Marijuana Business Magazine May-June 2020

May-June 2020 | mjbizdaily.com 11 a facility. When we look at some of these more supply- constrained markets like Illinois or Massachusetts, if we had our own cultivation facility, we could come into the market, set our price and launch our brand the way we’d like to. Given that we don’t have that control in our supply chain, we have to go out and find the right partners in those markets where it makes sense and figure out a launch plan that works for everyone. But we’ve been really fortunate that our partners around the country have been really great. How has the model worked out so far? So far, I think it’s been going really well for us. We ended 2019 being the largest flower brand by volume in California. I think we were 3% or 4% of total flower sales by volume. Nevada has really taken off for us as a state. I think we’re in 40 of the 65 stores there, and the market has been really receptive to the brand. I think we have four or five of the top 10 SKUs on Headset at the moment. The cool thing for us about Old Pal was when we went to Nevada, it worked really well and validated for us that the brand could go national and resonate with people. So it’s been exciting. We launched in March 2018, and we’ve built a healthy following. We have a healthy retail presence in California, and things have been going smoothly, ramping up. We have a couple of new states on the horizon this year. It feels like a good time to be in cannabis. Do you expect a lot of other companies to follow similar models, where they don’t need to obtain state licenses? We’re seeing more brands like ours starting to emerge. The reality is, as the infrastructure of manufacturing partners matures around the country, this model becomes easier and easier and makes more sense to people. In the early days, it was a bit tricky because we were trying to figure out which partners were real and who actually had the balance sheets to invest. But as true, best-in-class manufacturers start to show themselves, I think more and more brands will take a path like this. John Schroyer is senior reporter for Marijuana Business Magazine. You can reach him at johns@mjbizdaily.com. WE CAN CANN. STAY AHEAD OF THE CURVE - GET YOUR THC/CBD BEVERAGE INTO CANS. With over 750 happy customers worldwide, Ska Fabricating is the industry leader in packaging line automation.

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