(WWJ) – Sports fans get used to seeing their favorite players’ faces over the course of their careers. But what about when the final whistle blows?
Some go on to have careers in media or coaching, but former Detroit Lions Calvin Johnson and Rob Sims are taking quite the different path.
Once teammates, they’re now business partners and owners of the Primitiv brand – a Michigan-based company that makes THC and CBD products. Sims
They started Primitiv in 2019, with the main facility in Webberville, and have since opened dispensaries in West Michigan’s Niles and, most recently, Boston, Mass.
Sims and Johnson have similar paths that led them to cannabis: pain management. For Sims – a former offensive lineman who played in Detroit from 2010-14 – it was a season-ending surgery.
For Johnson, he says the “lightbulb moment” for him, when he knew he wanted to get into the industry, came while he was on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.”
“Several weeks in, my ankles were swelling up. I had chronic swelling in my ankles while I was playing. I was telling my buddy who was there at the time because I was going back and forth between Detroit and LA, ‘I’m gonna have to quit the show because I can’t keep up with my partner,’” he told WWJ’s Zach Clark on a new Daily J podcast.
The next day his friend brought him a cannabis topical solution to use on his ankles. He ultimately finished in 3rd place, then he decided he “wanted to get down to the science of this thing.”
After getting into the California cannabis industry as a silent partner, he turned a real estate partnership with Sims into something more when cannabis was legalized in Michigan.
“We could have just been landlords and collected the check, but we chose to go after this thing, build a team and go after our dream and create some products that can affect people’s quality of life,” Johnson said.
Sims, likening Primitiv to a football team, says the team has built a “culture” that brings good energy and passion for what it is they’re ultimately trying to achieve.
Primitiv and their sister brand, Turf, started off as cannabis flower brands. But Johnson and Sims are working to create a new lane for themselves – and consumers, including athletes.
Primitiv Performance, what Sims calls “the new baby,” is a step outside the THC market and into the CBD realm. The new line currently features CBD topicals and CBD-infused rehydration drinks.
Who would know more about pain management and recovery than two former NFL players? Johnson says the vision for Primitiv Performance is to give consumers an alternative to hardcore pain medication.
The team is currently working on cannabis studies with researchers from Harvard University.
“I’m just trying to piggyback on the things that we used, that we knew worked for us when we played and being abled to add more efficacious compounds with the cannabinoids, the anti-inflammatory effects, that’s what we need,” Johnson said.
Johnson hopes their products – which feature nanotechnology to “bypass the intestinal system and get into the bloodstream” – can help give everybody a better quality of life.
Johnson and Sims hope to one day see Primitiv Performance products in professional and college locker rooms, as well as sporting stores across the country.
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