At a glance
Claybourne Co. is a California cannabis company founded in Riverside County in 2017 by childhood friends Nick Ortega, Jonathan Griffith and Brent Barnes. It began selling flower in 2018 and built a vertically integrated catalog around indoor cultivation, genetics, flower tiers, pre-rolls, infused products, vaporizers and extracts. The founders describe the company as self-built and rooted in the Inland Empire.
The three founders
Ortega serves as CEO, Griffith led marketing, and Barnes brought formal plant-genetics and breeding experience. The company’s own 2022 founder interview says Ortega presented the business plan in his living room in July 2017. Bare Dispensary in Palm Springs became the first retailer to buy Claybourne product in 2018.
The name came from a childhood friend’s middle name. Griffith developed the early identity and eagle mark, while the founders deliberately removed “Cannabis” from the consumer-facing name to make the brand less literal and more usable outside dispensary culture.
Cultivation and genetics
Claybourne’s catalog begins with indoor flower grown and processed by its cultivation team. The company says flower is hang-dried in darkness, cured under monitored conditions and hand-trimmed on-stem with minimal handling to preserve trichomes. Barnes’s breeding background supports the company’s emphasis on proprietary genetics, but cultivar lineage should still be checked on the specific release.
Products and price tiers
The live store organizes flower into Gold Cuts, Classic Cuts and Small Buds. Flyers are pre-rolls; Power products use flower enhanced with collected kief; Gassers cover vapor products; and the company has used Eagle Extracts for concentrates made from its own material. Product architecture and availability change, so an older interview is not proof that every sub-line remains active.
Testing and sustainability claims
Claybourne says its products are tested through third-party laboratories and that package QR codes connect consumers with batch information. It also describes LED lighting, off-peak electrical scheduling and humidity and water controls designed to reduce resource use.
Claims that products are always “contaminant free” are marketing language, not a guarantee across time. The relevant evidence is a current certificate of analysis linked to the actual batch plus any California recall or enforcement record.
Scale and where to buy
Claybourne’s About page calls it California’s third-largest brand, while its 2022 founder interview made a similar claim about flower. Those are self-reported rankings whose metric and period are not stated. They should be read as company positioning, not as a current independently measured statewide rank.
Products are sold through licensed California dispensaries and delivery services. The company’s Riverside roots do not mean it operates a legal storefront inside every Inland Empire city; its original founders discussed surrounding-city retail and direct delivery because local rules differed.
California and Canada are not interchangeable
This profile covers the claybourneco.com California company. Canopy Growth’s Canadian portfolio has used a Claybourne-branded site at claybourneco.ca. The two sites do not currently publish enough first-party ownership detail to merge their histories, founders, products or awards. This page therefore keeps the Canadian market arm separate unless a controlling company discloses the relationship.
Awards and notable achievements
No itemized award ledger naming competition, category, product and year was found on Claybourne’s current first-party pages. Its documented achievements are the 2018 commercial launch, development of proprietary genetics, California-wide distribution and a tiered flower-to-extract portfolio. Unsupported “award-winning” phrasing is omitted.
Research notes and sources
- Claybourne’s About and product pages establish current categories, cultivation process and testing claims.
- The company-hosted Riversider interview provides the founders, 2017 business-plan origin, 2018 first sale, name story and original product architecture.
- Company ranking claims are clearly labeled as self-reported.
- The California and Canadian Claybourne identities remain separated because their own sites do not establish a complete relationship.