👨🏻‍🏫 To sum up

I’ve been writing this thing for a little under a year. 41 posts. Lotsa words. 

Last night, I had the sense that some kind of philosophy was forming out of these things. Some overarching perspective on cannabis and digital commerce. At times, it’s difficult to see the forest for the trees, because more often than not, I’m winging it. I write about things that interest me, usually in a rare fit of productivity the night before. There’s a through line, of course, and it’s a product of my profession and my passion. 

But sometimes I just curate shirtless pictures of Prince. 

Anyhow, last night I saw the forest. Here are the findings.

Finding 1 - everyone wants to shop for cannabis like they shop for everything else

Cannabis is a consumer packaged good. Yes, it has wonderful benefits, and its legalization provides us endless possibilities, but it’s still CPG. That means that it’s not special, and marketing / selling it is not special either. 

“But Brian! Ad rules are so stringent and limiting, and the supply chain is complicated!”

Yeah, welcome to the real world. Plenty of products operate in highly regulated markets, and plenty of products have to be tracked from manufacture to sale. 

It’s simple - truly simple - but we pretend it’s astronomically complicated. 

Finding 2 - delivery is king 

Ultimately, people will shift toward having their cannabis delivered. Though sometimes it’s nice to go into the store - I like to listen to podcasts and wander through Vons, for example - it’s way more convenient to get your staples (which cannabis is) delivered. 

Will we shop in store? Yes. At a new location we haven’t been to, to have an afternoon out at an interesting place, to take our Aunt Martha so she can experiment with CBD gummies, etc. Of course we’ll shop in store, because it’s fun sometimes. 

But the more we normalize this plant and its products, the more we’ll lean toward convenience. Delivery is convenient. 

Finding 3 - large retailers will develop in-house brands, push them heavily, and benefit from their inborn distribution points

MSO’s have been; are; will always be developing in house products. These products are margin accretive, and they are easy pawns for undercutting third party brands. Ultimately, they make retailers more money. These retailers will not stop developing them, because they have shareholders, and these brands will grow fast over the next two years. 

Will we have third party brands? Of course. A few brands  - Heavy Hitters, Stiiizy, Wyld, Papa & Barkley, Select, Kiva, Wana, Cann, and a few others - have the sales and customer base to warrant evergreen shelf space. But MSOs will find the equilibrium between 1) necessary third party products that your customers demand and 2) juicy, profit-pumping in-house products; they’ll push on this equilibrium until they see a revenue dip, then they’ll stop. 

Finding 4 - data is underutilized

We all crow about data - we need store-level info, we need market-level info, we need granular comparisons of our various ad campaigns - but, from the many, many conversations I’ve had with cannabis retailers, most of us don’t actually act on any of this data. We gaze at dashboards, then we do nothing…

Data is there to reveal actionable insights. Actionable! That means if you don’t act, the data is meaningless.

Finding 5 - we are still desperately, helplessly influenced by the War on Drugs

Let all 40,000 nonviolent cannabis offenders out of jail. Make good on social equity promises. Grant veterans easy access to this healing plant.

In other words - use common sense and have a little f**king compassion.

📚 tl: dr

• I seem to be fond of shirtless pictures of Prince

• Finding 1 - people want to shop for cannabis like they shop for everything else

• Finding 2 - delivery wins

• Finding 3 - MSO’s will develop products that will sell well as a result of their immediate distribution channel

• Finding 4 - we don’t use data well

• Finding 5 - we need to grow up and act like human beings

• It is Thursday