After being fired from his last two jobs, Canadian entrepreneur Bruce Linton is back with a new venture and a new goal: to disrupt the industrial supply chain.
Known as slotting fees, the practice requires brands to pay anywhere from $500 to $15,000 a month for premium space on cannabis retailers' shelves.
As more brands enter the marijuana products marketplace, competition for retail shelf space in key adult-use markets such as Colorado and Washington state is intensifying.
Canadian and U.S. cannabis companies are facing a spike in already high costs of insurance to protect top executives from personal liability, following a slew of lawsuits by disgruntled investors alleging fraud and misinformation, with more such action expected.
Some of the biggest cannabis companies, including Medmen Enterprises, Canopy Growth, CannTrust Holdings, Aphria Inc and Columbia Care, have faced shareholder litigation, accusing leaders of false claims, failing to act in the interest of all shareholders and attempts to defraud investors.
Illinois marijuana dispensaries sold more than $47.6 million worth of products in June, according to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.
During that time, 994,545 items were sold, averaging almost $48 per purchase, not including taxes. Tax figures will be released later this month by the Illinois Department of Revenue.
Those sales figures will likely lead to another record in tax revenue for the state, as well.
2020 has not lived up to expectations for the global cannabis industry and much of the blame can be attributed to COVID-19. Going forward, we believe that the industry is poised to record growth as lockdown orders start to get lifted in provinces across Canada and in the European Union (EU).
Lawmakers in the House of Representatives have advanced a highways infrastructure bill that includes language making products from state-legal cannabis markets available for federal research purposes.
Since Aurora Cannabis (NYSE:ACB) reported its impressive third-quarter earnings, it has been making all of the right moves. For the quarter, the company reported revenues of 78.4 million Canadian dollars. The revenues beat analysts’ expectations of 66.6 million Canadian dollars. The company’s management credited the launch of a value brand, Daily Special, in February 2020 and growth in Cannabis 2.0 sales for its impressive third-quarter sales.
On June 24, US Department of Justice whistleblower John Elias testified that attorney general William Barr ordered investigations of 10 cannabis mergers in the 2019 fiscal year based on personal dislike of the industry. If that sounds like a lot, he said, it is. According to Elias’s testimony (pdf), those reviews accounted for 29% of the antitrust division’s full merger investigations during that period.
It might seem like common sense, but for many business owners, records retention is one of the first things to slide. This is a big mistake.
For the average Central Massachusetts consumer, it may not be immediately obvious the artisanally decorated cannabis retailer in their quiet mill town is owned by a multi-million dollar, multi-state company whose CEO lives on the other side of the country.
