For Blazy Susan, providing customers with the best accessories to enhance the quality of their smoking experience is paramount. However, the Denver-based company finds it important to give back.
With every purchase of Blazy Susan’s iconic pink and purple rolling papers and cones, a portion of the proceeds is donated to nonprofits or causes.
To highlight Mental Health Awareness Month in May and Suicide Prevention Month in September, Blazy Susan gives to organizations like The Trevor Project and the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Year-round sales from the pink papers and cones get donated to breast cancer research groups, such as the Lynn Sage Foundation.
Marketing director Zach Rudio said charity work is a driving force behind many of Blazy Susan’s products.
“Really at the core of our brand values is that charitable, kind of give back initiative that we try to tie to every product line that we release,” Rudio said.
Breast cancer is a disease that has affected the lives of Rudio and founder Will Breakell. Breakell’s mother and Rudio’s grandmother each beat breast cancer twice. That’s why Blazy Susan was so adamant on using its products to help in any way it could.
“We launched (the pink papers and cones) to be able to give back portions of the proceeds to breast cancer research,” Rudio said. “Pretty much everybody in the company has been affected in one way or another. So, in those early days, it was really just us trying to give back in whatever way we possibly could to those causes.”
When Blazy Susan rolled out its line of pink papers in 2021, colored papers weren’t common unless they were flavored, which Rudio said gave the company a unique niche to enter. So the team at Blazy Susan got to work creating flavorless pink rolling paper, and it turned into a hit.
“Pink papers weren’t really a thing at that point, at least pink papers that weren’t flavored with a bunch of crazy different flavors or manufactured in a way that was a little bit gross, so we made a really good paper that burned really smoothly, burned slowly, and it happened to be pink,” Rudio said.
Now, Blazy Susan has become a premier brand for smoking accessories as the rest of its products continue to increase in popularity.
Best known for its flagship spinning rolling tray, user-friendly accessories, and vibrant, unique branding, the company has experienced substantial growth over the last five years, achieving a remarkable 3,000% year-over-year increase since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Everything, including its rolling trays, papers and grinders, has been developed with customer feedback in mind. Rudio said customer suggestions are implemented in nearly Blazy Susan’s product development meetings.
“We get a ton of really, really great feedback across the board from our community, online, on socials or on our website, in the actual reviews of the products themselves,” Rudio said. “So that plays a major part in every product development meeting that we have here at Blazy Susan.”
Rudio mentioned that the practice was applied to future products such as rice rolling papers, which are thinner than other types of paper.
The emphasis on meeting its customers' needs has provided Blazy Susan with partnership opportunities alongside brands like the Grateful Dead. Rudio mentioned that the band approached Blazy Susan with a proposal to launch a collaborative line due to its positive online reviews.
“(The Grateful Dead) actually came to us,” Rudio said. “They said, ‘Hey, we like what you guys are doing in the space; we like the noise that you’re making and it looks like the products are really, really good from what we can see across the board from all the feedback you guys get. So it looks like you guys are the perfect people to help us bring this brand to this space,’ and it just worked.”
While Blazy Susan has already forged its own path in the smoking accessory world, Rudio stated that this is just the beginning for the brand.
“It’s been an exciting ride, and this is definitely just the beginning,” Rudio said.
