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The First Apex Ancillary Blog: About Us & Meet Apex Avi!
What’s up and welcome to the Apex blog! Here at Apex Ancillary, we’re all about convenience — creating products to make your smoke routine more seamless and your sesh station less cluttered. For our very first post, we figured we’d give you the inside scoop on who we are and how we created some game-changing heaters for your heady setup.
I’m Kat, the official writer (and unofficial product tester) for team Apex, and I sat down to sesh with our founder Avi for a conversation about the brand and its core lineup of products. Let’s grab a glob and get into it!
MEET THE APEX FOUNDER, APEX AVI!
What was your personal journey to smoking hash and starting a dabbing accessory company?
I started smoking when I was 15 and have been smoking flower steadily every day since. Fast forward a few years after that and “dabbing” becomes a thing. I think it was 2012 when I tried my first extract. It was crumble but we didn’t have a rig so we sprinkled it over some weed and rolled it up. I was like this is cool, this is nice, but I didn’t really know what a real “dab” was supposed to be. About three years later, some more information was finally coming out about it. This is when BHO, slabs, shatter, and all that was really becoming a thing. So I was like, “Maybe I will try whatever this honey syrup stuff is and actually throw it in a banger!”
I started dabbing, but it was probably at Real Deal Resin levels - you know, in the 800s. I just thought that was the way you were supposed to dab. I would literally hold it on the banger until it was red fucking hot. Man, I don't look back on it fondly. I eventually had to stop because I was also a big joint smoker, and it got to the point where I couldn't enjoy a joint because I wouldn't get high after all those red hots.
Fast forward to 2019 after years of being just a flower smoker again. At this point, I had my own online smoke shop. I found out about rosin presses and started selling them, so I knew there was something called rosin out there. This is back when flower rosin was popping off. I did some more research, and it seemed like a very pure process that could be a cleaner way to dab. So I tried it myself. Game-changing! I got a Puffco, which makes the whole process obtainable, easy, and terp-heavy. I was like, “I can really get behind this.” Then eventually I got heavier into the scene and started exploring heady glass. Everything escalated from there and led to me designing these Apex products.
The online smoke shop sold probably 300 different products between 150 brands, so I could see what was selling in this industry, what was selling in each category, and what people were buying more of. I felt like I could make a better mousetrap. I thought, “If I know the process and I know dabbing, let me take all these insights I have from products that are already out there and make something truly transformative for the daily dabber.” That’s how the magnetic tool stand was born and Apex Ancillary really came to be!
So how did you originally come up with the idea for the stand?
Well, my background is in the kitchen industry and I went to culinary school almost twelve years ago. When you're in a kitchen, you need somewhere to put your knives. There's a lot of knife racks around and it just became a thing of convenience…you need a knife, it's hanging right in front of you. You don't need to go digging in a drawer or anything to find the right one.
So I'm sitting at my computer one day and I'm thinking, “I have so many fucking dab tools here, this is such a pain in the ass.” I wanted to keep them all in one spot, and I thought back to the knife racks. So the first thing I did was buy a little wooden magnetic knife strip from Amazon and slapped it on my wall right behind my computer desk where I was dabbing all day. I was like, “Wow, I really like this, this is really convenient.”
I bought five more knife strips and even got little magnetic ones so I could cut them down to size and put them in different places to keep refining the design. I actually still have one of the OG magnetic strips up on my fridge. I use it almost every day. When I’m standing there and pull a dab tool off it, I’ll think about how that’s really where it all started. Seeing something that changed the game a little bit and made everyday life easier working in a kitchen — so why wouldn't I try to apply that to a different industry which I'm a huge fan of?
But a dab station is not always by a wall, so you're not always going to be able to reach over and grab something if it's stuck on the wall. That's where the stand came to play so it could fit on a dab station. Sure, it’s going to take up a little space, but it's also going to allow you to take about five different things off the dab station. So it makes up for it. Nothing else like it exists. It holds your caps, your pearls, your accessories, your nonmagnetic tools — and it looks nice too.
Something like that hasn't been on the market yet and I'm pretty proud of that. If I'm making a product, I want it to be like a game changer. I want you to use it and be like “Oh shit, this is making my life easier. This does make my process a little smoother. This does make my dab station a little cleaner.” You know? Seamless. I'm a sucker for convenience and I live my life by that. If I'm gonna make a product, it's going to be a convenient product.
What’s your plan for the next year over at Apex?
More game-changing accessories, great prices, more collabs with really cool names, and hopefully more events. Basically, just more things that when you put them on your table, you'd be like, “I didn't know I needed this but now that I have it, I appreciate it.”
Bonus question: favorite jar in your headstash right now?
I would hit you with the Mango Lasi from Sly Fox for sure, I’m a big fan of it. After that, I’d probably have to go with Animal Mints from Sugar Magnolia Farms.
MEET THE APEX PRODUCT LINEUP
The stand.
The only magnetic stand on the market with a magnetic front surface, as well as a notch on the top and bottom for non-magnetic tools. Featuring an internal removable drawer to house small accessories or secretly stash your favorite jars, a wide anti-slip base, and an aesthetic wood finish.
The iso station.
An all-in-one hash hub for swabs (perfectly fit to Glob Mops XL containers), iso, tools, caps, and pearls. Featuring an iso pump, tool holder, and cap holder — all with sealed bottoms so they double as soaking basins. Available in a regular-sized and XL version, we’re talking less grabs and more dabs.
The dab tools.
Apex products were designed to stand alone or harmoniously with each other — they work all together or in pairs. We have a variety of accessories available, from our classic six-piece toolset with four standard dab tools and two designed for slurper fans, to our dab tool collabs with artists like Sibelley, Cole Dabs, and Dunkin Dabbers (more on those coming to the blog soon).
Want to know more about who we are and what we do over at Apex? Ready to transform your dab station setup? Reach out to the team today, and as always, happy dabbing!
Written by Kat Wolf @katadellic for Apex Ancillary
