What do electronic music, precious metals and cannabis have in common?
All three are passions of Toronto-based goldsmith Alex Dordevic, the CEO of Tribe and a man who wants to change the meaning of the word ‘luxury’ in the cannabis accessories space.
Written content by Amanda Siebert for Forbes.
Established in 1993, Tribe began as a magazine documenting Toronto’s budding underground electronic music scene. It was the first in Canada to possess an online parallel, with a community now “four and a half million pages deep” according to Dordevic. Though the magazine halted publication in 2005, its forum is still active and has become a place where the multitalented publisher-turned-goldsmith can spread the seed, so to speak, among readers and cannabis consumers interested in customized high-end cannabis accessories.
While the pivot might seem an odd one, Dordevic says his idea for a business that produced lavish items out of Canadian precious metals and gems took root in the years leading up to legalization. Cannabis, he says, changed the course of his life, helping him cope with the pain of osteoarthritis (“Years of jumping off stage and dancing for hours at underground raves really adds up,” he says). Wanting to participate in the new industry in an ancillary market to avoid the “intense” regulations put in place by Health Canada, his plan was to create a new tier in the market for cannabis accessories while putting skills he had acquired nearly 50 years earlier to use.
“It’s a gold thread that has run through my entire life in spite of various other long careers like magazine publisher and photographer,” he says. Dordevic learned jewelry making and stone polishing from his fifth-grade teacher, opening him up to Montreal’s jewelry district at a young age and connecting him with established goldsmiths, jewelers, and gem cutters. Read more from Forbes.
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