💨🤗 Direct-to-my-face

👩🏾‍💻 Many cannabis brands are yearning for something their retailer partners already have: a direct relationship with the end user (and the juicy data that comes along with it).

I talked about this back in May 2020, around when we launched an embedded eCommerce product for brands. We were a bit early. But now, hundreds of brands are engaged in some form of sales directly to end users, on Jane and elsewhere, so it warrants some time.

Click below for a quick primer on the discussion, which’ll root us in some context:

🤔 First, why are brands trying to crack this code?

It’s easy to illustrate the ‘why’ of this commercial setup by describing how cannabis brand sites used to work for shoppers:

1. Navigate to briansbuds dot com

2. See lots of nice pictures, read about the history of the brand. Get excited enough to purchase

3. Navigate to the “Where to Find Us” tab, which launches an ugly, outdated, manually-updated map

4. Find a dispensary near me, click the link, redirect from briansbuds dot com to some other site altogether. Don’t find the product. Frustrated w/ the folks at briansbuds, choose another product

From a brand perspective, this is about the worst UX you could implement. And, worse, a brand could never collect insights on who their customers were, and whether or not they actually purchased anything.

⇝ inDirect-to-Consumer (e.g. Jane 💛)

When Jane hit a critical mass of retail partners, we started collecting feedback about the shopping dynamic for brands that I described above. We reverse engineered our retail framework to allow brands to host fully-realized, white labeled eComm environments on their site, which would funnel customers to nearby retailers to place an order.

The important part - all of that occurred on briansbuds.com. No redirects, and all the behavioral data stayed put.

The program has grown to service ~400 brands and is, by all accounts, the best way to work in tandem with retail partners. Retail + brand can coordinate promos and campaigns, everyone gets the data, everyone stays happy.

The one drawback, in the spirit of speaking openly - various retailers have different operational nuances. Some offer delivery, some don’t. Some offer discounts, some don’t. So the end user may have a slightly different experience based on which retailer they place an order with.

🚚 Delivery Partner (e.g. Grassdoor)

Another popular setup for brands is to contract with a dedicated license-holding delivery partner; the delivery partner holds your inventory, and the good ones provide a white label eComm environment that you can embed in your site.

This is compelling because each delivery will (hopefully) be consistent, because similarly-trained delivery staff are in charge of fulfillment.

The major drawback here is that this setup disintermediates (big word!) retailers - meaning it removes their role in the transaction. For a brand, there is zero benefit to your long-time retail partners from this dynamic - all of the benefit goes to your dedicated delivery partner.

Data is spotty in this setup, and depends on how robust your delivery partner’s data analytics are, and how much they are willing to share with you.

🗂 Own the License

In some states, brands can apply for delivery or storefront licenses themselves; meaning they can act as supplier and retailer. They have unlimited choice in terms of eCommerce partners, as it’s a traditional retail setup. Data feedback can be great, but is highly dependent on tech stack choices.

The main drawback here is even further alienation of retail partners - having a retail license means you compete directly with the retailers you sell into. Kind of an odd one, but there are some success stories so far, and it probably won’t go away.

Brands won’t stop trying to figure out how to get closer to their customers - and how to tap into incremental lead generation tools for their businesses. The next 12-24 months will be very telling in how much control the retail network is willing to cede, and how much they’ll retaliate if they are cut out of the picture.

📚 tl;dr

• Brands want to sell as-directly-as-possible to end users to own the relationship (and the data)

• inDirect-to-Consumer relies on a retail eCommerce partner to provide a white label eComm environment on your site, which funnels orders to your retail network

• Dedicated delivery partners can provide a similar eComm environment and fulfill all orders via delivery, but this disintermediates your retail friends

• Brands can (sometimes) own delivery or retail licenses, and fulfill orders themselves, but this further alienates retailers

• Today is Wendesday