For years, Sherbinskis occupied a rare place in cannabis culture.
The brand was widely associated with premium flower, cultural relevance, and one of the most influential strains of the modern era. Then, quietly, it disappeared from shelves in California.
By 2022, Sherbinskis was no longer a symbol of top-shelf cannabis in the state’s legal market but a distressed brand, carrying millions in debt, sold repeatedly, struggling with operations, and largely absent from dispensary shelves.
That was the moment PrimeTime Capital entered the picture.
PrimeTime Before Sherbinskis
PrimeTime founders Oleg Spektorov and Anthony Messina moved from Massachusetts to California in 2018, drawn by what they saw as the center of gravity for the cannabis industry. In 2020, they partnered with Max Albert, a California native, to start Primetime Holdings.
By 2021, the company had expanded beyond vape manufacturing into terpene formulation and wholesale flower distribution, and founded Boutiq. That year, PrimeTime as a parent company reported roughly $120 million in revenue, driven largely by wholesale flower and white-label manufacturing.
“Our specialty is product development,” Spektorov said in an exclusive interview with High Times. “From the actual hardware and packaging to what’s inside the vapes… making high-quality, consistent products.” That operational focus would become central to the Sherbinskis acquisition, since Sherbinskis had operational chaos and was unable to deliver on the promise of high-quality flower and concentrates.
“They did very cool marketing,” Spektorov added. “Reputationally, it was still one of the top brands in the industry. But operationally, they had done very poorly in California.”
The result was inconsistency, particularly from the perspective of dispensaries and budtenders, which ultimately damaged the brand. At the time PrimeTime began talks, Sherbinskis was reportedly doing less than $100,000 per month in California sales.
PrimeTime engaged with Sherbinskis in 2022 as one of several interested parties. The deal was structured as a merger rather than a simple acquisition.
“We gave up eighteen-and-a-half percent of our equity,” Spektorov said, “and we paid off a lot of debt and took on the liability.”
He estimated the total exposure at roughly $10–11 million.
Why take on that level of risk?
“The reason we were drawn to it is because we know how hard it is to build a brand,” Spektorov said. “This brand was already built and had a very high-end reputation worldwide.”
While Sherbinskis’ reputation had deteriorated within California’s retail ecosystem, its global recognition remained.
“Nationwide and worldwide, that reputation still held,” he added. “Only a select group of people knew about their inability to operate.”
Leadership Changes
After the acquisition was finalized in January 2023, PrimeTime implemented sweeping internal changes.
“We pretty much let go of every single person that worked for Sherbinskis at the time,” Spektorov said, including executive leadership, project managers, and former CEO Mario Guzman, who founded the brand but remained involved after the merger.
PrimeTime characterized the changes as necessary to stabilize operations following the merger.
PrimeTime described the following year as a rebuilding phase focused on quality, consistency, and product redevelopment.
“It wasn’t overnight,” Spektorov said. “It took a year of educating consumers, budtenders, and dispensaries… When we came in, the quality was bad all around—the products, the flower, the genetics. We had to change everything.”
By 2024, PrimeTime reports Sherbinskis generating over $1 million per month in California revenue.
Sherbinskis is also licensed in Arizona, New York, Florida, and Canada, with additional international markets—including the UK, Germany, and Australia—under development.
What the Sherbinskis Case Shows
For PrimeTime, the bet appears to have paid off, though the company remains cautious.
“This isn’t easy or quick,” Spektorov said. “It’s going to take years.”
One of the products developed during the rebuild is Quattro, a vape device featuring multiple coils and tanks designed to deliver larger draws at lower temperatures.
Anthony Messina described Quattro as “the Ferrari of vapes… the only vape that has four coils in it, a dual tank, a digital interface inspired by a car dashboard, and lower operating temperature,” a design intended to preserve flavor by reducing heat while increasing vapor production.
As the brand stabilized, PrimeTime began rebuilding Sherbinskis’ product strategy through a network of partnerships rather than internal expansion alone.
According to Spektorov, this involved reworking both flower and concentrate programs while bringing in external expertise.
“We’re bringing in Ryan Bartholomew from Doja as head of genetics,” he said, noting that Bartholomew had been involved with Sherbinskis in its early years.
On the concentrate side, PrimeTime partnered with Casa Flor to develop live resin and entered a licensing relationship with Sensi Seeds, intended to allow Sherbinskis genetics to be distributed and developed internationally.
