Why I Started Hemp Well

I had already been dabbling with hemp years earlier, back before “CBD” was a buzzword.

Back when most people thought hemp was good for rope and hippie sandals. I bought HempWell.com on a hunch and started sourcing hemp extract from farms in Kentucky, or at least that’s what the company selling it claimed. Turns out they had imported it from China and packaged it in the Bluegrass State.

That may not sound great, but here’s the truth: for a long time, and even now, a huge share of the global hemp supply chain has run through China. They had been using hemp medicinally for thousands of years long before America was drafting early versions of the Constitution on hemp paper.

Back in 2011, almost no hemp was being grown domestically in the United States. The law didn’t clearly permit it, but it wasn’t exactly kicking down doors over it either. Hemp lived in that gray zone: legitimate enough to sell, risky enough to misunderstand, and new enough that everyone was learning in real time.

The oil sold okay. It was marketed as a human supplement. I even ended up in a segment with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, which gave Hemp Well a jolt of legitimacy. Back then, you could still run CBD ads through Google if you worded things carefully. Then the pharmaceutical industry pushed back, Google and Facebook changed their rules, and the party was over.

So I shut it down.

Months passed.

Then came Ginger.

She was a cat handed to us by my wife Sarah’s grandmother, a woman who never said no to strays. People, animals, it didn’t matter. If you were in trouble, she’d make you soup, hand you canned cat food, and find you a warm bed.

Ginger was tiny, orange and white, and had been abandoned outside in a Michigan winter as a newborn. She had health problems from the start. By the time she was three months old, all her teeth had been removed.

But she was loved.

Less than a year later, Sarah and I sat in a vet’s office while the doctor leaned back and used that slow, careful tone vets use when they are really telling you to prepare yourself.

“We need to focus on comfort.”

We both knew what that meant.

I looked at Sarah. She didn’t say a word. I told the vet, “Hold tight.”

When we got home, I went to the back of the cupboard. There it was: one of my old bottles of CBD oil from an earlier Hemp Well run. I never told the doctor I was about to give the cat weed. Sarah just watched me.

At that point, what did we have to lose other than Ginger?

One dropper. Then another.

By the next day, Ginger was eating.

By the next week, she was moving better.

Her eyes had that old brightness again.

Sarah looked at me like I had pulled off some kind of miracle.

And maybe I had.

That was the moment Hemp Well became more than an idea.

I relaunched it, this time as a pet wellness brand built around hemp and CBD, the quiet cousin of THC. No high. No paranoia. Just relief. This time, I sourced it from inside the United States.

Congress would eventually legalize hemp-derived products, and I got in ahead of the wave. I hired a friend I had worked with in an earlier life, rented a small warehouse, and started cold-calling.

And if the saying “it’s good to have friends” isn’t true, then I don’t know what is.

A friend heard what I was doing and said, “You’ve got to meet someone.”

Before she became my partner, she had already built and sold a pet supplement brand to what was, at the time, the biggest player in the category. She brought me up to speed fast: sourcing, compliance, formulations, what mattered most.

I poured myself into Hemp Well.

Only this time, I wasn’t just helping Ginger. I was helping arthritic Labradors climb stairs again. Our products calmed rescue Chihuahuas who shook through thunderstorms. We gave family pets like Ginger not just more time, but more life.

We grew fast. Pet Supplies Plus. Amazon. Target’s website. Petco. Even the grocery store my family had shopped at for as long as I could remember. No neon crosses. No reggae branding. Just clean packaging, better formulations, thoughtful ingredients, and testimonials from pet owners who swore our products changed their animals’ lives.

And here’s the thing about hemp: it really is a gateway drug.

Not to harder substances, to better health.

It gets people reading ingredient labels. Asking better questions. Caring more about what they’re putting into the bodies of the animals they love. CBD is one of the first things many people try when they’re desperate, like Sarah and I were, and sometimes it works so well that it opens the door to a different way of caring for a pet.

That’s what it did for us.

Hemp made us pay attention.

We started reading the ingredients on every bag of treats and every so-called value bag of kibble. We avoided cheap fillers. We became more intentional, more skeptical, and better advocates.

It made us better pet parents.

And Ginger was the proof.

The vet had given her days.

Hemp gave her seven more years.

Seven years of pawing at the blankets. Seven years of curling up next to Sarah at night. Seven years of meowing for food at 3 a.m. like she was paying rent.

When she finally left us, it wasn’t with the helpless early ending that had once been written for her. She went on her own terms.

And that is what Hemp Well is really about.

Not hype. Not trend-chasing. Not cashing in on a category.

It’s about giving people and their pets more of the good time.

More comfort. More mobility. More peace. More mornings, more walks, more cuddles, and more ordinary moments that turn out not to be ordinary at all once you realize how close you came to losing them.

That’s why I started Hemp Well.

Ryan Richmond, Founder. I live in Michigan with my wife, our two human kids, and our golden retriever, Heidi.