How JIGGY Actually Started
Jay and I met over a spliff. Genuinely.
We were already a bit stoned when I passed them the lighter, which they flicked and pressed the wrong side straight into the joint. Nothing happened. They tried again. Still nothing. I watched confusion take over their face, then embarrassment, then watched them scan the room to see if anyone clocked it.
I meant to be nice about it, I really did. But it was too funny and I lost it laughing. Jay realised there was no coming back from that and started laughing too.
That was it. That was basically the entire essence of what JIGGY would become.
We kept running into each other after that through mutual friends. Same gatherings and smoke circles, and somewhere along the line we admitted we wanted the same thing: to build something genuinely cool in Cape Town’s cannabis scene. Not another lazy-stoner brand running on mass produced Rick and Morty two-piece grinders.
We wanted something for people who smoke to create and connect. A space for the queer stoners like us, who’d never quite seen ourselves in this industry.
Turns out we had exactly the right skills for it. Jay studied Ideation at Cape Town’s Inscape University and I received a diploma in Cannabis 101 at Africa’s first cannabis academy- Cheeba. Put those two passions together and you either get chaos or a business. We got both!
But what we didn’t get for a long time, was a team that stuck.
Over the first year and a half after birth we went through about ten people - bright, capable people we brought on for their ideas and their energy. But building a brand from nothing is relentless and once they saw exactly how much work and risk it takes, most of them drifted off. Slowly the room emptied out until it was down to the ones who actually stuck. Jay and me, obviously. And two people who’ve been just as essential ever since: Danél, the most electric socialite who manages our events to make them memorable, and Jared, the smartest eco-warrior we know, building our reusable packaging from the ground up.
We learned some harder lessons too. We once trusted a grower to help us scale up. We paid for his training, handed him our plants and believed in him, but he took the cannabis and vanished with no call or explanation. It's part of why we don’t hand off the things we care about most anymore. Plants, product, vision- we build it ourselves now, from start to finish.
Even our name has a story. We lost our original domain to a petty man who decided he’d rather sit on it than let us have it. So we became jiggythestoree. Same essence but new name and zero patience for people who get in our way.
Almost three years later, we’re still here. Still building. Still stubborn about it.
We might not be the biggest brand in Cape Town yet. We might not even be the most polished. But we’re willing to bet we’re the hungriest. A brand run entirely by queer Gen Z’s who wanted to build something we would actually use as creative cannabis users, and finally see ourselves reflected in. Permission be damned.
It started with a lighter held upside down- but we’ve never once let go of the fire, and it's only going up from here.
x JIGGY
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