They Drilled a Hole in a Plug. Now It's in 50 Stores | Nancy Domenichelli & Diana Langle, TarTubes
Nancy Domenichelli and Diana Langle met at a letter-writing campaign for a local candidate. They were the only two who showed up. Between letters they found out they lived six blocks apart in Springfield, and at 4:20 they found out something else. One morning Diana reached for a cigarette with a filter on it, Nancy reached for a pre-roll, and the pre-roll would not fit. That mismatch became TarTubes. The first working version was a plastic plug from Diana's husband's workshop with a hole drilled through it. Fourteen months later the product is on close to 50 shelves across five states, and 80% of those dispensaries have reordered twice. Nancy and Diana are the co-founders of TarTubes LLC, a filter adapter that lets a standard disposable filter attach to a pre-roll. In this conversation with Jason Reposa they walk through the whole build: the tissue paper and cardboard failures, the university engineering lab that drew the first 3D print and cannot be publicly credited because federal grant money is on the line, the second designer who made it look like a product, and the Flower Expo soft launch where they gave away thousands of samples. They get specific about distribution. Why bud tender education is the actual sales mechanism, what a display case costs a store, how DTC stacks up against wholesale, and what a brand rep's word of mouth did to their shelf count. They close on Massachusetts Question 8 and why the repeal is a no vote. 21+ only where legal. Nothing here is medical advice, and claims about tar and filtration are the guests' own statements, not verified by the show. Listen at highfunctioning.show.