Day: July 16, 2025

A cannabis company is using its platform to support the animal that most embodies the recreational use experience: the sloth.

The brand Koa was created in California four years ago under the Garden House umbrella of brands and has since made its way to New York stores through FlowerHouse NY. Branded with an adorable sloth (also named Koa), the company wanted to embrace the laid-back approach that goes hand in hand with cannabis.

“Cannabis typically tends to slow people down. It allows you to relax and live in the moment, live in the now and be kind of reflective on the day-to-day,” said Ben Catt, cofounder of Koa. “It’s not like some other medicines that might bring you up and get you excited and have you run around and kind of have the opposite effect and I think that’s why when people use cannabis they feel most connected to a sloth.”

Koa currently offers high-quality, high-potency infused pre-rolls, sold in packs of ten. Each pack is sold in a reusable tin, allowing you to keep the tin for whatever you see fit.

Each tin is a limited edition packaging, but they always feature Koa the sloth in some capacity. Catt says that this move allows a bit of exclusivity to the product and allowing consumers to collect them if they choose.

“We’re always switching out under the tins and the artwork, and we’ve seen that a lot of our customers like to collect the tins and some of them will post them on eBay and try to like resell them. So there’s kind of a reseller’s market, which is pretty exciting and really cool and something I think that stands us apart from a lot of the other products out there,” said Catt.

A major part, and what Catt would say is the most important part, of Koa’s business is their sloth conservation efforts. Taking inspiration from their own sloth mascot, Koa began to symbolically adopt sloths to help raise funds for their care through the sales of their pre-rolls.

“It just seemed like the easiest and best way to support the Sloth Conservation Foundation was to adopt the sloth,” said Catt. “As we do research online, we’re looking for different sloths in some of the territories that are present in for us to contribute to and to sponsor or to support in some way.”

Currently, Koa sponsors a handful of sloths, including the Bronx Zoo’s resident two-toed sloths Calisto and Hans Slolo, as well as Pumpkin and Pie, a mother-son sloth duo in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica through the Sloth Conservation Foundation, and Syd, the two-toed sloth who was the inspiration for the sloth character Flash in the film “Zootopia,” through the Wildlife Learning and Conservation Center in Sylmar, CA. 

Catt hopes that the company can continue to expand upon its sloth conservation efforts, whatever that may look like, in the future.

“It’s such a big part of our brand, supporting the small community. We love sloths and they’re super cute and they do a lot of good for the forest, the rainforests across the globe,” said Catt. “I don’t really know what the next steps would be, but that’s still something, as the brand grows and as we have more resources, we would look towards what those next steps are in terms of our conservation efforts.”

For more information or to find where Koa products are sold, visit koacannabis.com.