| Cape Cod Times
CHATHAM — Walking into Paul Borde’s office is like stepping into a candle store. A smell of lavender wafts through the air as one’s eyes are immediately drawn to the array of CBD products splayed across a large table in the corner.
Ranging from gummies and oils to salve sticks and hemp extract, the display is enough to spark anyone’s curiosity.
Two summers ago in 2019, Borde — an avid golfer — suffered from severe lower back pain. After seeing a doctor who suggested surgery, Borde warily asked if there was another way to stop the pain. He was referred to a chiropractor, who introduced him to CBD products.
At first, Borde said, it sounded like hocus-pocus, but he decided to try it. At the time, he was in so much pain that he struggled to get out of bed every day. Soon after using CBD products, he said, “I became a believer.”
The blood flow returned to his lower back, and he was able to resume everyday tasks and even golfing.
When he first retired, Borde didn’t know what he wanted to do next in life. “I was flopping around like a bluefish,” he said.
After having such a positive experience with CBD products, he decided to open a business selling them.
He did a big dive into researching the 130 cannabinoids that have been discovered and how they can help people with anxiety, pain and sleep problems.
By December 2020, Borde and California-based partner Stephen Crane had launched the Primabee online store: primabee.com
“We are putting out the best of the best,” Borde said.
Users find that the products help support daily self-care for calmness, sleep habits, energy management, pain relief, inflammation reduction, skin care, epilepsy seizure reduction and even calming dogs and cats.
Primabee’s CBD products are legal in all 50 states and do not give users the high or side effects of smoking marijuana.
“We decided to prove our distinct value by putting our customers first, by insisting on product quality transparency,” Crane said in a statement. “We source our hemp from the most ethical U.S.-based farms, and our custom formulators were carefully chosen for creating the purest, properly potent, broad-spectrum CBD products on the market.”
The 2018 Farm Bill removed many of the restrictions on CBD derived from hemp plants. There are many varieties of the cannabis plant, and hemp is the nonintoxicating variety of cannabis.
Both hemp and marijuana come from the same cannabis species. However, hemp, unlike marijuana, contains less than 0.3% THC, and cannot get someone high.
In recent years, it seems as if CBD has popped up everywhere, from local pharmacies to being sold in coffee, to even dog kennels as a way to soothe pets’ anxieties.
Many of those products, however, are not of high quality. And some, Borde said, don’t even have CBD in them.
Borde said he believes many of the products recently approved by the federal government were rushed to market with little regulation.
“It’s a battle back and forth and people are taking advantage,” he said.
To combat that, Borde said, he hopes Primabee can educate people about what CBD is and how it can help them. He also wants his business to provide “the best-in-class ingredients” and use top-notch manufacturing to give consumers the best products possible.
For now, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, opening a brick-and-mortar store is not a top priority for the business, Borde said. The goal is to build out the online store while working with local businesses here on Cape Cod.
Over the holiday season, the company partnered with Cape Cod Lavender Farms to offer customers gift packages that included a sachet of fresh lavender, bath bombs infused with CBD and a candle.
If someone asks why they should start using CBD products, Borde said he would point to his own experience.
“It has helped me with sleep, migraines and anxiety,” he said, adding that when his friend places the salve on his shoulder for pain, it is an “instant reaction.”