After Bankruptcy And A Lost Home, This Cannabis Team Rebuilt From The Ground Up: The Real Story Of Blimburn Seeds
By Javier Hasse via El Planteo
What does it take to build a global cannabis brand from scratch, after everything falls apart?
For Sergio Martínez, it started with trust. Long before Blimburn Seeds became a staple in grow rooms across Europe and the U.S., it was just a rough idea shared among childhood friends in Barcelona. Years later, through personal loss and industry reinvention, that idea became a company with over 1,000 seed strains and a reputation for consistency in one of cannabis’s most unpredictable verticals.
The global cannabis seed market is projected to reach $6.5 billion by 2031. Blimburn is among the companies positioning themselves in this expanding vertical, offering genetics tailored to both hobbyists and commercial growers.
The Origins
Long before they entered the cannabis space, Martínez and his friend Sergi J. ran a small business selling camping gear—flashlights, tents, backpacks. “We were just 17 and already trying to build something,” he says. That early hustle would later evolve into a career in cultivation equipment and ultimately, cannabis genetics.
In the early 2000s, Martínez began selling supplies for indoor cultivation. To better understand the products and the growers who used them, he started growing himself, always within the limits of local law. He recalls a tense but telling moment in 2004: driving home from a cannabis competition with a car full of seed samples, he was stopped at a police checkpoint. Fortunately, he had installed an ozone machine in the vehicle to neutralize …