Sagely Naturals: Female Founded Premium CBD Brand
Sagely Naturals Co-Founders Kaley Nichol & Kerrigan Hanna
When something changes your life, that’s probably not the end of the story. And for Sagely Naturals, in fact, it was just the beginning.
Co-founder Kerrigan Hanna had been suffering from chronic back pain for years when a friend suggested she try CBD honey. One hour after trying it, she said her back felt the best it had in years: “In that moment, I really felt like CBD had the potential to change a lot of people’s lives for the better.”
It didn’t take long for this aha moment to manifest itself into something larger. Excited about this new healing prospect, Kerrigan and her future business partner Kaley Nichol visited a dispensary the very next day. They were met with products that were high in THC and branded for men; all of it was very clearly geared toward the stoner contingent. It wasn’t what they were hoping for. “We felt like all the products were made for men. What if we wanted something that we could proudly display on our bathroom counters or carry around with us in our purses. We wanted to create an inviting brand that felt therapeutic, familiar and safe — one that you would see at Target or Whole Foods, not in a typical dispensary.”
Options for consuming CBD also felt very limiting on their first dispensary foray: “I personally don’t like smoking, and edibles can be really unpredictable, so I was left to wonder: Where are the products that I already use in my everyday life? What if we want the therapeutic benefits of the cannabis plant but we don’t want to get high? It seemed to us that there was a huge opportunity to create products that really highlighted CBD instead of THC.”
And as they say, necessity breeds invention, and thus, Sagely Naturals was born; their mission formed around a desire to create products that marry the familiar, everyday remedies we use in our daily lives into the emerging cannabinoid industry. “After all, the majority of Americans aren’t comfortable getting high, and the beauty of CBD is that it has all of these benefits with no psychoactive effects.” If it feels like you’ve been waiting a long time for someone to come up with a product based on this idea, well same, girl, same.
Before starting Sagely Naturals, both Kaley and Kerrigan held similar career trajectories, working at investment banks and then transitioning into the restaurant industry. Kaley was the director of operations at LYFE Kitchen, while Kerrigan worked in brand management at Wolfgang Puck and Taco Bell while she was getting her MBA. “Obviously serving people when you work for a bank is very different than serving people food, but in either case, we loved taking care of people. And I think nothing in this world makes people feel more cared for than helping remove a burden from their shoulders — and illness is really the ultimate burden,” Kerrigan said.
It should come as no surprise then, that Sagely Naturals’ mission is to get people back to doing what they love most. As Kerrigan pointed out, one in three Americans is currently dealing with chronic pain and almost two in ten Americans say they suffer from anxiety: “Although pain is physical distress and anxiety is mental distress, if you take a holistic approach to health, you can see how intertwined the two are. What’s incredible about phytocannabinoids, and CBD in particular, is that they interact with the endocannabinoid system, which has receptors all over the body and in the brain. So the same cannabinoid can help to address both physical and mental maladies.” A holistic approach to overall mind and body health? Sign us up! But wait, there’s more — they’re all about female empowerment to boot! “Given our passion for creating a brand for women in a space that has long ignored the female consumer, we are attempting to empower women to take back control of their physical and mental health through the use of all-natural, plant-based medicine.” Yeah, you could say we are HERE for all of that.
How do Kaley and Kerrigan know their products work? They’re intimately involved in the R&D process and always the first ones to use them. Kerrigan loves and stands by all their products, but right now Kerrigan is most excited about their Relief & Recovery Headache Roll-On. “Many Relief & Recovery Cream users were telling us that they were rubbing the cream on their temples when they had a headache or migraine — so we decided to create a product specially formulated for them. The CBD and essential oils of peppermint, rosemary, and eucalyptus provide calming and therapeutic benefits to relieve headaches and head tension. The roll-on can be applied easily to the ‘halo’ of the head — forehead, temples, and neck — to provide instant cooling relief. As always, our products are all-natural and made with no parabens, sulfates, artificial ingredients or synthetic dyes.”
Even a cursory glance at sagelynaturals.com, and you’ll notice that their customers leave some enthusiastic reviews. People are seriously jazzed about what Sagely Naturals has on offer. “I think what moves me the most is when we learn that whole families are using our products — the daughter bought a bottle for the mom and then ended up buying one for herself and her grandmother — or when I can sense that there was a hopelessness that’s now gone. It makes me feel incredibly happy when I read a testimonial from someone who says, ‘I didn’t think anything would make me feel better and couldn’t believe it when I noticed that I did feel better after using your products.’”
If you’re looking to get a daily dose of CBD to make you feel your best, look no further than their Relief & Recovery CBD + Turmeric Capsules. While their other products are more experiential (as in they smell and feel amazing), Kerrigan opts for the more utilitarian approach that their CBD and turmeric capsules offer. And due to their unique manufacturing, these capsules are extremely effective. While most CBD capsules are suspended in oil, theirs are water-soluble, making them incredibly bioavailable. As Kerrigan explains, “If you’re taking a CBD capsule that’s labeled as 10mg of CBD and it’s just CBD suspending in oil, you’re probably only absorbing about 3 or 4mg into your body by the time you’ve digested it. The water-soluble CBD we use is not only still full spectrum, but it is also incredibly bioavailable, so you’re absorbing 9mg of the CBD instead of 3 or 4mg.” This advanced approach to CBD capsules makes them one of the most advanced on the market. And what about the turmeric? You may be (happily) surprised to know that CBD is a strong anti-inflammatory, much like turmeric. And when talking to people during their consumer research, Kerrigan and Kaley found that most people were already taking turmeric or curcumin supplements every day to combat inflammation, “so our thought was: Why not allow people to just take one anti-inflammatory every day instead of two?”
A far cry from anything they encountered on their first trip to the dispensary, it’s clear that Sagely Naturals comes from a place of true want for a better product — and belief that we can (and deserve) to feel our best, naturally.
