At Costa Mesa Firm, All They Are Saying Is Give Hemp a Chance

Someday, when the rush is over, Christopher Boucher figures he’ll sit back and think about what fun it was to hitch a ride on the new wave of Beatlemania that is sweeping the country.

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But for now, he’s too busy.

Boucher’s Hempstead Co., which manufactures products made of industrial hemp, has landed a contract to make three products being merchandised with the Beatles’ new album.

Per an agreement with EMI Merchandising, the Costa Mesa business is making hemp hats, wallets and backpacks that can be ordered from a form tucked into “The Beatles Anthology, Vol. I” compact discs.

The CDs have been selling like crazy and so have the promotional items, said Christopher Scully, head of merchandising at EMI.

EMI has the rights to Apple Organics, a line of products featuring “environmentally friendly” clothing promoted along with Beatles albums, he said.

In the first four days of the album’s release, the promotion generated more than 2,000 telephone orders for the items, and a flood of mail orders is anticipated, Scully said.

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The blitz includes the sale of 11 products, eight of them from O-Wear, a company that makes clothing from organically grown cotton.

So far, the T-shirts from O-Wear are the hottest sellers; the Hempstead Co. hats are in second place, he said. More than 10,000 hats and T-shirts have been delivered to record stores.

With the goal of marketing environmentally sensitive products, Scully said Hempstead Co.--which boasts to being the largest hemp manufacturing company in the nation--was the natural choice.

“I look at them as [being] pretty much the trendsetter with this whole thing,” Scully said.

Boucher, who opened the business in 1991 with partner David Martyn, believes the contract might also be a major break for the overall sales of products made of industrial hemp, which promoters say has been unfairly maligned because of its relationship to marijuana.

Cannabis sativa is the plant common to both marijuana and industrial hemp, but the latter contains only a negligible amount of tetrahydrocannabinol, THC, which produces the drug “high,” promoters say.

“Now that everyone’s going to see that the Beatles . . . a large, large name like that, is carrying hemp, it’s going to hit like wildfire,” Boucher said. “It’s not just a bunch of hippies or a bunch of people trying to legalize marijuana. It’s a viable, sustainable crop that’s very profitable.”

Scully said EMI zeroed in on hemp because, after years of Beatles merchandising, they were looking for “a whole unique twist” for their products.

“There’s really not much more, in terms of new ideas, you can do with the Beatles, everything’s pretty much been done,” he said.

George Harrison played a key role in designing the hemp hat, suggesting that wording on the cap be moved to the side, rather than the front or back, thereby making the hat “more modern and trendy looking,” Scully said.

The Beatles are concerned about the environment, he said, and it was that aspect of hemp--not its association with marijuana--that inspired the deal with Hempstead Co.

“We don’t want to endorse marijuana or drug use,” he said. “That never even crossed our mind as the reason we would want to do this.”

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Certainly, the rush of activity is keeping the small band of workers at Hempstead Co. hustling.

“We’ve been working every night till about midnight, packaging hemp hats,” said Boucher.

On Tuesday, Hempstead Co. employees hurried through the day, putting the finishing touches on a stack of just-delivered hats. The caps are made for Hempstead by RPM 724, a Santa Ana manufacturing company.

With a charcoal drawing of John Lennon--hung long before the deal with EMI was negotiated--staring down from the wall and a Bob Marley tune filling the air, Butterfield tagged the hats while Boucher snipped away loose threads.

Inside the hat is a warning: “Do not consume.” The price tag: $24.99.

The orders have been coming in too quickly to add them to the database, so office manager Milan Tabrizi has filled out labels and addressed boxes until her hand aches. The night before Thanksgiving, employees say they showed up at a UPS office with 160 boxes of hats destined for Camelot Music stores around the nation.

Even before the current onslaught, Boucher said their privately held company was doing well, selling to about 1,000 stores worldwide. In 1994, they made just over $1 million, Boucher said, and their goal is to close out 1995 with $1.5 million in sales, a goal he thinks they are likely to reach.

The company also boasts of past merchandising deals with other rock bands, including the Grateful Dead.

Boucher admits a shirt made of hemp can cost two or three times more than a cotton shirt, but he said hemp products have many advantages. Hemp is particularly sturdy and is grown in an environmentally safe manner, without pesticides, promoters say.

Boucher blames the higher hemp prices on the fact that hemp must be imported since it has been illegal to grow any variety of the plant in the United States since 1937. Hempstead imports its hemp from China and Hungary.

“About a $40-million industry, and we’re getting left behind,” he said. If hemp were grown locally, he said, “we would see the price cut in half overnight.”

Not that they haven’t tried.

Last year, Hempstead Co. planted its own field of dreams in Brawley, after winning permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to launch the test project on federally owned land. But Imperial County narcotics officers--who said local children had been sneaking onto the field and stealing plants--plowed the crops under.

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Still, industrial hemp promoters say their product’s time has come.

Hempstead has attracted the attention of actor Woody Harrelson, who decided to invest in the company. Harrelson, who first met Boucher and Martyn about three years ago, said he became a partner because he is concerned about deforestation and favors using hemp to produce paper products.

“The ultimate objective for me is I’m really concerned about the status of the forest,” Harrelson said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “I think hemp is certainly among the answers and I wanted to get involved with these guys.”

The EMI deal--which Harrelson knew about before investing in the company--was simply “a nice bonus,” he said.

“I’m a Beatles fanatic,” he said, “so it’s a doubly good bonus.”

In addition, Hemp In The Hollow, Orange County’s first all-hemp retail store, opened just this month in Laguna Beach, selling jeans, backpacks, hats, bags and paper. They even offer lip balm and cosmetics made from hemp seed oil.

Steven Farmer, who co-owns that store with his wife Cindy Biggers, said there were 12 manufacturing wholesalers in the United States in 1993 and by 1994 there were 200.

“It’s growing from the ground up,” Farmer said.

While things are fairly frantic at Hempstead Co. right now, Boucher said they don’t expect to slow down for some time. They plan to produce new hemp products to accompany the Beatles’ release of two more “Anthology” volumes.

“It’s a wave and it keeps on building,” Boucher said. “We’re just trying to hold on so we can be on top of it.”

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Hempstead Co. at a Glance

Headquarters: Costa Mesa

Founded: 1991 by Christopher Boucher and David Martyn

Chief executive officer: Christopher Boucher, 33

Partner/vice president: David Martyn, 31

Partner/vice president: Woody Harrelson, 33

Business: Hemp clothing and fabric

Employees: Eight

First-year sales: $100,000

Projected 1995 sales: $1.5 million

HEMP AND HISTORY

First use: Evidence of hemp usage predates 5000 B.C. Both ancient and modern societies have used the fibrous plant for fabric, food, paint, paper and rope.

Declaration of Independence: First drafts of the document were written on hemp rag paper. The final draft was prepared on animal skin.

Hempmobile: Automobile magnate Henry Ford built a car out of hemp straw and flax. It operated on a hemp-based fuel.

Source: Hempstead Co.