Fernway takes its name from fernweh, a German word for the longing for faraway places. Five years after its first vapes landed on dispensary shelves in Massachusetts, the brand is living up to it.
Fernway says it became the No. 1 vape brand in Massachusetts by the end of 2021, its first year on the market, then claimed the top spot in New Jersey and, this summer, New York. It holds the No. 3 spot in Illinois, according to the company, and is already “climbing really fast” in its newest market—Missouri—says co-founder and chief marketing officer Liam O’Brien. Next up are Arizona in December and Pennsylvania in the spring. “It has been a real rocket ship ride,” he says.
What fueled that ride wasn’t doing more—it was doing one thing, obsessively well.
Four Friends, Something Missing
Fernway co-founders Liam O’Brien, left, and Christopher “Kit” Gallant. O’Brien is the company’s chief marketing officer; Gallant is its CEO.
Fernway started with four friends: O’Brien, CEO Christopher “Kit” Gallant, CFO David Van Vlierbergen and COO Kevin Wu. O’Brien went to high school with two of them and roomed with the third in college for three years. “We shared a room and we still decided that we wanted to go into business together,” he says.
In 2017, all four were working in other fields, with O’Brien in marketing, Van Vlierbergen at a hedge fund, Gallant as an attorney and Wu as a management consultant. “We weren’t unhappy. We weren’t uncomfortable in our roles, but there was something missing,” O’Brien says. “We were working for other people. We didn’t have the chance to build something for ourselves.”
Massachusetts voters had legalized adult-use cannabis in 2016, and the market was preparing to open. In March 2018, the friends attended NECANN, a Massachusetts cannabis convention, and committed to building their own vape brand. Then came the waiting that every cannabis startup knows. Fernway, now based in Northampton, Mass., didn’t ship its first product until February 2021.
“You Deserve the Best”
The founders built Fernway around what they wanted as recreational consumers. To them, cannabis “makes the good life even better,” O’Brien says. “It makes the things that you love even more enjoyable, whether that’s your favorite food, hanging out with your favorite people, seeing a gorgeous sunset, listening to your favorite album.”
They also saw a problem to fix.
Early legal-market vapes often cost a premium but tasted off, clogged or came in cheap hardware, O’Brien recalls. So Fernway started from scratch, custom designing its hardware, packaging and flavor blends. “We’re somewhat obsessive perfectionists when it comes to product and when it comes to quality,” he says. That standard is behind the brand’s tagline, “You deserve the best,” and the slight price premium that comes with it. “We never wanted to engage in this sort of race to the bott
