Marijuana Business Magazine November December 2018

in DC. We had personnel issues; we had regulatory issues; we had bad luck,” Vita said. For starters, when Columbia Care opened, Washington DC regulators had yet to register a single patient – and wouldn’t for several weeks. Cutting back on store hours wasn’t an option, because the District’s medical marijuana regula- tions mandated that dispensaries be open 40 hours a week. “We were open, and we had no one to serve,”Vita recalled. “If you can imagine, we had people showing up for work every day.We had product on our shelves. And it was a little bit, frankly, frightening.” After Vita – who had been on the Columbia Care board – was installed as CEO, he replaced much of the staff. He said they were neglectful about compliance issues and didn’t operate the business well. For example, there were no efforts to garner patient feedback – an oversight Vita changed soon after becoming CEO. “One thing we started asking is: ‘Why are people coming to us? Why aren’t we engaging with the people we serve to better understand their needs and innovate around that feedback?’” Vita said. Having no patients to serve while keeping Columbia Care’s doors open 40 hours a week also taught Vita that being first to market isn’t always the best thing in cannabis. “We burned through a lot of cash waiting for those patients to be registered,” Vita said. “And what we learned over and over again is that it’s not important to be first to market. It’s important to be ready to go to market, and it’s important for the market to be ready for you.” A Winning Formula While some multistate businesses have models that require them to have partners, which can complicate license- holding relationships, Columbia Care prefers to go into states alone by writing winning license applications. Having already written a dozen successful applications makes it easier, Vita said. “The process of operationalizing the licenses has become more and more streamlined,” Vita said. “We never really engaged in a significant M&A strategy because we haven’t needed to. At some point, we will re-examine that, and we do look for partners in mar- kets, but we have a very distinct way of doing things.” When it comes to choosing which markets to try to break into, Columbia Care has a straightforward formula: Pick markets that are highly regulated, and pick markets with well-developed regulations. That’s why after Washington DC, Columbia Care went to Arizona next, then Massachusetts, Illinois, New York and onward. “We were very focused from the start on highly regulated environments where it was clear that the states were telling operators and the industry what they could and could not do.That clarity gave us confidence to make investments and hire people in those states,”Vita said. Columbia Care operates in 11 states and the District of Columbia, including these facilities in Scranton, Pennsylvania, left, and Rochester, New York. Photos courtesy of Columbia Care 56 • Marijuana Business Magazine • November/December 2018