Mike Saghian
THE ARTIST TREE KOREATOWN
THE KOREATOWN outpost of the Artist Tree art gallerymeets-weed shop concept was one of the city’s first social equity dispensaries to open — in April 2021 — thanks in large part to majority stakeholder Saghian’s ability to navigate the application process. (Saghian’s partners in this space own and operate three additional Artist Tree shops, none of which is part of the social equity program.)
“It did have its complications,” Saghian said. “But I guess you could say I was a little bit lucky that I was [already] so involved in the licensing process and in the know. I’d done my research, and was just waiting for that [first] round of licensing to open. And when it did, I just went ahead with it.”
His familiarity, he said, comes from the job he’s been doing pretty much since he graduated from high school — helping other businesses with all the important but mindnumbing minutiae that come with being a business. “DBA filings, setting up corporations, getting city licenses, camping outside the courthouse,” he said. “I liked it, I was good at it and I’d built a loyal clientele.”
When some of that loyal clientele reached out to find out how to get into the medical marijuana business (“back in the medical cannabis days,” he notes), he immersed himself in the research. He says he helped clients get dispensaries running before the city instituted a temporary moratorium on new ones in 2007. “When the new [recreational] regulations came out in 2018, I just kept doing the work.”
He joined forces with the Artist Tree team (Avi Kahan, Lauren Fontein and Mitchell Kahan) after the real estate he’d lined up fell through. (“You need a property lined up to apply,” he said, “and time was running out. I reached out to some friends and family, and a friend of a friend introduced us. The rest is history.”)
Saghian says he spends most of his time focused on his Van Nuys-based consulting business, the Biz Shop, but makes regular visits to the dispensary. “I come in from time to time to check up on stuff, but I’m mostly involved behind the scenes. I’m involved with all the big decisions — marketing, sales and product procurement.”
He thinks the general public has a skewed perception of what it’s like to be a player in L.A.’s legal weed business.
“It’s not all it’s made out to be as far as being on the businessowner side of it,” he said. “It looks a lot easier than it is, and people think it’s a license to print money — but it’s not.”