5 Questions With Murano Tips Founder & CEO Luca Vincenzini

I’m a massive fan of Murano (Venetian) Glass. Fortunate to grow up in a home with many pieces of this richly textured and deeply colored glass, the memory light shines through my memories. It is as if each droplet of glass is lit from within. Luminescent and robust. When I discovered that someone was making tips for cannabis cigarettes made from snippings of real Murano glass, the authentic kind, not the cheap knock-offs, I had to know more. These artistic Murano Tips are a brilliant, yet tiny invention using one of my favorite materials, Venetian glass!

To appreciate these tips you really must roll up a cannabis joint the old-fashioned way. By hand! To do this, you must get yourself out to Oregon and taste some of the finest flowers in the land.

May I please recommend the richly purple tinged, Tenzen Kush #4 from Green Bodhi. You shall find these flowers to be very kind indeed. Cheers, WB…

Warren Bobrow=WB: Please tell me about yourself? Why Cannabis? What was your inspiration for the plant? how did you discover Venetian Glass?

An introduction: My name is Luca Vincenzini and I am the CEO + Founder of VIVOitaly and our brand, Murano Tips. I actually spent the first chapter of my career as an Executive Producer for an Italian TV production company called Magnolia, founded by Giorgio Gori. This role took me from my native Rome to Milan before relocating to the United States.

Warren Bobrow=WB: Why cannabis?

Luca Vincenzini=LV: Despite living in various cities and countries throughout the world, one thing has been constant in my life; cannabis. I’ve always felt connected with the plant and at 41, it continues to be both a beautiful trip that can be shared with my loved ones or enjoyed as a personal source of therapy, no matter what the circumstance.

I started smoking cannabis regularly at around 20 years old with my friends in and around the streets of Rome. Some of my earliest and best memories of my cannabis involve us sneaking into the Colosseum in the middle of the night and smoking as the sun would rise. Smoking cannabis in a setting like that truly elevated the smoking experience for me at such a young age. It’s something I’ve never really been able to forget and was the driving force behind starting this company, and it continues to guide the sort of experiences we trying to create with our products.

WB: Why Venetian glass?

LV: For as long as I can remember, Venetian glass/Murano glass has always come hand in hand with quality and Italian culture. Most, if not all, the Italians I know could tell you what Murano glass is and would hold it in the same category in regards to quality as you would Parmigiano-Reggiano in the cheese world, or a red Ferrari if we’re talking about classic supercars.

The more I learned about Murano glass making during my trips back to Italy, the more I began to appreciate the true artisan quality and dedication to these age-old glassblowing techniques that were still being practiced on this small island of Murano, in Northern Venice.

As a cannabis smoker, I’d had a few experiences with glass smoking tips in the past, but had often found them to be too heavy and too bulky, so I could therefore never fully enjoy the many benefits that I knew could be possible when smoking with glass. 

Once the vision was realized and the exclusive deal was made to create 100% sustainable glass smoking tips out of Murano glass right there on this little island in Italy, we established our brand Murano Tips and began selling online and with a few select dispensary partners in the United States in 2019.

WB: Please tell me about your company? What are your six and twelve-month goals? What obstacles do you face? How do you remove those obstacles?

LV: Who we are: Murano Tips is our cannabis accessories and lifestyle brand that exclusively creates hand-crafted Murano glass tips at an accessible price point for the cannabis and CBD smoking market. In particular, we look to appeal to people who roll joints with the more traditional, paper filter tips and convert them to the benefits of smoking with glass tips!

An elevated smoking experience, we believe that cannabis should be treated with the respect it deserves, in the same way, that people regard to wine. You wouldn’t pop the cork of your favorite wine bottle and drink it from a paper cup, so why treat your cannabis any differently? Our tips have been designed to allow the smoke to cool before reaching the rim, ensuring a smooth draw, flawless flavor + full enjoyment of your herb. Sustainable & zero-waste, each hand-made tip is made with sustainability at its core and designed to be endlessly reusable, removing the need to ever look again for that scrap bit of paper to make a filter. Our reusable packaging is also both efficient and forward-facing, producing less post-purchase waste and more post-purchase usage. The less paper we collectively use, the more trees will stay standing. We are also proud to partner with One Tree Planted, which gives our customers the option at checkout to plant a tree with their order for an extra $1.

A district, not a product.

We are devoted to the ongoing preservation of this centuries-old glassmaking tradition and unique Italian district, viewing it as our responsibility to educate people through our products on the importance of supporting these local industries + communities. 

Verified artisan mastery

Finally, we are proud to have the endorsement from the only institution certifying the most prestigious works of glass in the world, Vetro Artistico®.

Only Vetro Artistico®-certified products hold an anti-counterfeit seal of honor as each individual Murano Tips set does – born a thousand years ago – indicating that the product was unequivocally sourced from genuine Murano glass, handmade on the island of Murano and strictly followed the guidelines of centuries-old glassmaking tradition.

Our goals

We’ve been experiencing great feedback on the soft launch of the 4 color product range to date, so our primary goal is to continue to educate people through our social channels and outreach such as this, on the why they should upgrade their smoking experience and make the switch to rolling with a glass tip.

If we succeed in the above, then we should also make good progress in achieving our goal of growing the existing community of people who smoke with our products through our online, retail & distributor sales channels. It’s also a really exciting time to be building a company in this industry and there are so many brands that we love and are inspired by. So, it’s definitely a goal to collaborate with like-minded brands across the cannabis & CBD market in the near future.

We want to embrace the use of art in the every day in this way and celebrate the beauty in building new, sustainable rituals.

What obstacles do we face?

LV: Just like most people that else that operate in the cannabis sector, traditional advertising & outreach opportunities can be somewhat limited and thus requires a little outside of the box thinking. That said, there are increasingly innovative ways to market your products in an organic way that really allows us to connect with the type of people that we want to be engaging with. Throughout everything we do as a company, we believe that with the right level of kindness and professionalism; most obstacles can be overcome.

WB: What about stigmas? How do you explain to a potential client what you do? What about parents?

LV: I read in the news a few days ago, that 47.8% of the Italian population now supports the legalization of cannabis. If you asked me 20 years ago, I think the figure would be half that, so great progress has undoubtedly been made across the world when it comes to how people view cannabis as a narcotic.

Stigma is definitely still present, but we are confident that these outdated social views on cannabis consumption will continue to decrease over the next few years. It also goes without saying that the cannabis criminal justice system needs urgent attention and I would urge everyone to support the Last Prisoner Project in any way they can. Cannabis has been such a normalized aspect of my entire adult life, that I am fairly unapologetic about extolling the virtues of the industry I’m in or the plant that I love. As long as you are honest with people and you know that you’re in this industry for the right reasons; it leaves very little room for people to say anything meaningfully negative about what cannabis is and your relationship with it.

WB: What is your favorite food memory from childhood? What is your favorite kind of food now? From where? Do you cook? Who taught you?

LV: I grew up in Rome, so the smells of food and especially pizzas could often determine the direction you decide to walk at any given moment. Smoking cannabis only elevated my connection with Roman street food to the point in which I opened the restaurant Trapizzino in New York City a few years ago. I owe my love of food to my sweet mother making the best polpette al limone for us as children. Believe me, when I say it’s still a must-try today whenever you’re in Rome!

WB: What is your passion?

LV: Ultimately, my passion is to create a platform through our products that connect as many people as possible through a shared appreciation of cannabis, quality, art & sustainability. Our mission will be accomplished once the whole world has moved away from using paper smoking filter tips!