Tiffany Woodman, founder of Canna Bella Lux, believes cannabis can be luxurious. She’s building a brand with “a different kind of luxury that leads with love, uplifts others, and [gives women the space to] be extra.”
Woodman is a Chicago native with a Puerto Rican mother and an Italian father, who grew up in the Rogers Park area. A self-proclaimed “late bloomer” to cannabis, she began consuming in 2018 and by 2019 was discouraged by the lack of women-inspired lifestyle cannabis brands. By early 2020 she opened her own brick-and-mortar accessory shop in Lincoln Square with credit cards and a dream. The shop had a lot of promise, but then COVID-19 arrived, and Woodman had to reimagine the day-to-day operations for Canna Bella Lux.
She went live on Instagram every day and did many giveaways. She built community through free local contactless product deliveries and online events. Because of these efforts, she was able to keep the doors open but closed the shop when the lease was up in June 2022. About the decision, Woodman explained, “A smart leader knows when to pause.”
Despite the pause, Canna Bella Lux has not slowed, and Woodman just announced a brand expansion as the first Latina-owned cannabis brand to hit the Illinois market. She partnered with the 1937 Group, the first minority-owned and vertically-integrated cannabis group in Illinois to offer exclusively women-grown flower with a focus on women’s pain relief. This partnership provides much-needed equity to women in the cannabis industry. According to the Harvard Business Review, women-led startups only received 2.3 percent of venture capital funding in 2020.
Canna Belle Lux
cannabellalux.com/
