Marijuana Business Magazine February 2020

Marijuana Business Magazine | February 2020 92 A fter 10 years of distributing its humidity-control products to the premium-cigar industry, Boveda, a manufacturer based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, saw the opportunity to increase business by selling its moisture-regulating packets to cannabis companies. In 2007, Boveda President and CEO Sean Knutsen received a call from a California man who in the 1980s had run one of the largest illegal marijuana operations in the United States. Recognizing the value that Boveda’s humidity-control packets (then called Humidpak) could bring to the legal cannabis industry, the man asked Knutsen whether he could become a distributor. Moisture accounts for much of the mass of marijuana, which is sold by weight, and the man had been losing thousands of dollars because when evaporation occurred, the product weighed less. “He had seen the product in a cigar store and thought, ‘Where in the world was this back in the ’80s?’” Knutsen told Marijuana Business Magazine. Boveda is designed to prevent the evaporation of terpenes—one of the biggest unmanaged problems in the cannabis industry. When cannabis is fully cured, the flower is at its peak potency in terms of terpenes, flavo- noids and cannabinoids such as THC. Left unprotected, the terpenes begin to evaporate and cannabinoids start Cannabis Aficionado By Margaret Jackson Boveda finds a new audience for longstanding moisture-control technology in the cannabis sector Business Strategies | Ancillary Mainstream companies seeking to enter the cannabis industry should take care not to alienate the customers who helped to build their core businesses. Here are some steps Boveda, a maker of humidity- control products, has taken to ensure it maintains good relationships with customers not related to cannabis: • Create collateral for your website, social media accounts and trade show booths that is specific to each industry, rather than taking a one- size-fits-all approach that can dilute your message. • Have a sales and marketing team dedicated specifically to cannabis. • Take advantage of infrastructure that’s already in place at your company—such as production capabilities, customer service representatives, supply-chain logistics and information technology—to ramp up service to the cannabis industry. • Don’t try to be all things to all people.