Marijuana tech platform I Heart Jane suffers slowdown, affecting retailers

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Marijuana e-commerce platform I Heart Jane suffered a slowdown on Wednesday that impacted an unknown number of recreational and medical cannabis retailers that rely on the software.

I Heart Jane is used by at least 1,700 “dispensaries and brands across 33 state markets,” according to a December news release from software developer Jane Technologies.

Moe Asnani, director of The Downtown Dispensary and D2 Dispensary in Tucson, Arizona, told Marijuana Business Daily that the I Heart Jane system “wasn’t loading” when he tried to log in on Wednesday morning.

“And then I started checking some of the California and (Las) Vegas stores that I know also use I Heart Jane, and they were all having the same issue.”

The I Heart Jane status website cited “a change to the application that placed a heavy load on our servers, slowing down response times across menus and admin portals.”

Jane Technologies engineers identified and addressed the issue as early as 7:30 a.m. PT, according to the website.

“The initial rush of slowness, however, had residual effects on performance that lasted until 2:15 p.m. (PT), at which point the app returned to normal.”

In a brief statement provided to MJBizDaily, Jane Technologies CEO and co-founder Socrates Rosenfeld said the slowdown did not constitute an outage.

“The site experienced reduced performance for approximately 4 hours and is now operating at full capacity,” Rosenfeld added.

Asnani said his marijuana stores are “99% dependent” on the I Heart Jane platform in light of the shift toward online sales during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Tech is the lifeblood of cannabis sales, especially in the COVID era,” he said.

“I love I Heart Jane as a product … I want everybody in our space to be better, because this ecosystem is going to grow on the retail side, the production side, manufacturing, cultivation.

“But without the software component of it, we’re not going to go anywhere.”

Software hiccups, including problems with seed-to-sale tracking systems such as Metrc and MJ Freeway, have become a major concern for some regulated marijuana companies in recent years.

– Solomon Israel