Briar Hound

Briar Hound was a physical boutique pipe tobacco shop located in old town Pasadena in 2014. Here is what happened…

For years I lamented over the effort to find great pipe tobacco. So when Chris Nickols, (a fellow smoker and developer) asked if I’d be interested in starting an online pipe tobacco retailer – I giddily said ‘hells yeah.’

After almost a year of researching pipe tobaccos from all over the world (for “r&d reasons only”), we leased a little back-alley space in old town pasadena, got our tobacco license, and launched a pipe tobacco shop: https://briarhound.com.

Then it closed 6 months later. It turns out that just selling pipe tobacco isn’t a great business model. We still paid all our bills though, and hosted tons of pipe enthusiasts from around Los Angeles.

Honestly, it was a lot of fun, and I’m glad we made something new.

Like to take a peek?

Here is a Mood board that friend & colleague Chris Dewan helped us dial in:

Later my artist friend Shane Edelman helped us dial in the branding for signage and the final jars.

Tons of other friends helped along the way, including Will Keeler, Marc Ritzma, Austin Obrien (who shared the tobacco space during the week!), and many more.

Only onward and upward.