CES 2020 Award Goes for the First Time to a Cannabis Company

Last year, CES made headlines after it awarded – for the first time – an Innovation Award to sex toy tech company Lora DiCarlo. It wasn’t quite the smooth ride, culminating with the company issuing an open letter to CES organizers, but it showed the organizers’ willingness to include innovative products and companies in the show, even if they might be considered controversial in other shows.

CES Gives Back Innovation Award to Sex Toy

Now, CES is doing it again. For the first time, they have announced KEEP Labs, a cannabis tech company, as a 2020 Innovation Awards Honoree. Their product, KEEP, is a smart box that’s intended to keep cannabis safe and away from busybodies.  

As a smart objects, it is of course connected to a mobile app. The owner can unlock it with a look or a touch, via biometrics. Every time someone tries to access the box, the app send a short notification to the owner, letting him know a non-authorized person is trying to access it.

But the box does more than that. It keeps an inventory of the box, so the owner can always know exactly what it has there. As for the storage space itself, it is divided in different sections and it’s temperature-controlled.

“At KEEP, we believe that cannabis shouldn’t be kept in places like pencil cases, sock drawers, or the back of the closet, but it should be kept responsibly,” KEEP spokesperson Eden Wilkins told Mashable. 

As an additional method to keep the box stealth, the KEEP team has made it to look and work like a digital watch. Either in white or black, the box shows the hour thanks to a backlit LED display with adjustable lighting.

Even with such an unassuming look and no involvement of actual cannabis, CES could have easily rejected the company’s proposal. After all, cannabis vaporizers for examples don’t exist as a category and are not allowed on the showfloor.

Yet, KEEP got its place amongst the honorees and managed to keep it by classifying as a home appliance 😉

The KEEP box is actually up for pre-order for $149 as a crowdfunding project. As a retail piece, it will sell for $249.