Our Story

Our company was born after our co-founder's dog, Kali, was diagnosed with cancer and treated with home grown marijuana and hemp plants. Leading up to this experience, Color Up Therapeutics' three co-founders spent many years in the cannabis space, both professionally and personally. Having all moved to Denver to become more intimately involved in the cannabis movement, they came together through friendship in 2013. When Kali's life was extended by over a year due to the cannabis care she was given, the three quickly realized their shared mission to educate their communities on cannabis as a medicinal option for health and wellness.

The three created a (not yet licensed) basement lab (think hot plates and mismatched "office" chairs) and coined their creations Color Up Therapeutics. We launched our first round of pet products in honor of Kali and began sending them to family and friends back home, and around the country. Shortly thereafter we created body care products for our co-founder to use in massage therapy sessions, and to be used in the local massage school, Denver Integrative Massage School.

We opened our first physical location where we shared space with a friend's yoga studio and another friend's plant shop–we built our first licensed manufacturing lab, created a retail space / massage therapy room, and together hosted community wellness events that incorporated cannabis. We officially launched our pet care, body care, and professional skin care lines through ecommerce and at our brick and mortar. With the help and support of the instructors and owner at School of Botanical and Medical Aesthetics, a local boutique aesthetics and massage school (the one our co-founder graduated from), we expanded our cannabinoid infused skin care product line to include a professional 7 step European facial protocol.

In 2018 we rebranded to Color Up, taking the Therapeutics out of our name due to government regulations. We launched our retail "Life" line in an effort to reach more people by focusing on preventative options containing fewer active ingredients. We began our journey with Oncology Spa Solutions–the only trusted oncology program in our country–and had all of our cannabinoid infused offerings oncology safe for care after treatment. We built an education team and scaled our impact nationally across spas, hotels, trade schools, and boutique retailers.

After an late year rebrand in 2019 from Color Up Therapeutics to Color Up due to laws and regulations, we had a brief halt in all operations which led to several team members being temporarily furloughed for one to three months, our lab was eventually deemed essential bringing everyone back to work. During this time we quickly shifted to an online platform and launched consulting services for our account partners in an effort to support the survival of our industry. We set up up spa parties for clients, started drop shipped to our account partner's customers, hosted weekly educational classes, decorated outgoing mail, and we kept our team close. Our co-founders parents and our "landlords" who we call family, generously provided us with both financial support, and stability that allowed us to offer the small businesses within our wellness center, that same support in return. After the world opened back up, we leaned into our community and opened a second retail location at Nurture Wellcare Marketplace–we offered community massages from students who were interning with our team, we educated on cannabis wellness, and we created a supportive retail environment. On the last day of the year, we moved our wellness center and lab into a new location that our land-family provided for us, we built a lab twice the size of the one we were in, and we began our next five year journey.

The aftermath of 2020 proved to be more of a challenge for our team than the year itself had been. Along with several revenue-heavy trade shows canceling without refund, a sharp decline in the number of active professionals and spas around the country lost us several major accounts, to include an expensive bankruptcy case from one of our twenty-six-location spa partners. For the first time since 2015, we had to tighten our reigns and dig deep to keep our wellness center and lab operating at full capacity.

In 2022 we opened a retail and wellness center location in Phoenix, Arizona alongside our friends and community leaders, Archipelago Clubs. With the intention of tapping into the newly legal cannabis industry and opening up more revenue streams to sustain our business, two of our co-founders temporarily relocated to establish roots. our education team joined on occasion to spread the good word.

In 2023 two of our three co-founders stepped away and our remaining co-founder bought them out to keep our small business moving forward. Due to contractual obligations, as well as a desire to align with our new leadership team, we changed our name to VXN Wellness. VXN honors the women who stuck it out and stayed for the fight, while paying homage to the female fox–clever, adaptable, witty, nurturing, and loyal. The rebrand to VXN Wellness was manageable, although largely unsuccessful after having just stocked all of our customers up on Color Up products at a discounted rate–part of the buyout process.

In 2024 we paused operations briefly—an intentional decision that came from the hard reality that after years of absorbing rising costs, processing fees, and battling an unbalanced regulatory system, our pricing no longer covered our costs. Rather than compromise our ethics and morals to keep going, we paused to re-align.This pause allowed us to reorganize, revamp our operations, and figure out who's here for the long haul. We began focusing on our manufacturing lab and slowly started the process of closing our 7 room wellness and events center.

As we entered into 2025, our original co-founder, Shauna, was joined in ownership by two women, Marrana and Amber, who have been with our company since shortly after inception. Each of our mother's owning a small percentage to honor the extent they each went to support us through the last few years. We made the decision to close our remaining brick and mortar location at the end of 2024 in an effort to know our capacity, and to focus on where our passion is–our small-batch, licensed hemp manufacturing lab. We rebranded as House of VXN to bring all of our brand names under one roof, like the family we are, and we moved into a really cool new warehouse, Saltbox, where we now share walls with other inspiring small business entrepreneurs.