Novelty King Wholesale: the Memphis distributor raided in Tennessee's first big kratom seizure

Figure 1. The District Attorney's release, October 1, 2026. It calls Novelty King an alleged major supplier and names KLAZ among the products the investigation found. [1]

Who they say they are, and what the record says

The company's site calls itself Novelty King Wholesale, a wholesale distributor of smoke-shop and convenience-store goods in Memphis, and gives one address, 3090 Broad Avenue, Memphis. It does not name the company behind the trade name.

Figure 2. The About page names no company behind the trade name. Its footer gives the Broad Avenue warehouse the task force searched. [2]

Tennessee's register does. United Novelty Partners LLC lists “novelty king wholesale” as its trading name, with a head office at “325 s byhalia rd collierville shelby tn 38017”, the second location in the raid described below.[3] It filed its latest annual report in February 2026.[3] The trade name was older than that company. The NOVELTY KING mark, for “retail convenience stores”, has been registered since May 2022, with a “first use jun 08 2020”.[4] The registration is held by “nk wholesale inc dba aka formerly dba novelty king”, a Tennessee corporation.[4] That corporation's state record reads “status inactive dissolved administrative”; its last filing was its 2021 annual report, in March 2022.[5] We found nothing that names the people who own either company, and this page names none.

The domain was registered in February 2024, according to the .com registry. The Wayback Machine held no copy of the site before October 13, 2026, when we saved its pages.

What they sell

The site sells to shops, not to the public. Its menu, on October 13, 2026, lists vapes, smoke-shop goods, glass, novelty items, automotive goods, store supplies, signs, candles and display fixtures.[6] Prices and products appear only after a shop logs in.

Figure 3. The home page twelve days after the raid. The menu has no kratom or botanical category, and products are shown only to logged-in shops. [6]

The site's home page carried a run of banners, and the list of them is public.[7] One, uploaded to the company's image store on July 13, 2026, is headed Attention please and addressed to the company's customers. It announces that, effective immediately, there will be no returns, exchanges or refunds on four kinds of product: hydroxy products, pseudo products, kratom products and MGM products, and that the rule applies to all Novelty King Wholesale locations.[8] In this market hydroxy means 7-OH, pseudo means mitragynine pseudoindoxyl and MGM means MGM-15, three opioids made from kratom alkaloids; our 7-OH page and the MGM-15 page say what each is. The banner went up twelve days after Tennessee's kratom law took effect.

Figure 4. A banner from the wholesaler's own home page, uploaded on July 13, 2026, twelve days after Tennessee's kratom law took effect. It names four classes of product the wholesaler would no longer take back. [8]

Five days after the raid, WREG reported that “according to the novelty king wholesale website kratom is listed for sale in extract shots extract capsules extract powders extract gummies and extract disposables”.[9] By October 13 the public menu showed none of those.[6]

What the seized products contained has not been published. The task force says they were marketed under names including KLAZ, Botanical Extract and Cat's Claw.[1] KLAZ is a brand of tablets labelled as cat's claw extract, made by a separate company; its dossier is here. A county prevention coalition photographed KLAZ beside Buzzers tablets in a McMinnville store in August, “chewable tablets sold under the names buzzers and klaz”, both labelled as cat's claw extract.[10] Tennessee's Bureau of Investigation said in September that it was seeing tablets sold as cat's claw “that actually contain mgm 15 which is a compound made from kratom”, without naming a brand.[11]

Figure 5. KLAZ, the brand the release names, on a Tennessee shelf in August 2026, photographed by a county prevention coalition. The maker is a separate company with its own dossier. [10]

What buyers report

Shops, not the public, buy from a wholesaler, and buyers rarely know where a shop's stock came from. Searching every archived subreddit we keep for “novelty king” on October 13, 2026 found two posts, both about the raid. One buyer, on October 5, placed it: “that got raided with a semi truck load of klaz”.[12]

What buyers in the Memphis area reported that week was empty shelves. On October 1: “every shop and gas station i been too has every non mushroom packaging gone”.[13] On October 5: “every smoke shop and gas station i know of in the memphis area has removed every cc brand”, cc meaning cat's claw.[12] On October 10 a buyer said a shop had told them “they just had to wait for tbi to give them what products they could sell”.[14]

Lab results

The public pages show no certificates. The task force's director said of what was seized: “it has been chemically manipulated it is accompanied by fake lab tests and it is deadly”.[1] The release does not say which certificates it means. Samples of the seizure “were brought to a tbi crime lab to find out exactly what chemicals and adulterants are inside”.[15] No result had been published by October 13, 2026.

Some buyers have repeated a claim that fentanyl analogues were found in tablets sold as KLAZ or cat's claw. None of the sources on this raid mentions fentanyl. Our article on that claim traces it to a field test in another county and says what has and has not been published.

Regulatory and legal

On October 1, 2026 the Shelby County District Attorney and the West Tennessee Violent Crime and Drug Task Force announced the results of a weeks-long undercover investigation. Their release says “investigators identified novelty king 3090 broad street in memphis as an alleged major supplier of illegal kratom products”, and that agents “confiscated nearly 30,000 packages of the substance from novelty king”.[1] “At the same time investigators were conducting an operation at another location in collierville.”[1] Action News 5 reported that “approximately 30 cases of suspected synthetic kratom pills were seized there”.[15] The district attorney told the Commercial Appeal that “law enforcement obtained a search warrant” “to raid novelty king wholesale warehouses”, and that seizing the stock “required law enforcement to call an 18 wheeler truck to confiscate it”.[16]

Figure 6. Novelty King from its trademark's first use to the week after the raid. Every row is sourced in the text. [4]

Nobody was arrested that day. Action News 5: “no arrests were made at the warehouse thursday”.[15] The Commercial Appeal: “mulroy said there have not yet been any arrests made as a result of the raid”, and “during the search warehouse employees were temporarily detained mulroy confirmed”, which the district attorney called standard practice.[16] The release ends: “the investigation remains ongoing”.[1] No charge against the company or anyone in it had been reported by October 13, 2026. A business that has been searched has not been convicted of anything.

What the authorities allege goes further than the release. FOX13 reported that “novelty king wholesale had been continuing distribution of the drug after it was made illegal in tennessee back in july 2026”, and that “the investigation started about two months ago after a reported overdose in humbolt tennessee”.[17] WREG reported on October 6 that “agents seized five pallets of illegal synthetic kratom marijuana products and over 1 million in cash”.[9] Action News 5 carried a task force update: “agents have now seized 25 pallets of illegal synthetic kratom psilocybin and marijuana products as well as more than 1 million in u s currency”, a figure that covers the whole operation, not only Novelty King.[15]

The law the release relies on is Tennessee's Public Chapter 950, in force from July 1, 2026, which makes possessing kratom a misdemeanor and selling it a felony; the district attorney said that “stores selling products prohibited under tennessee law are now on notice”.[1] The raid came as the region reacted to “the overdose deaths of two ole miss students”;[15] nothing published ties those deaths to Novelty King.

Action News 5 wrote that it “reached out to novelty king for a comment and have not heard back yet”.[15]

Still open

• What the seized products contained. The TBI crime lab has the samples; nothing has been published.[15]
• Which “fake lab tests” the task force meant, and whose.[1]
• Who owns United Novelty Partners LLC and NK Wholesale Inc. The state register mirrors we read show one officer for each, behind a login, and no owner.[3][5]
• Whether any charge follows. the district attorney said on the day that “we are considering some arrests”, and none had been reported by October 13, 2026.[16]

Figure 7. Every page opens behind a 21-and-over window. Prices and products need a shop account. [18]

Changes

• 2026-10-13: first published.

References

1. DA Steve Mulroy, West TN Violent Crime and Drug Task Force announce major kratom enforcement operation (news release, October 1, 2026) — Shelby County District Attorney General
2. Novelty King Wholesale About Us page, archived 2026-10-13 — Wayback Machine
3. United Novelty Partners LLC, Tennessee company 001276193 — OpenCorporates (from the Tennessee Secretary of State)
4. NOVELTY KING, US serial 90727095, registration 6744080 — USPTO Trademark Status and Document Retrieval
5. NK Wholesale Inc, Tennessee company 001090088 — OpenCorporates (from the Tennessee Secretary of State)
6. Novelty King Wholesale home page, archived 2026-10-13 — Wayback Machine
7. Novelty King Wholesale home-page banner list (the site's public banner endpoint), archived 2026-10-13 — Wayback Machine
8. Novelty King Wholesale home-page banner, announcement.jpeg (uploaded 2026-07-13), archived 2026-10-13 — Wayback Machine
9. Synthetic kratom, $1 million in cash seized from Memphis wholesaler (WREG, October 6, 2026, syndicated) — Yahoo News
10. Kratom is banned in Tennessee. What replaced it in Warren County? (August 18, 2026) — Warren County Prevention and Intervention Coalition
11. What is cat's claw and why is Tennessee law enforcement warning public about it containing illegal compound (WSMV, September 14, 2026), archived — Wayback Machine
12. Memphis area total ban (2026-10-05) — r/CorynoxineBCatsClaw — anecdotal report, not evidence
13. TN wiped shops out in Memphis (2026-10-01) — r/CorynoxineBCatsClaw — anecdotal report, not evidence
14. Memphis tn (2026-10-10) — r/CorynoxineBCatsClaw — anecdotal report, not evidence
15. Kratom crackdown: nearly 30K packages seized during raid, DA Mulroy says (Action News 5, October 1, 2026), archived — Wayback Machine
16. Shelby County warehouse raids find 'tens of thousands' of kratom packs (Memphis Commercial Appeal, October 1, 2026, syndicated) — Yahoo News
17. West Tennessee Violent Crime and Drug Task Force announces major narcotics bust (FOX13 Memphis, October 1, 2026), archived — Wayback Machine
18. Novelty King Wholesale contact page, archived 2026-10-13 — Wayback Machine