UFC heavyweight contender Curtis “Razor” Blaydes is a major player in the world of mixed martial arts. He’s what you get when you combine the raw strength of an athlete with the strategy of a chess player. Blaydes is recognized across the sport for his formidable wrestling and explosive takedowns. As he navigates the intense physical demands and injury risks inherent in elite MMA, Blaydes is finding that recovery isn’t just about taking a break, it’s also a secret weapon that combats the risk of injury, enhances performance, and increases the potential for overall athletic progress.
Strategic Approaches to Cannabis Recovery
In his quest for the Holy Grail of peak performance and career longevity, Blaydes is pioneering state-of-the-art recovery methods through continuous improvement and a disciplined post-training regimen. Blaydes is not alone. Performance-tuning the recovery process is now an essential component of wellness as athletes balance healing, pain management, and stress reduction. The cornerstone of Blaydes’ recovery program is the AirVape Legacy PRO 2, a bespoke combustion-free experience that transforms the therapeutic benefits of cannabis.
“I’m always looking for ways to recover smarter,” Blaydes says. “The AirVape Legacy PRO 2 is clean, fast, and helps me wind down the right way.”
According to AirVape co-owner Gary Szilagyi, “what sealed the [partnership] was the shared philosophy: we both believe cannabis can be used intentionally for recovery, mental clarity, and focus, not just recreation. It felt like a natural fit: his discipline and story amplified our vision, and our technology elevated his routine.”
The Legacy PRO 2 is AirVape’s next evolution of their original award-winning Legacy PRO dry herb vaporizer. And the love for this device runs deep. As AirVape’s first user-centered upgrade, it reflects direct input from the brand’s dedicated following—a community that’s helped cement its place among the top names in vaporization. As the company website states, they’re “taking everything users loved about the original Legacy Pro and enhancing it with smarter design, refined aesthetics, and user-driven upgrades.”
If you, like Blaydes, are interested in joining the AirVape community and utilizing cannabis as part of your health and wellness routine, then you’ve found the right company. Their entire ethos is centered on promoting wellness through innovation. Founder Roland Szegi, a former athlete, envisioned transforming the portable vaporizer landscape. In the sequel to the original AirVape Legacy, he released a device that captured high performance, elegance, and mindfulness.
Setting a New Gold Standard
The AirVape Legacy PRO 2 is a sleek, ergonomic device that fits naturally in the palm of your hand. Designed for modern wellness seekers, it’s the cornerstone of a discreet ritual—an elegant piece of technology that hides in plain sight while subtly masking the aroma of the herbs within.
Wrapped in hand-applied cork fabric with 24k gold flakes over a gunmetal frame, the vape balances modern design with artisanal detail—no two devices are exactly alike. The gold freckles upon the cork detailing are an homage to AirVape’s dedication to quality materials that produce a session’s luxury experience. Engraved into the leather is its name, bordered with delicate stitching.
While the cork is aesthetically pleasing, it also functions to insulate the device’s heat and to maintain temperature precision. While the top vaporization devices on the market are quick to heat up within 30-40 seconds, the Legacy PRO 2 heats up in just 15 seconds. The hybrid heating methodology, gold-plated filters, detailing, and the glass airpath level up the original Legacy design. By integrating both conduction and convection, the device achieves true hybrid heating—a rare innovation that sets it apart from competitors.
Blaydes had already been using vaporizers as part of his recovery routine, but when he tried the Legacy Pro, he immediately appreciated the design, build quality, and clean vapor experience. The glass is also easy to maintain, with a replaceable battery to enhance the lifespan of the device. The user’s ability to precisely adjust the temperature puts control back into the user’s hands to achieve efficient and even heating of the chamber. You can modify the temperature per strain and terpene profile for the best flavor and extend session time through temperature modulation.
Unparalleled Functionality
AirVape stood out to Blaydes because of his open advocacy for innovative, cleaner recovery methods. That innovation, The Legacy PRO 2, arrives assembled and ready to charge with a universally compatible USB-C port. To turn the device on, click the button three times. The device either times down or shuts down with clicking the button three times. This Legacy PRO 2 provides a visual display that is used to turn the temperature up and down, adjust session length, gauge battery life, and to say goodbye with a “ciao ” and a smile when turned off.
This dual-use vape can hold flower or concentrate, adding convenience to a busy lifestyle. The gold-plated chamber isn’t just for looks— the chamber is interchangeable and easy to replace. It is an innovation on traditional heating devices with gold, a metal that’s traditionally been in medical devices, thanks to its stable characteristics. We’re impressed by how AirVape seamlessly blends form and function to create a device that isn’t just aesthetically pleasing but effective at what it’s designed to do.
The Legacy PRO 2 also comes with two important accessories. First, there’s a loading tool that presses flower from the grinder into a compact puck that’s easy to take in and out of the device, making cleanup easy. Secondly, there’s a glass piece, reminiscent of the top of a water pipe, that helps with cooling the vapor further when playing with higher temperatures and wax. It’s easier to customize and pursue hybrid sessions by incorporating flower and sugar at the same time. The device’s innovations are born from real challenges compiled from AirVape’s dedicated fan base, making this the clean and innovative design Blaydes relies on.
Rethinking The Recovery Paradigm
Together, Blaydes and Air Vape are pushing cannabis and sports with their willingness to educate other athletes about alternatives to traditional painkillers. “What’s really striking is how authentic [Blades’] involvement is,” describes Szilagyi. “He’s not just endorsing a product; he’s sharing his own recovery journey.” Blaydes is championing the paradigm shift in athletic recovery. Acceptance of cannabis in sport is growing as regulations around flower use continue to vary.
Vaporization devices like the AirVape PRO 2 play a vital role in supporting athletic wellness and performance. They offer an opportunity for all of us to channel our inner Blaydes as we strive for peak potential.
In the world of cannabis technology, few brands carry the legacy and trust of Storz & Bickel. For over two decades, their iconic Volcano vaporizer has set the standard for quality and performance, earning a reputation as the gold standard for both cannabis medical patients and connoisseurs alike. While the brand’s legacy is built on its classic devices, Storz & Bickel continues to innovate. Today, the brand is launching the new VEAZY, a true game-changer for the personal dry herb vape market.
The new Storz & Bickel VEAZY Vaporizer delivers consistent, flavorful vapor in just 40 seconds using the company’s patented hybrid heating technology. It’s also the brand’s smallest and most affordable device, priced at just $249 and weighing 0.3 lbs. Users can fine-tune settings and easily personalize sessions from their phone or laptop via Bluetooth to the S&B web app. Plus, the quick USB-C charging system means you can easily recharge the device when you’re on the move. The VEAZY is the perfect blend of style and substance: It fits nicely in the palm of your hand but still packs a punch with S&B’s patented mini hybrid heater blending conduction and convection.
Cannabis Now Founder Eugenio Garcia sat down with Jürgen Bickel, co-founder and managing director of Storz & Bickel, to discuss the brand’s 25-year journey from a small German workshop to a global industry leader. In this conversation, Jürgen shares the company’s foundational principles, his new role as a public-facing advocate for the brand, and an exciting first look at the VEAZY, the company’s latest device set to redefine accessibility in the space.
The new VEAZY is the latest innovation from S&B and is designed to appeal to a broader audience with its compact design, affordable price point, and range of fun colors.
Eugenio Garcia: Jürgen, welcome. Thank you for being here with me. Storz & Bickel is one of the few brands with a true legacy. In my opinion, cannabis is still a new industry, but we’ve been at it for over a decade now in its modern sense. However, your brand has a rich history, and I’d love to learn a little more about the company’s beginnings and how it got started.
Jürgen Bickel: Of course. This was 25 years ago, or even a little bit before. The starting point was my partner, or ex-partner, Markus Storz. He started to develop the Volcano. I met him from time to time during this process, and I also tested a few things with him. But at that time, I was still living in South America and was not too close to it. In November 2000, he brought out the first series of the Volcano. I was one of his first clients. I bought a Volcano for myself. I quit smoking tobacco at that time, and I brought it with me to Peru.
A year later, I came back to Germany. My time in South America was over, and Markus needed help, so I helped him out because I knew the device. We attended trade shows together, and then we decided to co-found Storz & Bickel. We were just the two of us then, and then the journey started. 25 years later, we have about 150 employees here and have had a great time and a great experience.
EG: Twenty-five years ago, how did you develop the technology for the Volcano? How has it transitioned over 25 years, given that you must have over 20 or 30 products now?
JB: It started with a heat gun. It became clear at the time that you don’t have to burn the flower to consume it. At that time, it wasn’t immediately apparent to everyone that THCA needed to be decarboxylated; all we knew was that it worked. We found out that you need a minimum of 180 degrees Celsius to release the THC, and you need less than 230 degrees Celsius because above that, it also burns. This is your window and to stay in that window, you must have exact temperature control. This is how it started.
EG: The balloon is such a signature part of the Volcano experience. What was the rationale behind that design choice, and what benefits does it offer the user that other methods don’t?
JB: To this day, people still ask, “What is it, a balloon or a bag?” But it’s just a way to hold the vapor you have already produced so you only need to inhale. You can almost not do anything wrong once you have the bag in your hand. It’s very easy, and it’s also a resistance-free inhalation. All this made it very special from the very beginning.
EG: There’s a huge medical benefit to these devices. How do you think about it from a medical point of view, as far as the technology and your presentation of the products?
JB: We’re located in Tuttlingen, Germany, which calls itself the world center of medical devices.. So, from the very beginning, it was clear that we wanted to have a medical device like everybody else in this town. Another point for us from the very beginning was that somebody who is slightly disabled needs to be able to use it. It was also important that a patient could use it and that you could replicate the dosage. One balloon always has the same amount. You have local mobility; you don’t have to touch electricity or heat or glass. You can bring it to a patient in a bed. All of this was thought into the design from the very beginning, and it worked very well.
It’s not only the medical device status we like. We also certify our household devices that are not medical devices. We certify them with a UL norm. The UL 8139 is the vaporizing norm. We send 100 devices to a lab where somebody else tests them, doing drop tests, water tests, electric tests, and venting tests. We do this to get a third-party approval for our device. This is our way to ensure quality and demonstrate the diligence we bring into the development process.
EG: Speaking of the development process, how does the process of creating new devices or enhancing technology work for you?
JB: We get a lot of customer feedback, and we take all feedback seriously to see if there is something that everybody doesn’t like or what everybody wants to have. We review it, but the baseline remains an internal process.
For the Venty, for example, we said, “Okay, the MIGHTY+ is nice, but we would like something a little bit faster with more airflow.” So, this was clearly an internal idea. In the cannabis industry, if something isn’t widely available and a lot of people don’t know about vaporizers, it’s difficult to get good feedback. You have some experts who know a lot of devices, but this is only a few people, and they are already experts. This isn’t somebody on the street you can ask. The feedback you get is always that people want it to be cheap and small, which makes it a little bit difficult.
We develop a lot of these ideas in-house; Markus and I both use cannabis and we’re the first ones who test it. We stand behind it, and if I don’t like it or if I think it doesn’t work, then we don’t do it. This is our internal review process. But of course, the whole community brings in ideas, and all this together brings us to a new device.
EG: You mentioned just now that everyone wants it cheaper and smaller. A company that comes to mind when you say that is Apple. They revolutionized technology across
the world. I don’t know if you’ve heard this before, but a lot of people compare Storz & Bickel to Apple. They say Storz & Bickel is the Apple of the cannabis space.
JB: I’ve heard that. It’s nice to hear.
EG: With Apple for many years, after Steve Jobs passed, there wasn’t a lot of personality behind the brand. For Storz & Bickel, for many years, everyone knew the Volcano and the product, but nobody really knew who was behind it. There was no public face of the brand. Maybe it’s just me, but in the last year or two, we’ve seen you, Jürgen Bickel, really out there as an entrepreneur and a leader in the space, as a spokesperson not only for your brand but for the industry as a whole. You’re very active on social media. I’ve seen you speaking on panels and doing a lot more interviews. Is that a perception, or have you truly taken your message and the brand to the streets in the last few years?
JB: That’s absolutely true. Of course, in the past, the legal situation in the States and in Europe was much more difficult, and you may not have wanted to go out and present yourself as a big cannabis entrepreneur. This has changed in the last few years. I can talk more openly than the company can. I can use the word “cannabis.” I can show the consumption. I also want to show people what it is like. I don’t want to give a wrong image. Everything that is happening on social media is authentic. I’m a user at the end of the day, and I’m testing the device. I’ve tested tons of devices, and I want to transmit this message. I am who I am, and this is the company behind it. This is to build trust with people and say, “You can spend this amount of money. I assure you this is something good. This is not something you will regret at any point.”
EG: The economy around the industry has been challenging. What I’ve seen is that a lot of companies, specifically from Europe, were looking at the US for expansion. Now that Germany has legalized, a good number have reversed their focus back to Germany or Europe. Germany has a population of nine million, so it’s a massive move for the economy and for potential revenue. How has Germany impacted your focus? We know that Mary Jane Berlin had 44,000 to 45,000 attendees.
JB: From the baseline, we understand ourselves as a global brand. Every year, we ship to more than 100 countries. It shows that cannabis is consumed everywhere in the world, whatever the legal situation is. Even where penalties exist, people are still consuming—not in the same way or with the same openness—but worldwide, people have been using cannabis for thousands of years. This is part of our brand’s international approach. I like this about cannabis, seeing that people are using it everywhere in the world.
Of course, then you have your main markets where you have your main sales and main revenue. The US market is the biggest market for us. But Europe also became more important. It was always a good market, but with legalization in Germany, we doubled our revenue in Germany. It’s also personally much nicer to live in a legal environment where you can consume and have three plants at home, which is allowed. So, as a company, Germany is great, and it’s our home market and our home language, so we have a lot of focus here.
We also have a subsidiary in Oakland; an office with 15 people and more than 20 salespeople employed as Storz & Bickel America, Inc. I personally founded that company in 2005 in Oakland. So, on the revenue side, we look for our main markets, but our general approach is to be worldwide, and I’m proud to ship every year to more than 100 countries.
EG: I was very happy to see the Oakland expansion. I lived in Berkeley, California, for 10 years. I have a very fond love for Oaksterdam. It was a cradle of innovation, as they say, so close to Silicon Valley. Speaking of innovation, tell me about the new VEAZY vaporizer.
JB: The Venty was our last innovation, almost two years ago. It was a game-changer because it had high airflow. It’s a very successful device, but it is a little bit pricey and bulky. It has the performance for people who are using cannabis several times a day. We thought, like with the Mighty and Crafty, the Venty needs a little brother or sister. We came up with the “VEAZY.”
The VEAZY has the same feeling chamber inside, so it works with our capsules, but it’s much smaller and handier. It has a slightly higher heat-up time of 40 seconds, and the airflow is a little more restricted, but it’s a nice and small device. Our goal with this device was to bring our experience to a broader audience and make it more affordable. This will retail at $249 USD. It has great performance and is a very nice device.
EG: And it comes in a range of fun colors, right?
JB: Yes! All our devices are normally black, so we thought, “Let’s use a few colors if we’re going in a more lifestyle direction.” In addition to our alluring black, it will come in four colors: rainbow, a dynamic blue, inspiring orange, and a charming pink.
EG: I love them so much. Being able to personalize a purchase is really important to people. In your home, you can use it as a presentation. It’s not just a device you pull out of a drawer. It’s something you can have on a bar cart or a conversation piece in the home, which is very exciting.
JB: It has the orange button, the different colors, and it works well and goes in your pocket. It’s a very good offer to the market. It’s also easy to use with a one-button design: You press it once, and it turns on. You see the orange light, and it heats up.
EG: It looks beautiful. It gives me an essence of a microphone for a rock star. You are the rock star of your own life with one of these. I can’t wait to try one. Congratulations.
As one of the leading brands and entrepreneurs in the space, what is your hope for the next five to 10 years? Do you think that we are on the cusp of a global or at least US legalization? What do you predict in the near and medium future?
JB: On the legal side, I think that it will go in the right direction. I don’t see things going back, even in the US. But even the current situation is acceptable. You can run a business in this space and do certain things. You see this globally. Australia, for example, is a good market. You also see advancements in South Africa and even in Brazil. The same thing happens: It goes through medical and then recreational. It gets acceptance. Our generation is the first one that is more open to it. The younger generation is more open to it, questions alcohol, and has more openness towards cannabis. So, I see this as a positive, and I think this trend will remain.
EG: Absolutely. In order to have the future that we are hoping for, I believe that the normalization of cannabis and the products and brands behind them is very important. What I’ve also noticed in the last year or two with Storz & Bickel is you have done specific things with your brand, connecting them with mainstream, normalizing opportunities. What is the next event that you guys have on your calendar, either in Europe or in the US, that is a larger opportunity for you?
JB: The next show is the cannabis show in Prague, in the Czech Republic. We will have a launch party in New York the weekend after. We are thinking about something in San Diego as well. Then, of course, MJ BizCon and Hall of Flowers in Santa Rosa are coming up. Those are the bigger events. In Europe, Mary Jane was great.
EG: Awesome. JB, it has been a pleasure to connect with you. I’ve been watching your progress over the years. I graduated high school in 2000, and the Volcano quickly came into my world when I was in college. It’s been a true pleasure to see someone like you grow over the years and now to talk to you personally. Thank you so much.
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