Riding the 
hemp wave in Descanso

Ryan Weaver
The Alpine Sun
     DESCANSO — Rural entrepreneurship is alive and well in Descanso — and riding the trendy wave of hemp fabric designs.
     Albert Lewis wasn’t sure what to do with his education. He had earned a bachelors degree in environmental studies and a masters degree in political science. He was working as a laborer for his dad’s construction company, and knew that something had to change.
     He became a sales representative for a company selling natural hemp products, and earned a whopping $70 in three months. He quickly realized this was no way to make a living. But the idea of working with hemp meshed well with what he had learned in the university and his own personal ideals, and Albert came up with his own line of hemp products. His company, Earthwise Enterprise, was born.
     Since he was living near the beach at the time and enjoyed surfing, his idea was to eliminate the waste that came in packaged surf wax by selling reusable hemp bags and bricks of unpackaged wax.
     “Nobody really cared,” he said.
Nevertheless, that was a beginning. He soon began manufacturing clothing and accessories from hemp, organic cotton and recycled synthetics. He called the new line Hempy’s. Now celebrating Hempy’s ten-year anniversary, Albert and his wife, Lydia Frausto, have settled into a modest, yet comfortable, straightaway with a business that has been on a roller coaster ride since its conception.
     In the mid-nineties, natural hemp products became a novelty, and Lewis was one of the first out of the starting gate. Lewis sent sample boxes of $150 worth of product to 75 stores around the country, and met with almost unanimous success. He asked store owners to send him a check if they liked the merchandize or to return it if they didn’t. Hempy’s sold high quality jeans, shirts, caps, backpacks, belts, etc., and by its third year the business did half a million in sales. Sales topped out at nearly $700,000 one year, but ironically, in this year Lewis actually took a huge loss the recovery from which took five years.
     By the late 1990’s, the number of hemp clothing manufacturers exceeded the market’s capacity, leaving the hemp trade in a limbo that only a few wholesale businesses survived.
     Hempy’s was one of the survivors.
     Now the business is a third the size it used to be, but Lewis is satisfied, and Hempy’s remains his family’s primary source of income.
     “It’s finally gotten to the point where the business is working for me, instead of me working for the business,” he said.
     Lewis deliberately chose not to directly connect his products image to marijuana. Although he said he finds the marijuana prohibition contradictory in a nation that holds freedom dear, he wanted to keep his focus on the potential of industrial hemp.
     His stated goal was to help demonstrate the plant’s economic value and to expose the government’s position as hypocritical and self-defeating. The plant, he said, was regarded by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as essential to the well-being of the United States.
     Marijuana is grown specifically to maximize leaf and flower growth, which contain the high THC levels that make the plant a drug. 
     Industrial hemp is an entirely different crop selected for high fiber yield. The THC level is too low to offer a drug high and it is bred to maximize useful fibers. To deny American farmers the right to grow the multi-use product is anti-American, Lewis said.
It’s not illegal to import hemp, however. Hempy’s products are constructed from bolts of hemp fabric shipped in from Romania and China. But it makes no economic sense, Lewis said, to prohibit American farmers from growing a product that can be shipped in legally from other countries.
    Hempy’s now sells its products online and in retail stores in all 50 states and throughout Canada. One may learn more at Hempy's Eco-Technology.

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