Our Story: Ten Years in the Making | Royal Supply

Ten Years in the Making

From a basement in Chapel Hill to the shelves of the biggest names in cannabis.

No funding to start. No packaging experience. Just 300 vape batteries, a spare bedroom, and more ambition than sense. This is the story of Royal Supply's first ten years.

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10Years in Business

500+Brand Launches

14Product Categories

1Outside Raise, in Ten Years

Jump to: 2016 Â· The Idea 2017 Â· Going B2B 2017-18 Â· Go West 2018-20 Â· The Swings 2020 Â· Boulder 2018-25 Â· Partners & Team 2025 Â· By the Numbers 2026 Â· The Rebrand

2016 Â· THE IDEA

A $1,000-a-month side hustle

Fresh out of grad school at UNC Wilmington with a master's in accounting, Robert Kenny was running an insurance consulting agency when a beach-trip conversation sparked a simpler idea: sell vape batteries online. Small product, ships in an envelope, doesn't take up the house. Goal: an extra $1,000 a month.

The first 300 batteries, bought from a factory Royal Supply still partners with ten years later, sold out in a week. Profits went straight into 500 more. Then 1,000. The goal was gone before the first month was.

The first Royal Supply vape battery, 2016

"The entire operation, 2016."

JULY 11, 2016 Â· ALL IN

Six months of runway, $500 a week

The side project was growing faster than the consultancy ever had, and it was a lot more fun. So Robert shut down the insurance business, gave himself a six-month runway to live on, and set one target: build Royal Supply to the point it could pay him $500 a week.

Every dollar the company made was reinvested: more inventory, then a small team to run the online operation. He knew nothing about packaging, and even less about cannabis packaging. He jumped in head first anyway: studied every competitor site, sourced factories for every category, built the website, and ordered Royal Supply's first full shipping container.

A spare-bedroom room stacked with early inventory

"World headquarters: a basement spare bedroom, Chapel Hill, NC."

2016-17 Â· THE BASEMENT YEARS

A container in the basement, a teacher on the tape gun

That first container didn't fit in the basement. The overflow went into a 10Ã—30 storage unit up the road. Royal Supply was now a full e-commerce operation selling pop-top bottles and pre-roll tubes by the case, run from a rental house shared with three roommates in North Carolina, not exactly a cannabis-friendly state.

One of those roommates, Brooks Covington, would come home from his teaching job and pack the day's orders for $75 a week, solid beer money at the time. E-commerce climbed to $30-50K a month. The basement was officially too small.

Working among shelves of stock in the early storage unit

"Packing the day's orders: teacher by day, fulfillment by night."

"I knew nothing about packaging. I had nothing to lose and even more ambition, so I jumped head first into the deep end."Robert Kenny Â· Founder & CEO

2017 Â· THE BACKPACK TRIP

One weekend, one backpack, one last stop

To grow beyond cases of stock bottles, Robert had a thesis: businesses need custom-branded packaging, and they buy a lot of it. To test it, he flew to Los Angeles for a weekend with a backpack full of battery samples and a catalog printed from an Excel sheet, and started walking into dispensaries.

No appointments and no luck, right up until the last shop before the airport. At Marina Caregivers in Marina Del Rey, the manager happened to be in, happened to be looking for custom batteries, and ordered 1,000 on the spot. Thesis proven. Royal Supply was a B2B company now.

A custom-branded battery made for Marina Caregivers

"The first custom run: 1,000 batteries for Marina Caregivers."

2017 Â· SINK OR SWIM

A couch in San Francisco

When summer break came, Brooks asked for a bigger role. The plan: spend the summer on a friend's couch in San Francisco, driving the city to find cannabis operators and dispensaries that needed custom packaging. It was sink or swim. Brooks swam. He was a natural.

The first B2B customers came onboard, and Royal Supply began building an international design team based in Indonesia to handle branding and packaging design, with full-time designers who are still with the company today. The pieces of the modern company were coming together.

Brooks crouched over a briefcase of cash from a customer who paid in cash

"Getting paid: Brooks, closing real deals in the only currency the early cannabis industry could bank on: cash. (And yes, every dollar was documented.)"

2017-18 Â· GO WEST

Packing up the storage unit

At summer's end, Robert packed up the North Carolina storage unit and moved everything west. The inventory went to a warehouse in Stockton: $0.55 per square foot versus $1.65 in the Bay. Robert joined Brooks in San Francisco, where they shared a house for the next four years and built Royal Supply into a true B2B packaging company, in the backyard of the cannabis capital of the world.

E-commerce kept the lights on while the custom business grew. Milestone from the era: Creative Labz placed its first order on May 31, 2018, and is still a customer today, Royal Supply's longest-standing B2B relationship.

"Square footage at $0.55: the first warehouse, Stockton, CA."

"We built this business from the first 300 batteries we sold and reinvested everything. We never raised a dime in the early years."Robert Kenny Â· Founder & CEO

2018-20 Â· SURVIVING THE SWINGS

The rule that vanished overnight

At the peak, Royal Supply was shipping 300,000-500,000 child-resistant exit bags a month into the Bay Area. When California required dispensaries to use them, the company stocked deep and stayed in stock. Then the state reversed the rule, with no phase-out and no warning, and the entire revenue stream died overnight.

Royal Supply ate the inventory and found other uses for a small mountain of exit bags. That's cannabis packaging in one story: China tariffs that reprice a whole catalog overnight, vape-shipping rules that rewrite the logistics playbook, state requirements that appear and vanish. Robert has stopped counting the compliance revisions the company has re-tooled around, and that institutional memory is now part of what customers buy. Through every swing, the team kept planting flags: its first MJ BizCon booth in 2018, and back every year since.

"Our first MJ BizCon booth, 2018. Back every year since."

2020 Â· THE BOULDER SUMMER

The one raise, for the room, not the runway

Four years in and self-funded, Royal Supply still felt like an outsider: no cannabis pedigree, no connections, every relationship earned the hard way. So in 2020 Robert made a deliberate call: raise money, not because the company needed cash, but because it needed structure and a network of advisors. Royal Supply raised $100,000 from Canopy Boulder, the cannabis accelerator run by well-known investor Patrick Rae, and moved the whole team to Boulder for the summer.

Then COVID hit and the world changed overnight. The team soaked up everything the advisors had to offer, cleaning up its processes and making connections that still pay off, before it was forced to leave. Robert calls it one of the most valuable things the company ever did. Afterward, he and Brooks left San Francisco for good and settled in Denver, where Robert still lives.

Robert presenting during the Boulder accelerator era

"Boulder, 2020: ninety days that professionalized the company."

2020-22 Â· THE HONEST CHAPTER

One week of payroll

Running lean and reinvesting everything means no cushion. There were weeks Royal Supply had exactly one week of payroll left in the bank. Robert stopped counting how many. When the market turned and orders slowed, he had his first panic attack, not knowing how payroll would clear. The company hired only when it had to, and could never afford a down month.

The part no one describes about the job: you keep a straight face so the team keeps the faith. The mission only works if everyone stays confident in it. The highs are high, the lows are low. Ten years of both, and Robert says he'd sign up again tomorrow.

"The battles are lonely. The wins, at least, you get to share with everyone."Robert Kenny Â· Founder & CEO

2018-24 Â· THE CUSTOMERS WHO BUILT US

500+ brands, one launch at a time

The proudest stories are the partners: Pure Plan in Utah, who Royal Supply helped brand before they ever hit a shelf, now one of the top-selling brands in one of the most regulated states in the country. Enlighten in Alaska, five years as their sole packaging provider. Creative Labz, who grew from first customer into a distribution partner bringing their own clients to Royal Supply.

Along the way: 500+ brand launches across 14 product categories, an in-house design team, ISO and heavy-metal-free certifications, and relationships measured in years, not orders.

A client dinner celebrating a long partnership

"Ten years of partners worth celebrating: a client dinner at Nobu."

2019-25 Â· A GLOBAL TEAM

Chapel Hill to Stockton to Southeast Asia

The basement operation became a global one. Today Royal Supply's people sit in Colorado, Arizona, California, Chicago, Florida, Indonesia, and the Philippines: a warehouse and operations crew in Stockton, and a design and project team across Southeast Asia that has now launched 500+ cannabis brands. Manufacturing runs through long-term partners in China, including the very first battery factory from 2016, and Robert still visits the factories in person nearly every year. In 2024 the team flew to Bali to work alongside the Indonesian designers and celebrate a decade together.

The arc is in the people. Brooks Covington, the roommate who packed boxes for $75 a week, built the early book of business, then moved on in 2023 to his dream job at Salesforce. "You need great partners and team members." Everything else can be copied; the people are the moat.

"Bali, 2024: ten years, one team."

TODAY Â· THE TEAM

The team that doesn't miss

Royal Supply wouldn't be Royal Supply without the people who show up for clients every day. Robert runs the company quietly from the background. The real face of Royal Supply is the team that works directly with brands and earns the relationship back, month after month.

It's a small but mighty group, hand-picked and recruited into an elite squad, with a subject-matter expert for every part of the job. There's a reason hundreds of brands keep choosing Royal Supply as their packaging partner, and it isn't the founder. This team doesn't miss.

Director of Operations The Backbone

Six-plus years keeping the engine running smooth, never missing a detail.

Lead Project Manager Award-Winning Artist by Night

The one you want turning your vision into finished packaging.

Senior Account Executives Industry Veterans

Your first call when you need something handled, or a fire put out.

In-House Designers Dedicated Cannabis Specialists

Hundreds of brands designed, turned around at industry-leading speed, often overnight. They know cannabis, and they've got taste.

Small but mighty. Hand-selected, every one.

2025 Â· BY THE NUMBERS

What the basement turned into

The $1,000-a-month goal is a useful place to start a story, and a useful place to measure it from. A single recent year of Royal Supply, by the numbers, is what a decade of reinvesting profits compounds into.

Built the way it started: every unit funded by the one before it, the same engine as the first 300 batteries, just bigger.

In 2025 alone

7.1MPre-roll units

6.4MBarrier bags

2.46MTubes

998KEdible packs

488KVape cartridges

72.5K lbsFlower packaged

855 active SKUs Â· 14 product categories Â· built on reinvestment.

JULY 11, 2026 Â· TEN YEARS

Simply Royal

Ten years to the day after it started, Royal Supply gets the name it always had. The "wholesale" in the old domain was a 2016 compromise: royalsupply.com was taken, and novelty TLDs weren't trusted yet. The world changed. Now the company that was always just Royal Supply lives at an address that completes its own name: royal.supply.

New site, complete rebrand, same operating principle as the first 300 batteries: reinvest in the work, deliver every time, and treat packaging as the only ad a cannabis product ever gets.