The CBD maker lost its range and moved to a larger facility in February to keep up with growth, but co-owner Matt Hook said the Steamboat-based brand remains true to its roots.
“All of our products are all-natural and handmade in small batches,” said Hook. “They are all third party tested and we share all of our tests on our website with our customers. Every ingredient on the back of the pack is natural and that’s one of the things that stands out.”
Co-owner and founder Given Johnson added that the high potency of the CBD products offered at Lost Range, which spells its name entirely in lowercase letters, also makes the business different.
“I would say our potency,” Johnson responded to a question about what distinguishes lost distance. “Then there’s the fact that we’re all natural, small batch and handmade. We don’t put any chemicals in our products and always have.
The Muscle Joint Rub, which offers between 500 and 1,000 milligrams of CBD, and the even more potent Gold Buckle, which contains between 2,000 and 4,000 mg of CBD, are the flagship products of the Lost range.
“It was the first thing we ever made,” Johnson said of rubbing muscle joints. “It’s been the same recipe for five years. Nothing has changed, except that we added the gold buckle, which is four times more powerful.”
The company moved its manufacturing facility to a new space in Downhill Plaza in February. The 2,000-square-foot headquarters, which is double the size of the old facility, is located at 2835 Downhill Plaza, No. 601, and includes a small boutique where customers can enter and obtain information on the 16 product lines offered by the lost range.
There is also an office area where staff look after the day-to-day operations of the business and an order fulfillment area where products are prepared for dispatch and an upper floor which offers a large manufacturing facility where Lost Range creates the its products.
In addition to Lost Range’s muscle and joint rubs, the company offers other topical products, bath salts, powdered bath bombs, soap, sublingual tinctures (both full-spectrum and isolates), and a line of massage oils. The brand also launched full-spectrum gummies last fall.
Hook says Lost Range CBD products can help with muscle and joint pain after a workout or run. Many of her customers also come looking for products they think are helpful for multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and cancer, or arthritis wellness.
“It’s not clinically proven, so we can’t make that claim,” Hook said. “But a large part of our client base is people with all these types of conditions.”
The Steamboat Springs business has experienced tremendous growth since its inception here in 2018.
“Since we started, we’ve grown over 25% year-over-year, and in the five months of this year, we’ve had 40% year-over-year growth, so we’re growing rapidly and the acceleration rate is picking up.” Hook said. “We have commercial customers in all 50 states and we have wholesale partners in 29. That’s the exact number of states right now and that number continues to grow.”
Hook said Lost Range just added a few new customers on the East Coast, including Martha’s Vineyard and the New England area.
In Steamboat Springs, products from the Lost Range can be found at Rocky Mountain Day Spa, Billo Premium Cannabis, Urbane Clothing, Aspen Botanicals Community Apothecary and Ski Haus. Hook also said that there are many private massage therapists who bring the lost distance.
The CBD manufacturer’s marketing has been a largely grassroots campaign, based on word of mouth from a loyal customer base. The company also has a presence at the Main Street Steamboat Farmers Market during the summer.
“A lot of our marketing and branding has been very basic,” Hook said. “We like to have markets where we distribute samples of our products. We’ve distributed, I think, 50,000 samples in the last six months.”
Johnson and Hook both said Lost Range wants to be environmentally conscious, and the company is moving away from plastic towards more sustainable packaging with its bath salts, powdered bath bombs and gummies.
“We’re just trying to get as far away from plastic as possible,” Johnson said.
The two men said the aim is for the Lost Range to put a quality product on the shelf where customers know exactly what they’re getting and can be sure they know what’s in the packaging.
Hook said all Lost Range products are made in-house with CBD sourced from a Hotchkiss agriculture collective made up of small niche family farms that use all-organic practices and test soil where the product is grown. An extraction facility run by a friend of Johnson’s uses its own third-party testing service that tests not only product texture, but pesticides and metals as well.
“We take the raw CBD and make the final product, then test it again,” Hook said. “It’s going through three levels of testing and I think that’s one of the main reasons we get such positive feedback all the time. It’s because our customers know what’s in that final product is 100% natural and it’s pure. It delivers exactly what they’re looking for: refined CBD and natural ingredients.”
In addition to making quality products, Johnson and Hook hope to build a close-reach culture of community support and investment as they continue to grow.
“As we grow, we want to be able to keep giving back,” Hook said. “If you look at Steamboat and some of the big brands that have come out of here, Big Agnes, Smartwool, etc., it’s really kind of a cool incubator. We really see ourselves as the next big brand to come out of here.
John F. Russell is the business reporter for Steamboat Pilot & Today. To reach him, he calls 970-871-4209, emails jrussell@SteamboatPilot.com, or follows him on Twitter @Framp1966.