By Chris Beals, CEO of Weedmaps
As Weedmaps moves towards its 12th year as the largest tech company serving the cannabis industry, we are happy to celebrate Illinois becoming the 11th state to commence adult-use cannabis sales.
This past year has been an especially difficult one for the cannabis industry across the U.S. and Canada. Jurisdictions have generally failed to roll out sufficient cannabis licenses to meet consumer demand; Prop 215 licensees who had been providing safe access to cannabis for 20+ years were shut out of the market; large cannabis companies have posted disappointing results as they struggle with contracting capital options; social equity programs designed to support a diverse cannabis industry have struggled to get off the ground, and the wave of legalization at both the state and federal levels have come to a halt. Meanwhile, the complexity of the regulations on cannabis operators and the associated cost of compliance continues to grow.
We would all be forgiven for feeling down, but I step into 2020 with great optimism.
When I took over as CEO of Weedmaps earlier this year, I wanted to redouble Weedmaps’ focus in two key areas. The first was making it simpler for consumers of all experience levels to find, discover and purchase cannabis in a way that promotes trust and simplicity. The second was to redouble our support of licensed cannabis operators by making it easier for them to give consumers information, and cheaper and simpler for businesses to meet compliance requirements through the use of our software solutions.
Like any fast-growing industry, we’re seeing a number of shifts in existing and new consumer trends come into the market. For example, in 2019 we saw a significant shift in consumer behavior, from searching for product categories and strains to searching for brands and specific product SKUs. As a result, we’ve spent significant time in 2019 creating brand-first and product-first experiences that address these needs while maintaining the existing flows that many of our longer term customers know and love. Undoubtedly, part of this work will be redoubling on making it easier for cannabis brands to verify authentic retailers of their products through our Brand Verified Retailer program.
The number of canna-curious consumers also continues to grow at a breakneck pace, not just in the US and Canada, but globally, and thus we will continue to expand the work the team does in becoming the most accurate and comprehensive guide to cannabis for any consumer wanting to enter the market. I am extremely excited about some of the upcoming launches we are planning around Learn, Strains as well as personalized and guided product recommendations.
Over the last 11 years, we’ve become indispensable for businesses in the cannabis space by having the largest base of consumers looking to buy cannabis. Building on the work we did last year around better retailer, brand and product discovery, we will be launching new ad units that engage consumers at all the critical points of the consideration journey, offering unparalleled value to canna-businesses. These units will also make it easier for specialized brands to reach specific subsets of consumers or businesses.
One of our large focuses for 2020 will be to continue the work we’ve done on POS integrations, building on the great success and learnings we’ve gotten from our Cova, Meadow, and LeafLogix integrations. This integration allows retailers on these systems to have their POS system seamlessly update their Weedmaps menu and power online ordering functionality against the retailer’s current inventory levels, driving cost savings for business owners through reducing overhead and creating a much better consumer experience. As we continue to make it easier for cannabis licensees to engage with these consumers, we will expand the number of POS and inventory management solutions we integrate with to make it easier for both retailers and brands to showcase their inventory and associated data.
We will continue to expand our SaaS offerings, with a very clear focus on creating products that seamlessly integrate with one another and take the guesswork out of operating compliantly. In the vein of aiding business compliance, we significantly expanded our Orders and Logistics platform over the course of 2019 to enable retailers to more effortlessly comply with legal requirements for real-time driver GPS tracking, delivery vehicle inventory limits and historic retention of delivery logs. We also expanded the functionality of the tax calculation and calculation engines that underpin several of our products. Moving forward, we are continuing ways to take complex compliance requirements and automate and simplify them through the use of software. This focus on compliance and unique value extends to our newer product lines like WM Exchange or WM Retail.
Last, but certainly not least, as the largest technology company in the industry, we continue to believe that we have a critical role to play in expanding cannabis legalization and acceptance. In 2020 Weedmaps is expanding its efforts to advance access to cannabis through legalization and to foster and support an inclusive industry that hopefully can set us on a path to redressing a fraction of the wrongs perpetrated under the guide on the war on drugs. We will be announcing more details around this later in the first quarter. One of the programs that’s already live and I’m incredibly proud of is our social equity program, which offers these licensees free or discounted access to our platform, business and industry training, access to legal support and startup consulting. The first few licensees started getting their benefits in November as part of our Beta launch, and we look forward to extending this to all those that qualify in 2020.
I think there is reason to hope that we will see the winds of fortune shift for the cannabis industry and usher in more licensing, new states coming online, and regulators beginning to realize that they can’t drown a nascent industry in paper or grant monopolies to a select few. I am hopeful that the coming year will present fewer challenges to licensed cannabis markets, whether it be reduced taxes, better access to banking or increased efficiencies across the myriad of compliance requirements.
