STIIIZY is the Los Angeles cannabis company that built its name on a proprietary pod vape and grew into a 61-store dispensary chain. Co-founder James Kim runs it as CEO, and parent company The Shryne Group sits behind the brand's grows, manufacturing and stores.
The numbers are loud. Headset ranked STIIIZY No. 1 in both California vapor pens and California flower for August 2026. After a December 2025 acquisition, MJBizDaily counted 58 STIIIZY stores in California and three in Michigan.
Steeze plus easy, in a pod
Forbes traced the company to 2016 and a 2017 launch as a vape brand, before California's adult-use market opened. The name blends the skate slang "steeze" with "easy." The first order was 500 vaporizers from China, filled with THC oil from a California extractor.
Kim grew up in Cerritos, the son of South Korean immigrants who sold clothes at the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet. He served with the Army's 101st Airborne Division in Iraq in 2006–2007. Before STIIIZY he and high school friend Jonathan Lee ran Kilo, a nicotine vape juice brand.
Forbes lists Lee, Sam Cho and Tony Huang as cofounders alongside Kim. Huang seeded the company, and Cho came over from California's medical cannabis market. Tak Sato serves as president.
Batteries, pods and the 40's
The pod is still the center of the business. STIIIZY pods click into the brand's own batteries, the BAR, Pro and Pro XL, instead of standard 510 threading. The BAR runs two 1G pods at once. Pod lines include Original THC and Live Resin Liquid Diamonds, and the all-in-one range covers LIIIL, LRLD and a 2G pen.
Flower comes in tiers: Exotics, Black Label, White Label and Green Label, plus Naked Pre-Rolls. The 40's Infused line runs across flower, pre-rolls and blunts. Extracts cover Curated Live Resin, Live Resin Diamonds, Crushed Diamond extracts, Live Rosin Badder and Jam, Live Resin Badder and Shatter.
Edibles include Original, Sour, Lemonade and Tropical gummies and a 100mg Superstar format. The site also sells STIIIZY Drinks in 10mg and 20mg versions, plus shirts, grinders, lighters and ashtrays, and runs its own delivery service and smoke shop storefront.
From a DTLA flagship to 61 stores
The first branded dispensary opened in Downtown Los Angeles in August 2019, and STIIIZY threw a seventh-anniversary weekend there on August 21–23, 2026. By June 2021 a Wildomar store about 75 miles southeast of LA was the ninth in California, Cannabis Business Times reported, with 17 more in development.
The pace held. A January 2025 company release counted 41 California stores and three in Michigan. In April 2025 Forbes put the California count near 50 and reported a goal of one new store a month on the way to 100.
Then came the big buy. In December 2025 STIIIZY took over 12 former Gold Flora stores in California, bought at auction for $25 million. MJBizDaily reported on December 10, 2025 that the deal gave STIIIZY the largest cannabis retail footprint in California by state records, well ahead of Catalyst Cannabis at 33 locations.
The 2026 store list keeps moving. STIIIZY Seaside, formerly Higher Level Seaside, is open, Vallejo is on the map, and the Michigan side includes Battle Creek and Kalamazoo.
Seven states and New York Diesel
On January 30, 2025, STIIIZY put its products in seven states: California, Nevada, Illinois, Michigan, Arizona, Missouri and New York. The same release counted more than 1,700 employees and more than 20,000 customers a day.
New York went live on February 7, 2025 with batteries, pods, all-in-ones, 40's multi-pack joints and an exclusive strain, New York Diesel. Forbes reported that STIIIZY ranked among New York's top 10 brands within a month, citing Lit Alerts.
What the sales data shows
In April 2025 Forbes called STIIIZY the best-selling cannabis brand in the United States, citing Headset sales data. It reported annual revenue above $800 million, roughly 7% of California's $5 billion legal market and an estimated $1.5 billion valuation. The same piece put monthly cultivation at 15,000 pounds and daily vape pen output near 100,000 units.
Headset's August 2026 data shows where that volume lives. Vapor pens made up 50.6% of STIIIZY's tracked sales, pre-rolls 25.9% and flower 19%. It ranked No. 2 in California pre-rolls and No. 3 in California concentrates. In Nevada it ranked No. 1 in flower and No. 2 in both vapor pens and pre-rolls.
The top seller was the Blue Dream Distillate Pod, followed by the 40's Blue Dream Infused Pre-Roll. Headset tracked the brand on shelves at 1,361 licensed dispensaries that month, 601 of them in California.
STIIIZY on the 2026 calendar
The brand works the event circuit hard. STIIIZY recapped Buds & Bikinis Arizona 2026 in Mesa in July, then showed up at Revelry Buyers' Club NYC 2026 and the Network Show in Los Angeles in September. At Nocturnal on September 19–20, 2026, it set up at Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernardino.
In Phoenix, STIIIZY was one of 13 cannabis brands at Mangia Ganja, a Trap Culture festival on the West Side that drew about 850 people. Its booth sat next to the DJ.
A September 21, 2026 STIIIZY post lists five nominations at the 8th annual Nevada Cannabis Awards: The Don for concentrate product, Cereal Milk for vape product, and STIIIZY for flower brand, vape brand and concentrate brand. The calendar sets the winners announcement for September 26, 2026 at 601 E. Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas.
Who owns STIIIZY in 2026
STIIIZY stays private. The Shryne Group is the parent company, Kim remains co-founder and CEO, and the company runs its own grows, manufacturing and retail. The latest store count, MJBizDaily's from December 2025, is 61. The brand sells in the seven states named in January 2025 and held Headset's No. 1 spot in California vapor pens for August 2026.
For the longer arc, the High Rise Co breakdown of how STIIIZY became the best-selling cannabis brand in America traces the pod-to-retail playbook.
For adults 21 and over.