A lot can change in 16 years.
In 2009, Coss Marte was sentenced to seven years in prison for drug abuse. This year, Marte expects to make up to $12 million from legal cannabis sales.
Marte, 39, is the founder and CEO of Conbud, one of the first companies fully licensed to sell recreational cannabis in Manhattan and the first in the city’s Lower East Side. After initially opening in October 2023, Conbud added a second location in the Bronx last April.
According to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It, Marte’s company currently generates about $800,000 in revenue per month, including nearly $100,000 in profit. Marte predicts a final balance of about $7 million in 2024, he says.
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After his early release from prison in 2013, Marte founded a fitness company called Conbody based on his training program behind bars. Then, in 2021, New York legalized the sale of recreational cannabis and expunged all previous convictions for marijuana-related crimes.
A year later, the state announced that business owners with prior marijuana convictions would be eligible to receive the first licenses to sell recreational weed. Given his experience running Conbody and the requirements set by the state for retail licensees, Marte saw a golden business opportunity, he says.
“I followed that law and what they asked for was two years of profitable business and a conviction on your record,” Marte says. “Now, how many people have that to qualify for a cannabis license? Not many.”
From prison training to multiple companies
Marte grew up on the Lower East Side surrounded by an illegal drug trade that entangled him at age 13 after seeing other teenagers making money that way, he says.
“When I was a kid, people asked me, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And I would say, ‘I want to be rich,'” Marte says. “My first opportunity came in the world of drugs. So I started dealing weed.”
In prison, doctors told Marte he was overweight and had dangerously high cholesterol levels. He began training intensively, using bodyweight exercises that he could perform in his cell. After his release from prison, Marte joined Defy Ventures, a nonprofit program that provides entrepreneurship training and business mentoring to the formerly incarcerated.
Coss Marte, founder and majority owner of Conbud, one of the first legal recreational cannabis dispensaries in New York City.
Source: CNBC Make It
With a $10,000 grant from Defy, Marte launched Conbody in 2014 — which he says now brings in about $1 million in annual revenue.
Eight years later, Marte paid $2,000 to apply for a cannabis retail license. He put about $50,000 of his own savings into Conbud, mostly from Conbody and paid speaking engagements, he says — and raised nearly $1.2 million in additional seed funding from friends and family who are now co-owners of the company.
Marte owns 51% because New York requires the “judicially affected” license holder to retain majority ownership.
Conbud’s seed funds paid a $400,000 deposit on the Lower East Side retail location, construction costs, payroll and inventory, Marte says. The company opened its doors in October 2023 and was generating about $250,000 in monthly revenue – until authorities shut down hundreds of unlicensed operators selling cannabis illegally last year.
We strive for growth in a highly competitive market
The New York move was a helpful development for licensed retailers like Marte, who face an uphill battle to gain a long-term foothold in the industry.
The state Office of Cannabis Management has reiterated its commitment to prioritizing “social and economic justice” while growing the legal cannabis market. But critics fear that smaller stores will eventually be squeezed out by larger companies with nationwide reach.
Curaleaf, for example, is one of the largest pharmacy owners in the United States, with annual sales of over $1.3 billion. The company began selling adult products in Queens, New York in 2023.
This table breaks down the monthly expenses for Marte’s company.
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Even simple business costs — especially rent and labor — are high, leaving Marte with a relatively low profit margin of 13%, he says. Should cannabis become federally legal, Marte could access federal tax deductions for payroll and other business expenses, as well as expanded banking options with lower fees.
“So that 13% will (at some point) grow to a 25% profit margin,” he says.
Both Conbud and Conbody almost exclusively hire workers with “impaired justice records,” meaning either they or a family member have been incarcerated for a prior drug conviction, Marte says. In total, he employs 72 people who meet these criteria.
Marte himself left prison with $40 and a bus ticket, only to “end up on my mom’s couch” while trying to figure out how to make a living with a drug conviction on his record, he says. Without his own second chance, he probably would never have found himself in this position, he notes.
“It’s a big, big community that’s growing with us,” says Marte. “I feel blessed, man.”
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