In a 12-acre industrial campus in Sacramento across the street from a U.S. Navy recruiting center, Natura grows 80,000 pounds of weed a year inside 18 glass-ceilinged hot houses. Most of the cannabis will eventually be ground up and made into pre-rolled joints, which are infused with hash and dusted with an extra punch of THC, the compound that gets people high.

Every day, Natura produces 40,000 of its pre-rolls for its in-house brand Sluggers Hit, or about 1.2 million joints a month, generating around $60 million in revenue last year and is on track to hit $85 million by the end of 2026. Leaning into sports tropes, Sluggers’ best-selling product is its five-pack of pre-rolls in a tin wrapped in a metallic mylar bag like the kind collectible sports cards come in. Sluggers’ branding is eye-catching and riffs off sports teams—its New York Diesel pack is emblazoned with a logo reminiscent of the Knicks’ orange and blue and its Green Monster five-pack is an ode to Fenway Park. Sluggers even has a collaboration with actor Chauncey Leopardi, who played Squints in the classic 1993 baseball movie The Sandlot, and just released a limited edition run with rapper Xzibit.

The tin, which contains a total of an eighth of an ounce of weed and a collectible card, costs between $25 and $50, depending on the strain. (Sluggers’ cards also have a burgeoning second market on eBay, with asking prices for collections ranging from $150 to $1,000.) Thanks to the brand’s marketing gimmicks and collaborations with well-known producers like Cookies, Connected, Backpack Boyz and more, Sluggers is now the fifth best-selling pre-roll brand in California, home to America’s biggest marijuana market.

CEO and cofounder Ori Bytton, 40, said he knew they were onto something right when Sluggers hit the market. “The first batch [in 2021], they weren’t pretty, but they sold out in a day, and we got re-orders in a week,” says........

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