EXCLUSIVE: Treez's Survival Guide for Retail Cannabis Business Owners

With greater competition and the downturn in the market, cannabis operators are worrying about the bottom line, efficiency, and loss prevention. Whereas earlier growth induced a lot of weight in inefficiencies, cannabis companies are all about monitoring products running out to deploy funds efficiently and keep supply consistent.

How do we curtail stuff? How can we optimize shelf space? How can we reduce SKU counts?, these were just some of the questions John Yang and Shareef El-Sissi asked themselves before founding Treez, one of the cannabis industry’s leading technology and retail analytics providers.

“We were already finding solutions for workflow volume growth,” explained John Yang, Co-founder and CEO of Treez in an exclusive interview with Benzinga. “In 2016, Shareef’s store was doing about 400 tickets a day, later on, at its peak, the store was doing about 1200 tickets a day. The only difference was the software.”

Treez is a leading enterprise cloud commerce platform that streamlines retail and supply chain operations within the cannabis market. “It's coined as a point-of-sale software system, but Treez is also about inventory management, compliance, and bringing up sales,” John added.

Shareef, co-founder, and CSO of Treez explained that while some of the latest iterations of cannabis software have been focused purely on e-commerce and marketplace, Treez focuses on integrating information for the retailer.

“I think integration, data, analytics, and payments, are what it takes to support a very robust retailer,” Shareef said.

Empowering Retail Cannabis Businesses

Several years ago, when retailers wanted to optimize their product assortment, that is, knowing what product they were carrying and how much of it they could carry to ensure that the demand was met without losing sales, they compiled all this data manually, sometimes for multi-locations.

At every single store, they had to export the data, clean it out, put it into some reporting tool, and so forth. Now, retailers can count on software tools that tell them ‘avoid these knockouts,’ ‘ these items you should be reordering,’ and ‘this is how much we should order so that your consumers can buy it consistently.’ And that saves a lot of money.

“Markets are down, but if you look at the data trends, some of the transactional volumes aren't down per se. It's flat. Customers are still coming back, but they're buying less. If you're an operator in today's world that want to impact your bottom line and get back to profitability, you may want your front of the house to start their day knowing what the company needs and worry about upselling. We are empowering every stakeholder in a retailer to impact the bottom line together,” John continued.

“Big and small businesses need these tools. You need to understand what's happening in your local jurisdiction, beyond your store. You need to know what's working to optimize your product offering. We provide customers optimization across shelf planning, inventory scheduling, and tools to inform managers,” John said.

Starting A Retail Cannabis Business In NY?

In 2023 New York is poised to become one of the largest contributors to cannabis sales in the U.S. and many small businesses are lined up to obtain a license. While medical cannabis operators are not going to be able to open retail locations in New York, most retailers could be leaning toward the boutique segment. Then, what is good advice for them?

Shareef explained that dynamics such as the lack of pricing clarity, the proliferation of illegal robust distribution networks, illicit cannabis shops and an interstate illicit interstate commerce trade network, can bring some uphill battles for small retailers in New York. 

“In New York, the number of retailers should make the state price competitive to the illicit market. I don't believe it is going to be as cheap as in Michigan. The expectations are that pricing isn't astronomically different from what we've seen in the illicit market,” Shareef said.

“We have hundreds of stores popping up in New York and each one wants to have its own customer experience and loyalty. Hence, before marketing takes over and kind of dominates the industry, retailers need software tools like Treez,” Shareef added. “This isn't trying to capture their customer, isn't co-branding, they own their customer. Treez is designed to promote retail connection.”

“As a retailer, you want to choose a vendor that helps to set the right foundation to operational foundations, because the general hype cycle of a new market is not going to continue forever. You have to care about the top line, the bottom line, and efficiency and you want to go with the vendor that has your best interest in mind. For us, we just cater to that retailer,” Shareef continued.

“The point of sale is that center of the value chain, that node that connects the supply chain down to each other, down to consumers, there's a lot to do there. We build on the different nuances, workflows, and efficiencies needed to tackle the peak of the volume. Ultimately we learned what those foundational needs are to enable a retailer out of the gates on the right foot,” Shareef said.

Is this the 'Treez’s Survival Guide' for the five boroughs?

“This is where we're at. The industry is fighting over the consumer. The brands want to have loyalty. The retailer wants to have loyalty and has to pick how they want to run its business. We can empower brands with data, but we don't forget who our customers are and our customers are the retailers,” John concluded.

Photo by David Gavi on Unsplash.