland. Paul Penner and David Hyde offered guidance, but consultants charged $120,000, so I drafted the operational security plans myself.
Chris Crosbie Says: When Canopy Growth announced a major deal with the Newfoundland government, the province offered matching retail store opportunities to local operators who secured LP backing. I brought together two prominent Newfoundland business families, partnered with Hugo Alves and Auxly for equity investment, and began construction on our 90,000 sq ft facility in St. John’s.
Chris Crosbie Says: Today, Atlantic Cultivation operates eight flowering rooms, two veg rooms, 40,000 sq ft of processing, employs nearly 200 people, manages 550+ active SKUs across Canada, and supplies 80% to 85% of all products sold across our corporate retail stores directly from our own indoor production.
Chris Crosbie Says: Years ago, while flying through Toronto Pearson Airport after my mother’s critical brain tumor surgery, I was at an all-time low. I bought the book The Secret at an airport kiosk. Walking toward my gate, an imposing man in a white suit stopped me—it was Bob Proctor, the lead author!
Chris Crosbie Says: Bob wrote an inscription in my book and told me, ‘Chris, you’ll understand what this meeting was about when you finish reading.’ The moment I landed at LAX, I walked into a tattoo parlor and inked ‘Thoughts Become Things’ on my arm. That mindset got me through every setback.
Tom Ritchie Says: Maintaining morning mindfulness, meditation, and mental health rituals is essential. In the cannabis grind, operators face immense stress, and remembering why you started keeps you grounded.
Chris Crosbie Says: What you and Wes are doing on Legacies is critical. You’re building an enduring time capsule. In ten or twenty years, people won’t remember the financial sacrifices, regulatory hurdles, and heartbreaks that built this industry unless we document these firsthand stories today.
Tom Ritchie Says: Chris, what you’ve built with Atlantic Cultivation, Crooked Dory, and the Newfoundland community is legendary. Thank you for your transparency and resilience!
Tom Ritchie Says: What an incredible double-header episode with Rama Mayo and Chris Crosbie!
Wesley Bowles Says: From DIY punk rock shows and California trade show masterclasses to Shaolin temples and building Newfoundland’s premier licensed producer, this episode had it all.
Tom Ritchie Says: Huge thanks to Breadstack for powering the show. Check out the link below, and we’ll see you next week on Legacies!
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Founder & Chief Operating Officer
Chris Crosbie is a Canadian entrepreneur, martial artist, and founder and COO of Atlantic Cultivation, a vertically integrated producer in Newfoundland.
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Atlantic Cultivation is a licensed Canadian cannabis cultivator, processor, and retailer based in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. The company...
Learn More About Partner ↗Because brands in California cannot sell products directly to consumers at events, Hall of Flowers partners with an on-site licensed dispensary entity that manages the inventory, transaction processing, and point-of-sale compliance logs.
Under UDRP domain arbitration rules, the panel ruled in favor of Mera Holdings. Cronos Group was unable to prove that Mera acquired the domain kronosgrp.com in bad faith specifically to hijack their brand, highlighting the importance of early domain acquisition.
Atlantic Cultivation uses a vertically integrated model, manufacturing products at its 40,000-square-foot facility in St. John's, direct-shipping them to its proprietary retail stores, and toll-processing for other craft brands to distribute as house brands.
