With his hands in the soil as a cultivator at the R&D grow for one of California’s most highly awarded and sought after cannabis brands, when ‘Bobby.Bagz’ realized he had just doubled the harvest’s yield using supplemental under canopy lighting, while maintaining the top shelf quality that the brand was known for, he saw the future of indoor cultivation and the future was bright.
The cannabis industry is full of “solutions” offered up by people who have never experienced the problems that they are purporting to “solve”. For the brands who actually have their hands in the soil and some skin in the game, it is easy to spot these imposters, but real problems that need real solutions still really exist.
That’s why Faven Lighting, founded in 2023, has quickly risen to the top of the indoor cultivation lighting market, which makes sense since their whole approach is to work from the bottom up.
Specializing in under-canopy LED lighting systems for indoor grows, the brilliance of the Faven system is in its simplicity and affordability, and the proof is in the additional 14” to 24” of canopy growth you will achieve and the 25-35% average boost in your overall yield of retail-ready reefer that you’ll get by supplementing your overhead lighting with Faven Lighting shining up from below.
Retail customers want their weed to be as cheap as possible, but they don’t want to sacrifice any quality to get the lowest price. That’s the way it has always been, but the days of the $4,000/lb backpack trappin’ are over and in today’s taxed and regulated cannabis markets nationwide, profit margins are slim for all license types, but perhaps none more so than for the growers.
One guy who understands this better than most is the Faven Lighting founder, Tim, who you can find under his alter ego @Bobby.Bagz across most social media platforms.
With a highly relatable story of being in the right place at the right time with the right work ethic to make things happen, Tim’s journey from moving weight from the Emerald Triangle to the SoCal MMJ market, then cultivating killer weed in trap houses, greenhouses, and under the California sun, then walking away from it all only to have the plant pull him back for one more adventure is as admirable as it is compelling.
This dude’s roots run deep and it is from that depth of experience that Faven Lighting cropped up.
Faven Lighting is Changing The Game…But Who Is Bobby.Bagz?
After a pretty typical upbringing in Fairfield, California, Bobby.Bagz would be the first to tell you that he was ready to dip out of Solano County the first chance he’d get.
That opportunity came in 2010, in the form of a road trip down to a new life in San Diego where he and five other guys shared a 2BR apartment on the SDSU campus.
The whole crew broke and working 9-5’s, it wasn’t long before weed entered the scene. A roommate met a plug and before they knew it, the apartment became the headquarters between regular runs to the infamous Emerald Triangle in Northern California for pounds of pot, and the distribution of the goods to San Diego’s top Prop215-era medical marijuana dispensaries.
With demand quickly outpacing supply, the next logical step for our budding entrepreneurs was to start their own grow. After a cannabis cultivation crash course at an undisclosed location in Ft. Bragg, California, the crew moved to El Dorado County, near Lake Tahoe and set up shop. This led to a secondary operation up in Willits as well.
They grew great weed, and the market came to them.
The look Bobby.Bagz gets in his eyes when he talks about their old cut of Cherry AK-47 lets you know he’s a real one! Other moneymakers for the team included Pre-98 Bubba and LA Confidential, as well as the Ewe-2 and Ingrid they were still plugged into up north.
When we talk about “legacy”, this is what we are talking about.
These were hazy days to be a big time weed grower in California which had become an ideological battleground between state’s rights and federal intervention. Military style, multi-agency crackdowns became more common in the years that followed and on August 7th, 2012, the alphabet-boys caught up to Bobby.Bagz and the crew, raiding their grow by chopping not only the stalks of the plants, but the cords of the lights as well.
Eventually, Bobby.Bagz spun off his own operation, with a rudimentary residential indoor grow, along with learning light dep tech with some greenhouse weed, and another 99 plants sprouting under the sun outside. He ran this operation for six years, cultivating some enormous plants in 400 gallon pots as he honed his relationship with cannabis, and with himself.
Tim/Bobby.Bagz really credits that time he spent farming alone in his 20’s as a large influence on the man he is today, and he readily admits that was a time in his life where he was definitely better dealing with plants than with people.
In 2018, though, everything was changing in Cali when it came to cannabis. Prop 64 was about to take full effect, forcing farmers like Bobby.Bagz to come up with a huge bag for a cultivation license (up to a MILLION dollars in many counties), to become outlaws, or to change careers.
Just under a million dollars short of the million dollar entry fee to “legal weed”, Bobby.Bagz seemingly retired from farming, and Tim re-emerged, enrolling in college at UC Davis, where he would excel, graduating with a major in Sustainable Environmental Design and a minor in Remote Sensing.
This was quite an accomplishment for a fella who had spent the better part of the last decade on a 20 acre farm with no wifi. Starting college by learning what a Google Doc is and graduating 24 months later is impressive! But after over a year and a half away from the farm, Tim was faced with the choice of utilizing his studies by taking a nondescript job with the city or state, or saying “F it, let’s slang some more weed”.
Bless his heart, he chose the latter.
Bobby.Bagz Gets a Bright Idea
The landscape had certainly changed during his brief time away, and while chatting about it all with a homie who had a hydro shop in Placerville, serendipity struck again.
You see, it turns out that this buddy of his owned a big chunk of local land and his neighbor just so happened to be Alien Labs/Connected – one of California’s most popular cannabis brands then and now. As they got to talking about that, one of the Connected crew walked into the store so Bobby.Bagz wasted no time introducing himself.
It took a few follow-ups but his persistence, his resume as a grower, and even his college degrees earned him a shot on a 2-man crew at the Alien Labs/Connected research and development facility overseeing a 150-light operation.
This was the first time Bobby.Bagz had seen or used under canopy supplemental lighting, and it was a new concept for the bestselling brand as well.
When they pulled the first crop on Christmas Eve of 2020, they were astounded to see that they had quite literally doubled the yield from the prior harvest. Pulling roughly five pounds per light, this 100% yield increase was celebrated even more once they realized that there was no drop in quality between batches. Just great weed and way more of it.
Bobby.Bagz spent about a year in his role at Alien Labs/Connected before branching out again.
In his time there, however, he had studied the under-canopy lighting that was being used and took note of all the ways that the technology could be improved. From optimizing the units to be able to handle moisture from irrigation and IPM to toying with various light spectrums to discover what works best to simple clip systems to keep the lights aligned, he had ideas.
Back in a hydro shop, this time Indoor Sun Hydro in Sacramento, Bobby.Bagz was talking to the owner, Kevin, and explaining his gripes about the few under canopy lighting options that were currently on the market. His take was that these units were clearly made by people who had never harvested a cannabis crop and that with some sensible upgrades, the tech could truly flourish.
“So make your own,” was the reply that Kevin gave him.
With Kevin’s help, a concept was created, and six weeks after that – in late 2022 – a prototype landed. Fast forward to July 2023 and Bobby.Bagz and Kevin are partners and Faven Lighting is officially launched.
Fan-favorite farms like A Golden State here in California and Blueprint out in Arizona hopped on board immediately and have been boosting their yields ever since.
Just like he did when flipping packs to dispos back in the day, Tim/Bobby.Bagz brings a refreshing blend of professionalism and street cred to every transaction, and the product still speaks for itself. The connections between being a successful grower and a successful entrepreneur are not lost on this guy.
The Bobby.Bagz persona is a microphone that Tim uses as a voice for the plant and for growers. He has seen a lot of things, but more importantly, he has done them as well.
A father, a friend, a boss, a college grad, an avid snowboarder, and just a student of life itself, Bobby.Bagz encourages all of us to expand our horizons beyond just cannabis cultivation and then take note of how your talent as a grower expands in turn.
Faven Lighting has a 150,000 square foot warehouse here stateside, fully stocked and ready to rock anytime you want to take your commercial or personal grow op to the next level.
Don’t leave larf on the table. Get bigger, better buds with supplemental under-canopy LED lighting from Faven Lighting.
This article is proudly sponsored through a paid promotion with Faven Lighting and Beard Bros Pharms. We appreciate their support in making this content possible and encourage you to explore their innovative solutions and offerings.
