A lot can change in 16 years.

In 2009, a drug conviction landed Coss Marte a seven-year prison sentence. This year, Marte expects to bring in as much as $12 million selling cannabis legally.

Marte, 39, is the founder and CEO of Conbud, one of the first businesses fully-licensed to sell recreational cannabis in Manhattan, and the first in the city's Lower East Side. After first opening its doors in October 2023, Conbud added a second location in the Bronx last April.

Marte's business currently brings in roughly $800,000 in sales per month, including nearly $100,000 in profit, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Marte projects a final tally of roughly $7 million for 2024, he says.

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After being granted an early release from prison in 2013, Marte launched a fitness business called Conbody, based on his workout regimen from behind bars. Then, in 2021, New York legalized the sale of recreational cannabis and expunged all past convictions for marijuana-related offenses.

A year later, the state announced that entrepreneurs with past marijuana convictions would be eligible to receive the first licenses for selling recreational weed. Given his experience running Conbody and the requirements laid out by the state for retail licensees, Marte saw a golden business opportunity, he says.

"I was following this law, and what they required was two years of a net profitable business and a conviction on your record," says Marte. "Now, how many people have that to qualify for a cannabis license? Not many."

From prison workouts to multiple businesses

Marte grew up on the Lower East Side, surrounded by an illicit drug trade that ensnared him at age 13, after he saw other teens making money that way, he says.

"When I was a kid, people would ask me: 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' And I would say: 'I want to be rich,'" says Marte. "The first opportunity was through the world of drugs. So I started dealing weed."

In prison, doctors told Marte that he was overweight with dangerously high cholesterol. He started working out intensely, using body-weight exercises that he could do in his cell. Upon his release from prison, Marte connected with Defy Ventures, a nonprofit program offering entrepreneurship training and business mentoring to the formerly incarcerated.

With a $10,000 grant from Defy, Marte launched Conbody — which now brings in around $1 million in annual revenue, he says — in 2014.

Eight years later, Marte paid $2,000 to apply for a retail cannabis license. He put roughly $50,000 of his own savings into Conbud, mostly from Conbody and paid speaking engagements, he says — and raised nearly $1.2 million in additional seed funding from friends and family, who are now part-owners of the business.

Marte owns 51%, as New York requires the "justice-impacted" license-holder to retain majority ownership.

Conbud's startup funds paid for a $400,000 security deposit at the Lower East Side retail location, construction costs, payroll and inventory, says Marte. The business opened its doors in October 2023, and brought in roughly $250,000 in revenue per month — until authorities shut down hundreds of unlicensed operators selling cannabis illegally last year.

Eyeing growth in a highly competitive market

The New York crackdown was a helpful development for licensed retailers like Marte, who face an uphill battle establishing long-term industry footholds.

The state's Office of Cannabis Management has touted its commitment to prioritizing "social and economic equity" while growing the legal cannabis market, but critics worry that smaller shops will eventually get squeezed out by larger corporations with nationwide reach.

Curaleaf, for example, is one of the largest dispensary owners in the U.S. with annual revenues over $1.3 billion. The company began adult-use sales in Queens, New York, in 2023.

Even the simple cost of doing business — particularly rent and labor costs — is high, leaving Marte with a relatively slim 13% profit margin, he says. Should cannabis become legal on a federal level, Marte could access federal tax deductions for payroll and other business expenses, and expanded banking options with lower fees.

"So, that 13% will [eventually] grow to 25% profit margins," he says.

Both Conbud and Conbody almost exclusively hire workers who have been "justice impacted," meaning either they or a family member were incarcerated for a past drug conviction, says Marte. Collectively, he employs 72 people who fit that criteria.

Marte himself left prison with $40 and a bus ticket, only to "end up on my mom's couch" while trying to figure out how he could make a living with a drug conviction on his record, he says. Without his own second chance, he'd likely never have found himself in this position, he notes.

"It's a big, big community that's growing with us," says Marte. "I feel blessed, man."

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