NEW YORK CITY — On the top floor of
Barneys New York’s imposing edifice of fash-
ion, just past the men’s tailored suits, sits The
High End, the luxury retailer’s new store-in-
store venture that gives cannabis culture
a posh touch.
Handcrafted glass water pipes from
Caleb Siemon stand atop polished metal
shelves as an exalted design object. Hermès
and Bauhaus ashtrays comingle with 24-karat
gold rolling papers from Shine. And a dedi-
cated salesperson can set customers up with
an at-home cannabis delivery from upmarket
retailer Beboe, whose own silver vape pens
punctuate the lavish display.
‘Many of our customers are incorpo-
rating cannabis into their lifestyle,’ Barneys
CEO and president Daniella Vitale said
when The High End opened in March at
its Beverly Hills flagship. It’s a business
bet that a few years ago would have been
unimaginable for a venerated brand in the
US like Barneys, which like its rivals has
come under pressure from online shopping.
Marijuana is banned at the federal level, but
ten states and Washington, DC, have legalizedcannabis recreationally in the past decade.
That includes California and its nearly 40
million residents.
But the data backs Barneys’ wager on
weed as retailers seek to better define the
new marketplace and carve out their own
segment. Over the next three years, legal
marijuana spending is expected to nearly
double to $22.2 billion in the US with almost
a fifth of that coming from California alone,
according to The Arcview Group, a Califor-
nia-based cannabis investment and research
firm. In other words, it is not a consumerRETAIL
Barneys gets
high on the
luxury supply
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