The Mission
rise in the land of the sky
Hemp was in a sorry state when we got here. So we built the shop we wanted to walk into and could not find anywhere. Everything below is what we have been doing about it ever since.
Somebody had to do it right
Before Skyland, buying hemp around here meant walking into a shop run by somebody who had never once used what was sitting on their own shelves. It was a gold rush, man. The people cashing in were not cannabis people. They were in it for the money, they did not partake, and boy did it show in every corner of the store. Synthetic garbage sold like it was flower. Nobody behind the counter who could answer a real question, because nobody behind the counter ever needed to ask one.
So there was an opening. Not the kind you find on a spreadsheet. The kind you cannot keep walking past.
Skyland became the first brick and mortar hemp shop to carry only non synthetic THC and CBD. Nothing cooked up in a lab and dressed as flower. No exceptions because something was cheap and moved fast. We built the shelf around local farmers and around cannabis culture, because those two things ARE the product. The jar is just how it gets to you.
The owner should be the one checking the jar
We QC our own product. Not a spec sheet, not a rep’s promise. Us. Opening it, smelling it, smoking it, before it ever gets a price tag. An owner who will not do that is guessing, and it is the customer who pays to find out.
And we stock what people actually want, not what somebody in an office decided hemp customers are supposed to want. That right there is the whole problem. Hemp is not some lesser thing sitting off to the side of cannabis. It IS cannabis. Pretending otherwise is how this whole category filled up with sad dusty product that nobody who actually smokes would ever buy twice.
We close the gap between hemp and real weed every single day. One jar at a time, on the counter, with somebody who walked in skeptical.
It is supposed to be fun
Somewhere along the line this industry decided that buying weed should feel like picking up a prescription. Nah. That is a waste of a perfectly good afternoon.
There is more to do at Skyland, in the shop and right here on this website, than at any other cannabis retailer in the country. Big claim? Sure is. Come find out. Or go poke around this site for a while and see what happens.
Asheville has been good to us
Three years running now, our hometown has handed us awards. That is not a trophy thing to me. It means the people who live here keep choosing us, and that is the only vote that counts.
Along the way we built real relationships with the people who make this city what it is. Local legends like Stu Helm. Neighbors like Sovereign Kava. We threw the first corporate sponsored cannabis events this area has ever seen, right alongside Marriott Bonvoy, The AC Hotel at Downtown Asheville, and McKibbon Hospitality. Sit with that one a second. Live consumption, served by places that until then had only ever served alcohol. Nobody had done that here. It took a LOT of conversations.
We have also thrown a run of sold out private events. Sky Society. A Melting of the Heads. Afterparties with vending, private chefs, and more fine glass in one room than you will find in most galleries.
We know the people who make it
We stay plugged into local legends and cultural hubs, here in Asheville and all over the country, and we use those connections for exactly one thing. Getting this community the best of what exists. Sourcing, technology, genetics, products, artwork. If something genuinely new is happening with this plant, we want it on the shelf while it is still new.
We are also known for bringing craft makers out of the shadows and into legal frameworks. Some of the most talented people in cannabis spent years with no legitimate road to market. Helping them find one is good for them, good for the plant, and honestly it is the reason we can serve people better than our competition without breaking a sweat.
Hash rosin or nothing
Hash rosin pays farmers properly and gives the person using it a better time. Both of those at once is rare, so we went all in.
Every vape we sell is hash rosin. Never BHO. Never distillate. We do not sell BHO at all, period. Zero solvents is the only honest way forward and we would rather carry less than bend on it.
And listen… please do not tell us that water is technically a solvent. We will get weird about it. You will be uncomfortable. Let us both just enjoy the rosin.
One more thing we are quietly proud of. Skyland opened the legal pathway between Michigan’s caregiver market and the North Carolina hemp market. That road is a big part of why NC got to grow into a serious cannabis hub in its own right instead of an afterthought.
Education is the whole job
Everything else runs downstream of this one. Good cannabis service is not a transaction with a friendly face stuck on it. It is somebody walking out knowing more than they did walking in. That is the supreme action and it is the supreme outcome. If you leave with the right jar but no idea why it was the right jar, we only did half the job.
No food dye. Not in anything.
There is no food dye in any edible we make or carry. Nobody needs a gummy the color of a highlighter. It does nothing for the effect, nothing for the flavor, and it is only in there to make the jar photograph well.
No synthetics. No kratom.
Never sold either one. Never will. Not when it was legal to, not when everybody else was doing it, not when it would have made for an easy month. That line has never moved once.
Helene
In September 2024 the water came and Asheville went dark. No power, no cell service, no internet, and for a while no real idea who was still out there.
Nick ran the eight man team that got over $25,000 worth of donations into the hands of people trapped in hotels and the apartment complexes around them, all while keeping the storefront open and the merchandise protected, through the most tumultuous stretch this city has ever faced.
William did something that still sounds made up when we say it out loud. From his phone. That is it. That is the whole setup. He organized the acquisition and distribution of over 70 ATVs, three helicopter rescues, and tens of thousands of dollars worth of rescue supplies out into the surrounding counties. Heroically. Stoically. Without once making it about himself.
Nobody had communications of any kind. So we got a line to the outside world by chaining routers together as relays, back to an access point with fiber four doors down. It should not have worked. It worked.
When the people came to Skyland, we were there to help.
This will forever be the crux of our mission.