Rod and Missi Santos sit in the Stache Products warehouse across from each other at two separate desks. On both desks sit multiple prototypes and leftover parts of grinders, dab rigs and batteries that serve as a testament to Rod and the company’s innovative vision to push the creative envelope when designing and creating their products.
“I tell people don’t go in [to the industry] being like ‘I want to be like Michael Jordan,’” 40-year-old Santos explains. “Go be Kobe Bryant, go be [Allen] Iverson and then you’ll be competing with Jordan. But if you go in there trying to be Jordan, you’ll be a second version, at best.”
Rod and his family moved to Maryland from Brazil when he was five years old, settling in the Silver Spring area, where his knack for crafting began out of sheer determination. Not long after smoking weed for the first time when he was younger, he went home and made himself a copper pipe so he could smoke in his room. Eventually, he saved up money and bought his first real piece, a ROOR pipe, but he and his friends would still craft homemade pipes to smoke out of. “If I can’t have it, I’m going to make something similar to it,” he said.
In 2011, he co-founded Bethesda Vapor Company, a vape shop opened to help people quit cigarettes and replace them with Cannabis. At the time, he and the friends he co-founded the shop with were working full-time jobs while simultaneously figuring out how to own and run a business, adding that even though the group barely graduated high school, they were hungry to get after it.
“I think we were all tired of seeing everyone else do something cool and us just working every single day in a non-cool industry,” he recalled. “We wanted that excitement. We loved weed. We loved vaping. We were young and willing to do anything for that dream.”
After seeing a lack of Cannabis vape pens on the market and tinkering with different vape parts, Rod designed the first Stache Pen prototype in 2015. The finished pen combined features like a Clapton coil and a built-in compartment on the bottom to make smoking Cannabis — specifically wax — smoother and more accessible to consumers.
From there, he branched out from the vape shop to start Stache Products and began designing other items like grinders and dab rigs. In 2018, the company introduced the Rig-In-One, a portable dab rig that was the first of its kind on the market. Rod noticed other brands were advertising their wax pens as the closest thing to smoking a real dab. Instead of issuing another vape pen, the RiO would accomplish what Rod had in mind for consumers: taking a traditional dab without feeling intimidated by torches and flames. Additionally, he wanted the extra challenge of creating the opposite of what everyone else was making, so he designed the rig to be square, a harder shape to craft with glass.
“We mass-produced the hardest shape to make out of glass,” he said. “If you’re gonna do it, why just participate? Compete; let’s make this fun.”
Rod carries this same competitive spirit into making his grinders. Stache’s Grynder is made with 6063 aluminum and features small, rounded teeth with the intention of preserving terpenes and THC. They partnered with Orange Photonic last year to have their grinder tested alongside other popular grinders, and the data found that flower ground with the Stache Grynder tested highest in retaining THC content among those in the study.
“We want to be sure that we’re not just telling people that we have a good product,” Rod said. “We take every millimeter with intention. You see grinders everywhere, and they’re all the same; that design has been around for 20-plus years. We don’t smoke 20-plus year-old weed.”
“If weed’s changed, why can’t our grinder change? It needs to evolve,” Missi added.
While Rod designs and creates the products, Missi helps bring them to the consumer’s eye. Her specialty is content creation and marketing, among her other responsibilities within the company.
“Content-wise, Rod will have an idea, and I’ll bring it to life,” she said, adding how she often utilizes parts of their own home to help achieve the aesthetic she has in mind. “I love to take advantage of [being in] Maryland because it doesn’t matter what season; you can always find something cool as a backdrop.”
“What I do is very small compared to what she does,” Rod said.
In addition to overcoming multiple manufacturer errors and other brands selling their own version of the Stache pen in its early days, the company has done extensive work to take fake products that resemble their own off the market. Even while working through multiple lawsuits and protecting the reputation of his products, Rod doesn’t let any of the outside noise affect who he is or what he’s built his brand to be.
“I could’ve given up after the first Stache pen, the fake RiOs,” Rod said as he wipes tears from his eyes. “I’ve learned as long as you don’t stop, you’ll succeed; that’s it.”
While Stache products can be found in head shops and dispensaries all around the country and in some shops overseas today, Rod said what he really wants for Stache now is to stay relevant and stay true to the company’s mission to design, innovate and create.
“We want to be a part of every pop-up or event. We want to be that well-known brand here,” he said. “Wherever the Cannabis market and head shop businesses go, we’ll follow along.”
