EXCLUSIVE: 4 Cannabis Insiders Share Tips On Technology For Marijuana Retail

If you’re a retailer for cannabis businesses, here are some technology insights from four panelists, led by House of Puff’s CEO Kristina Lopez Adduci who moderated the talk at the recent Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference in Chicago.

Flowhub Holdings: Kyle Sherman

As founder and CEO of the cannabis retail management platform, Kyle Sherman acknowledged the industry’s fragmentation and said there’s as much power in choosing best-in-class software as in collaboration. 

Having an open ecosystem and working with integrated partners is “really unique” and holds enormous growth opportunities for cannabis retailers. Yet he also recognizes the market´s “literally insane competition.”

What could differentiate one store from others, Sherman says, is providing customers with an “incredible” retail experience, not as a mere afterthought but actually taking the actions needed in that direction. In this sense, as much as technology can help, he said, “a lot of it comes down to your environment,” undoubtedly including staff training toward having them “really understand the product they’re selling.”  

Seed Talent: Kurt Kaufmann

The online training platform’s co-founder and CEO Kurt Kaufmann says the “standard tech stack” for retail will be “pretty consistent” regardless of the size, with a point-of-sale system and an e-commerce frontend. He calls on retailers to enhance consumer experience by adding what he calls incremental value.

“A real opportunity that I think folks don't fully appreciate, regardless of the dispensary size, is how communal cannabis is,” he said. “I think most of the time if you're doing retail stores, you're trying to build community within that local community. And if you're building community, it’s that tech stack additive to that communal process and making people feel like ‘Shoot, there's really value-added walking through those doors versus waiting for that delivery to show up.’”

Surfside: Jon Lowen

Lowen, co-founder of the marketing and data platform, says retail media has become a large component of the advertising ecosystem, estimating that 25% of digital advertising will be bought through retail media platforms by 2027. 

This could make room, for instance, for dispensaries to have the ability to monetize their e-commerce sites. Connecting the off-site to the on-site advertising would provide a similar customer experience, potentially “taking a cost center turning into a profit center.”

On partners integration, Lowen says there are challenges -considering collaboration hasn’t historically abounded, yet the need to serve shared customers efficiently has made companies move in the direction of personalized marketing, customer acquisition and overall operational efficiency in retail tech. 

Dutchie: Sarah Kabakoff

Business development VP of the “power” tech platform, Kabakoff shared a possible solution for situations with retailers: Distinguishing if it’s one’s own system or a partner’s, “clearly and quickly” escalating it or making sure it gets to the right people in order to help solve the problem. If it’s a partner issue, she says making sure there are “clear, open lines of communication” with each partner toward being able to solve the problem for the customer.

“It's my philosophy we all eat from the same table,” said Kabakoff. For Dutchie “it's dispensary first,” meaning it’s important both parts “work well together” and retailers are empowered in order to have the best relationship possible with their customers.

How to stay competitive when floodgates open? Kabakoff predicts a “higher caliber of talent with more experience in traditional retail” will start to come in and “help augment some of these companies that are in place now to grow and scale.” Although she cautioned that the cannabis industry’s constant change and unpredictability due to laws, restrictions and compliance will “really keep a lot the big players out for a while.”

Photo: Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference.