HighIQ Webinar Series: How to Stand out on Crowded Dispensary Shelves

GrowerIQ & Highdeal Solutions join forces to advise on all things about product packaging

On October 27th we will hear from our very own Vegar Samuelson about many topics revolving around Cannabis SOPs, along with two amazing guests, Nick Sanders and Jeremy Nemanishen, from Highdeal Solutions.

We will be chatting with the Highdeal team about how to make your packaging unique and eye-catching, without killing your brand. 

We will also be discussing how to utilize the GrowerIQ system to break down lots, record packaging, and move it all into the sales step! 

Transcript

Rob Perry  0:05  

Hi there, everybody, how are you? Welcome back to the Welcome back to the GrowerIQ, HighIQ webinar series. We’ll just give a couple of minutes here for some of the stragglers to push play and, and wander in. But you know, I’ve got to say it’s been, it’s great to be back great to be getting the series back up and running, we had a little break for the summer, people were busy growing people were busy, busy selling a few people busy taking holidays, but by Yeah, by popular demand, we are, we are back again. So for those of you who aren’t aware, the HighIQ webinar series is something we do where we work with partners, we work with industry experts to really share in fallen learning across the industry with, with customers bars with customers or partner groups of ours with you know, peers who are out in the industry, friends of ours in the industry, just people who are generally interested in, in expanding my body of knowledge and maybe touching on areas where they have a bit of concern as an operation, or where they want to, you know, maybe an area they want to expand into. And one of the other ideas is to is to connect different groups together. So, you know, if you don’t know, don’t know where to turn with questions about, you know, in this is packaging, for example, you know, we have high detail here and you know, you can connect with them afterwards and ask some of the questions that you have. But as a bit of background, we are going to talk about, you know, officially how to make your product stand out on dispensary shelves, which I know is a big issue for a lot of groups, right? The industry is competitive. You know, even if you get your product into dispensaries into provincial boards, you really need to see it move at the customer side as well. You know, the B2C point of contact. So we’re gonna dive into that a little bit today, get some new strategies and thoughts on how to tackle that. We’ll also look a little bit at, you know, at a couple features in GrowerIQ, how do you record that packaging as you move along? So we’re gonna go through this for about an hour. And we’ll open it up for questions at the end. So you know, bring those questions or ideas you want to learn more about, and we’ll, we’ll, we’ll get those out. But a background, for those of you who don’t know, GrowerIQ. First of all, we’re a seed-to-sale software company, we incorporate all aspects necessary for compliance, record keeping and other digitisation within your licensed production facility, including QA, CRM, inventory, tracking, cultivation, processing, and a whole lot more. We’re active in 14 countries, five continents, and five different languages as well. And we’re fortunate to have Nick here with us today, hi, deal solutions. So we have Nick and Jeremy, who were who are joining us, with some good industry expertise. And yeah, hopefully, we’ll we’ll take away a few tips out here today to make things flow a lot, a lot smoother. So with that all kind of pass the mic over Nick to you. You know, first of all, thanks for joining us. And yeah, we’d love to learn a little bit more about Hi deal as well.

Nick Sanders  3:59  

As Rob said, Yeah, we’re, we’re happy to be here. It’s a it’s been great to kind of partnership working with you guys and you know, learn more about your software. I think it’s a very well good complement to what we can offer our clients and I think there’s a good synergy that goes between the two of us for sure. So you have to see a little bit of a background of what we do. 

Nick Sanders  4:38  

I’ll share my screen here all right. So um, yeah, as Rob kind of said, we’re, we’re Highdeal solutions. So we were founded in 2018. To based off the premise of, you know, the legacy market that was created back in, you know, the early days of the cannabis frontier out here in Canada. We’re located in Vancouver, British Columbia, just outside just outside of Vancouver I should say and meadows. If So you guys are familiar with the area. So we specialize in everything from packaging, sourcing logistics and creative design as a kind of a high-level overview of what we do. We are a single-source solution for producers, extractors and processors, helping our clients with everything from an NCP and compliance submissions to custom innovative packaging, and can’t secure jam, cannabis transport and things of the like. So see, as I was touching point there, so kind of the core things we do are cannabis packaging, compliant, design, compliant consulting, design services, logistics and sourcing. So we source from a number of countries, we move products from a number of countries, we’re able to ship Canada-wide down to the US any packaging or products for that matter, we ship cannabis secure within Canada through a number of our logistics partners as well. So it’s pretty much we like to position ourselves as kind of an ancillary office, if you will, of our customers and you know, be able to really help them focus on what they do best, which is, you know, growing the cannabis, you know, building their brand, we try to, you know, really be their right hand, man, if you will, and help them out in that respect. So, as Robert kind of said at the beginning, you know, today’s topic we’re going to talk about, you know, how you can stand on the crowded dispensary shelves, obviously, like any industries, especially cannabis, you know, it’s, it’s arguably more competitive than, you know, the grocery business where it’s very hard to get, you know, good for facing shelf space in the dispensary due to the number of SKUs and products that are on the market. It’s a very fast moving industry, there’s lots of new products always coming in. And it seems to be like that across the board, and additionally, Canada. So on those topics, we’re gonna talk about, you know, how you can create unique and distinct packaging, how you can leverage sustainability to, you know, basically get that PR to your clients. And also, you know, as things go on, and as time has changed, you know, we’re going to see a lot more of the sustainability side of things, which is something that we’ve really been pushing a lot, it’s something we stand behind a lot of, we’ve moved a lot of our products to fully sustainable, as we see that being the next side, we’ve invested heavily into the sustainable market and have a number of options for you know, anything from sugar, cane, hemp, ocean and plastic, to you know, fully compostable biodegradable options as well. On top of that, too, we’re gonna talk about you know, catching, you know, eye-catching logos and brand designs. In Canada, at least in the States. I know some of you are from different countries, but Canada has some of the most stringent laws and regulations on packaging and what you can actually put on your packages. So it leaves us with a good a good time and some creativeness to find the best solution to be able to really accentuate our, our clients brands on the shelf and really make them pop, and then also marketing and sales tools. And, you know, with the regulations again, in Canada, it’s very limited on what you can advertise and where you can advertise. So there’s lots of different options for that, that we’ll touch on. So getting unique and distinct packaging, obviously, you know, there’s the kind of standard that, you know, you see, you see the pop top tubes, you see the plastic jars, you see the glass jars, but there’s not a whole, at least as of late, there haven’t been a whole lot of you know, different products that you know, we see at least our clients going towards and as time goes on, we’ve really seen a ramp up in that, you know, as of late at least, where you know, guys are coming to us our clients are coming to us and saying, Hey, look, we want something that’s going to make us unique, we want something that’s going to you know, really make our brand pop because again with the regulations and limited you know, options for what they can really do. Really all you can do is you know, have a unique package, you know, have you know, some unique brand colors, and having, you know, really customized product tailored to your brand that really stands out, aside from your competitors. So most brands are purchasing the same or similar packaging products. As I said, we see a lot of the same, you know, plastic jars, plastic tubes, it’s very common, you know, and rightfully so, I mean, there’s, you know, the price points on a lot of these things are, you know, very competitive. However, we have, you know, found unique ways to still be able to get a good price point for our customers as well as being able to not only you know, keep the bottom line know pretty healthy but also increase their sales increase the brand awareness, which in turn allows that bottom line to be a bit bigger. And we do that by having creative packages like the ones you see on the screen here. That’s one of our unique products that we sell for concentrates. It’s something that we developed, in part with, you know, some manufacturers and clients of ours, listening to their needs. to what they want, I want to see the problem with you know, a lot of packaging options is there, yeah, there is no incentive for manufacturers to solve them. You know, customers are and you know, these LPS growers processors, they’re, they’re buying these packages on the, you know, the hundreds of 1000s, if not millions of scale. So there’s not really any, you know, reason for them to change that. I mean, the, the old saying goes, I mean, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But on the same token, you know, there needs to be people that are innovating. And that’s something that we’ve really taken to heart and something that we really strive for, you know, we work with a lot of our brands, you know, to try to also create new products, create new types of packaging, you know, whether that’s a jar or whether that’s a two, whether that’s, you know, a speciality, you know, type of bag or something unique that, again, you just, it’s not out there in the market yet. So, we do as much as we can work really tightly within our regulations, and we really walk the good side of the line and, and get as close to, you know, we can to, you know, having a basically how it was, you know, back when it was legacy, or what you would see in like California, or Oregon, for that matter, you know, stuff that’s really unique and stands out as close as we can, at least I should say that product customization, you know, there’s a lot of brands are reluctant to invest in the customization. And, you know, that’s part and parcel to, you know, the the distribution boards here, you know, they want net 90 terms, they want net 30, net 60 terms, and it’s hard for cash flow for a lot of our clients, when you know, they’re going to having to put up, you know, a lot of these custom products, you need to order, you know, at least 20,000, to 100,000, depending on the product and type, just to be able to get the custom color. So a lot of brands, especially the smaller ones, it’s hard for them to get into that space. So with that, you know, we’ve we’ve really tried to work with our manufacturers, work with our clients, and try to find unique ways that we can, you know, one lower MOQ is to keep the costs down with those lower MOQs, and find different options that we can use to really extend it with the brands, you know, colors or, you know, their, what they’re trying to portray to the consumer. And, you know, really trying to, you know, help them out as much as we can, in that respect, the value of unique uniqueness to the customer experience is huge. And we’ve heard it from many of our clients after they’ve switched to, you know, a different type of jar that’s, you know, cut Pantone match to their brands color or switch to a unique jar that, you know, no one’s really seen before, the reviews and what they get in the market is, is really, really well received. And it’s definitely something that, you know, once people make the switch, they usually don’t go back. So we really try to, you know, guide our clients into understanding that, you know, seeing the value within that, and executing on that for them and coming to the table, some good options for them to help with those things.

Nick Sanders  13:06  

And yeah, touching on brands, specific packaging, design, you know, there’s a number of options, we’ve worked with a handful of clients to create entirely new products for them, we have a number of them in development right now, you know, stuff that’s never even been seen on the market, you know, we have a number of factories manufactures, testing labs, that we work with, both in North America overseas, South America, where we were able to create these new products that really stand out something that, you know, when the customer gets to the end, it’s, you know, the big wow factor, which is really important. You know, it’s not just people buying cannabis, you know, as a, as a cannabis consumer, myself, I know, a lot goes into when I’m purchasing, you know, seeing when it comes in. Unfortunately, it seems that you know, in the last year or so a lot of people are making a switch over to bags, which understandably, because of the cost, the cost-effectiveness of it, what you lose with that side of things is it’s you’re kind of just flowing into the sea of everyone else, and you’re not really standing out in that way. And you can do custom colors, you know, you can do rounded corners, you can do different materials that can make it stand out a little bit, but nothing stands out, like having your own package, something that you know, when consumer gets in and holding their hand, you know, they feel like you know, they’re they bought the right product and you know, something that they can really stand behind and, and really share with their friends share with people that you know, which again, just builds the brand awareness builds the sales and, you know, allows you to get into more provinces and get more skews on the market. So it’s a it’s kind of a snowball effect, you know, it’s a larger investment at the beginning than you know, say just to pick up some sort of stock item that you know, you may carry, you know, we carry a number of stock products that you know, you can just grab off the shelf, take 10,000 of them, and you’re you’re off to the races but you know, it’s worth the investment for sure at the beginning to To start off, at least with, you know, even a small amount of some custom products to, you know, hit the ground running. Because once you basically have one opportunity to grab that customer when they’re in the store, and if you don’t do that, they’ll go with another brand that has these products. Right, so. And sustainability, like, as we talked about, you know, we have a number of options, a number of them also that aren’t here that we’re in development of postconsumer recycled fully recycled products. We use the term, you know, fully recyclable, in a sense that, you know, as much as we can, we were not gonna sit here and say to you, like most brands do, and customers, and they’ll sit here and tell their customers, no, it’s fully recyclable, you just throw it out, it’s all good when it’s not really the case, right. So, for bags, for example, they are made out of a fully recyclable material they can be, however, you know, the liner inside the middle as barriers not so as to be separated. So there’s a fine line to walk between that. And you know, we have a number of options that are fully recycled or are fully compostable. But we see a lot of people out in the industry, competitors of ours, you know, other people that do work in the packaging space that are basically just lying. And you know, they’re saying these are fully recyclable, fully compostable, when in fact, you know, you can’t just throw it out the window into the ditch and it breaks down, like it doesn’t work that way, it’s got to be in the right environment, it’s got to be in the right setting, you know, the right bacteria has to be president. Because if it’s not, it doesn’t break down. And if it does break down, it turns into microplastics, which isn’t really helping anything, right. So one of the solutions to that is obviously paper, or alternative fibres like sugarcane, and hemp, with boxes and secondary packaging, stuff like that, we’re able to do those things more. But, you know, there’s a certain amount of food grade food grade standards, you have to follow, obviously, within Canada, and most of the United States, as I’m aware of. So luckily for us, the ocean, we can plastics and the biodegradable and compostable options that we sell, those can be used as primary packaging, that is fully FDA approved for food consumption, which is what we’re requiring Canada. So we have lots of options for that sustainability, as we said, is something that we’ve really, you know, really hit the ground running on. We’ve been doing it for a while, but we’ve really doubled down on in the last six months here. And it’s something that we’ve seen a lot of our customers making the switch to for sure. They’re talking about sustainability, you know, as I kind of said, you know, like, what do we mean by sustainability? So, you know, sustainability is a number of things, you know, is it, you know, post-consumer recycled product that, you know, is whether that’s 10%, post-consumer recycled, or, you know, 100% post-consumer recycled? what’s the, what’s the amount of that? You know, is it ocean plastic is biodegradable and compostable. So when we say sustainability, it’s, you know, a product that, you know, is using another product that, you know, may have been thrown out, or may have been recycled from something else, and basically, upcycling things and reusing them to, to help not create new plastic, basically, the push for sustainability is, you know, obviously, as time goes on, you know, I think everyone is really seeing the fact that, you know, we need to have more sustainable options, we can’t just make keep making new plastic, it’s obviously damaging the oceans is damaging the rivers, it’s, it’s not, the sustainability is not sustainable in the long run. It’s just, I should say, you know, so we hear a lot from clients, consumers, you know, everyone, that’s, you know, they want sustainable options. You know, they want something that they can stand behind and say, Yeah, you know, we’re doing our part to help the environment, we’re doing our part to not be another, you know, person that’s adding to the problem. Unfortunately, due to the Canadian market, at least, the US we see a lot more sustainability happening. And it’s not for the fact that, you know, the Canadian companies don’t want to do it, but it’s more so the restrictions they have and the price points of these things. You know, unfortunately, it just costs more to make sustainable products and going into an ocean reclaimed tube can sometimes be 70 to 100%, more than regular, you know, Virgin P T two. So there’s, it’s a fine line to walk when you know, especially some of our clients, they have a, you know, a margin of 5% on the products they’re selling, some guys only make, you know, 30 cents, or 40 cents per unit they sell. So, when you’re talking about adding on another 10 cents, you know, we’re really cutting into that bottom line. So that’s the biggest hurdle we see for our customers is the price point. We’re lucky enough to work with a number of great vendors, manufacturers that were able to provide very competitive pricing, some of the best in the industry for sustainable options. And also being able to go factory-direct with a lot of stuff allows us to cut out have the additional costs and add-ons for a lot of these things. So we have a number of options, you know, not only just with full sustainable, but you know, we can do 20% 30% 40%, post-consumer recycled tube or a bag. So you’re doing your part, I mean, at the end of the day, everyone needs to operate their business. And you know, even if you’re doing a little bit of that, to help them, it’s it’s doing, you’re doing good. So yeah, touching on that post-consumer recycled, we just talked about, you know, fully recycle offers a better feel for the customers, it makes people feel better when they’re buying a product like that, that they can see as like, you know, it’s made with, you know, something that’s not brand new, it’s not a virgin material, you know, I’m helping the environment, it’s really good PR for your company to show that. And it’s just good to do and it’s something that everyone’s gonna be moving to in the future. So it’s good to get on that bandwagon now. And as we talked about paper and alternative fibres, you know, there’s lots of paperboard in recycled products, like sugarcane and hemp, that are really starting to get more popularity, again, these things are not really too much more expensive than regular paper, maybe five to 10% more in some cases, which allows, you know, a lot better, a lot more room for our customers, at least to work within those realms and not affect the bottom line as much. And ocean reclaimed plastics, we work with a number of manufacturers, you know, Santa packaging, is one that we work with J Pack the ocean reclaim plastics that we work with as well. These are great options as well, for the ocean plastics, I really like the the idea of ocean reclaim plastics. There is two different types of ocean plastics, though, which is something that you know, everyone needs to be mindful of. There’s ocean-bound, and there’s ocean-reclaim. So ocean bound just means that I don’t know the exact number, but it’s within a certain range of at river stream or ocean that would have a high probability of actually ending up in the ocean. So that’s considered an ocean-bound plastic. And then ocean reclaimed is, you know, actually physically in the ocean, they’re going to pick it up. They’re cleaning it up from the actual ocean, taking it out, processing it, and reusing it for another product.

Nick Sanders  22:16  

And then compostable, biodegradable. You know, as I said, there’s both there’s a lot of, you know, Hocus Pocus, if you will, going around the industry with you know, compostable biodegradable stuff. You know, we’re very transparent with our clients with the fact that, you know, unfortunately, it’s just how it is and people, you know, just have the idea that, Oh, well, it’s compostable. So I can just throw it in my compost in the backyard, and it will break down and, um, good. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. In most instances, these have to be in a certain scenario, a certain temperature, certain bacteria have to be present for these to break down. So we work with a number of manufacturers that offer both and you know, we’re, we’re really knowledgeable in the sense of what they actually look like, so that you guys can portray to your customers as well, like, Hey, this is what we actually mean, you know, like this is, this is what we’re doing our part to help with the environment is what we’re doing to help, which again, just adds transparency and trust with your clients as well. So yeah, that’s a good kind of segue. I’ll, I’ll slip it over to Vegar here and kind of let you take over and show you a little about work you can do.

Vegar Samuelsen  23:29  

Perfect. Thank you so much, Nick. Let me just fire up my screen share here.

Vegar Samuelsen  23:38  

All right. Yeah, really informative, great stuff. Great things to consider. And, yeah, definitely something you want to be thinking about when it’s time for packaging. So we’re gonna take a little detour here to GrowerIQ. I know some of you may be new to the platform. Some of you have been using it already. Not to worry, it’s fairly easy to understand, and you’ll be able to follow along without any worries. All right, so this is my landing page. Just gonna give you a quick overview here, we got the greenhouse warehouse module, our orders QA, admin, our CRM and accounting, you’ll also find the same tabs on the left-hand side. But for today’s example, we’re going to be looking at a batch of some golden goats, plants that we’re going to have shipped eventually to our clients healing horizons. So let’s head on over to the greenhouse. We can take a quick look. So I know I’m down in the flowering room here. I’ve got my golden goats right here. It’s due today. And that’s kind of why you see this red box here. It’s notifying me that I’ve got a task. That’s true. So why don’t we jump into golden goat? All right, you’ll land with nice overview. I’ve got my batch name here for Golden Goat Healing Horizons and I’ve got today’s date due for harvesting, got 20 plants are in the flower morning stage, you can see the stages on the far right as we advance through. And our end type for this is going to be dry material. Of course down below, you can see a bunch of actions we can take on the batch, whether it’s, you know, pruning defoliating flushing plants, if you want to do some clones Feel free, we can add pesticide or insects, we can log or fertigation. Of course, we can move rooms and even create custom activities for anything that the system doesn’t really have hardcoded already. And of course, you can always download your batch record and one-click give you all the details on everything that’s been done to this batch, which is a nice selling point, if you’re wanting to do that with your product or you know, if you’re faced with an audit, you can definitely use that as well to supplement your your audit. Okay, so why don’t we go ahead and just advance this stage to flowering, sorry to harvesting. So let’s go ahead and confirm that. And I can record my lightweights. Why don’t we harvest all 20 plants? And we’ll say 7000 grams. It was recorded on scale one, and we’re gonna say who weighed it? Who checked it and who approved it. It’ll just be me today. Confirm the details. 20 plants 7000 grams, well, oh, I should have had saved there. For guys. My mouse is in an awkward position here. So I think I didn’t make the click on the submit that to confirm. Perfect. So now it comes time to advance the stage to dry so I can record my dry Wait. Let’s advance it to drying stage. And let’s just record that weight. Say we ended up with 4050 grams. And I’ll just get my approvals for this.

Vegar Samuelsen  27:09  

Go ahead and submit. Perfect. All right. So the final stage here is QA we have a nice three stage QA release process. Let’s begin on that. I’ll advance that to QA. Maybe we’ll start with a visual inspection here for Golden Goats. When to render a visual pass on See you know what this looks great. Very golden. And on the sign-off on that as well. course we’ll want to create a sample. So we’ll click on the create sample sample 20 grams. I’ll put this in my shipping domestic because it’s going to go to our lab. I created the sample. And I approved it. And I’ll just confirm that as well. And I’ll close out. Yeah, so looking at the bottom here we’ve got you know, of course, our analytics if you’re integrated with environmental monitoring for temperature, humidity, and lights, you know, the batch plan that we’ve been working through which we can always customize, if we’ve had a really successful batch, we can replicate those growing conditions for successful batches moving forward, the activity log which captures everything that we’ve done to this batch that you’ll also find in the batch record. But let’s just skip on over to our samples, keep things moving along. So here we have our 20 grams sample that we took. I can hyperlink in here. I can send this to the lab, there’s a send lab button right here. And I’ll select our account, which is set up as a lab microscope industries. I’ll go ahead and send that out. Perfect, oh, maybe a few days have passed so we can record our lab result here as well. I’ll upload my COA render a pass, and I’ll say Oh, that’s great stuff. Okay, once that’s recorded, we can always hyperlink back to our batch just for the final release. And we can go to our QA review and we’ll say You know what, let’s just do the final review here. I’ll put in my password. Again, I could upload the COA here as well. I’ll choose to release this batch All right. Now from here we can create a lot we can create multiple lots, you know, we can move the inventory to different room. But you know For today’s example, let’s just quickly move this into a lot of shoes My scale, which is my room, let’s maybe say secure storage. And we can move, let’s say, we’ll just move 4000 grams. And we’ll create a lot name as well. It’s like all the girls, we can give it a prefix for dry. And we can put months dates. And they’ll make a little note here for healing horizons. Go ahead through my approvals, I’ll hit submit. And then we’ve created a new LOD ID, we can just jump right into there. And basically, if you were to go to the warehouse, you kind of can see your lot inventory. So we’ve got our golden goat here. And we have our SKUs, which is packaged inventory on the right-hand side. But if I just jumped into lots, we’ll see there’s the four kilograms of gold and goats plus the additional weight that I had from a similar lot earlier. But I can click into here, I can enter my THC and CBD values. So let’s say we’re doing golden goats, usually pretty high in THC up in the 20s, there’s hold on 25%, maybe we’ll put a lower amount for CBD here and submit them. And we can create a lot of them. So basically, you know, you can have many different kinds of skews setup. In this case, I’ve created one for one kilogram. But let’s just go and package I know it’s really easy to do, it’s really fast go to create an LOD item can select our SKU golden goat, one kilogram, maybe we just make four. So we can get this all out to healing horizons. And let’s just put that in secure storage. And I’ll approve it. Once I do that. You’ll see I’ve got the four lot items here. And that’s how easy it is to make those units. If I went to the warehouse, and you could scroll down. See I’ve got some Golden Goat one kilogram, I have a few extra units because I’d packaged them earlier today. But I have seven in total. So yeah, that’s the first step in our next trip of GrowerIQ. We’ll move on to creating an order through the CRM. Right now. I’ll pass it back over to Highdeal. Thank you so much, guys.

Jeremy Nemanishen  32:29  

All right, thanks. Vegar. I’m just pulling up our presentation here. Hi, there. Everybody. I’m Jeremy, I’m, I work here with HiDeal, I lead the creative team. So I’m here to talk to you a little bit about doing what you can to stand out on the shelves from a branding and design standpoint. In the Canadian context, so you know, the when it comes to your comes to design, you know, we’re really given a few options due to the Health Canada regulations on labeling. However, there still are a couple of places where you can stand out, Nick was talking about custom packaging, you know, creating something that helps your brand stand out through colors and packaging customization. I mean, we’re never at least at this point, we’re not going to get to a point where you can design, you’re familiar with the alcohol beverage industry, you’re you’re not going to get a custom bottle, like the crack and rum bottle or, you know, a skull package or something crazy like that. So within the parameters we can work within our options really are, what are you doing with your logo, and what kind of colors are you using, just try to stand out. So that’s really what I’m here to talk about on this first leg here. So when it comes to, you know, your logo, really what you’re looking to try to do is, you know, understanding that your logo and your color of your packaging are the two big things that your, your customer, your consumer at the retail level is going to see, you know, so finding a way a treatment for your logo, a treatment for the text, something that’s really going to be unique, standout and ideally not just be words on a page, you know, you tend to your eyes are drawn to brighter colors naturally. And we’ve seen through, you know, conversations as well as through surveys and other stuff that’s been done with people who are working, you know, retailers and budtenders and the like, you know, they’re often telling us that, that it is those bright colors, it’s the eye-catching logos, it’s the interesting branding, those are the things that consumers are coming back for. And it’s you know, they’re reaching for those things first and foremost. So, you know, our, our recommendation to our clients is, especially when you’re talking about logo design, if they have come to us without that, that already in the bag, is you know, what are your main brand colors? How are you going to contrast with the colors you’re going to be using on your packaging? And how are you going to utilize your text and your text treatments to try to stand out? I’ve got a couple of examples here just the right Add logo and that ghost drops logo to kind of illustrate how those two brands have really stood, they’re able to stand out within a crowded market, just by virtue of the colors that they’ve chosen and the way that they’ve treated their text. You know, in both cases, they’re able to, they utilize the logo and the brand coloring of their packaging, to really help draw the consumers eye to their packages, and, and help move them off the shelf. In the case of red, they’ve got their entire brand is very much on that sort of, you know, 1980s, themed vaporwave kind of aesthetic ghost drops is kind of gone in a different direction, but they are absolutely leaning really heavily into their, you know, their logos or colors and that kind of thing. And it really, it forms a full featured kind of scenario within the brand where consumers know what they’re getting, they reach for them because of the because they’re really eye catching. When it comes to colors, really it’s it’s it’s much of the same, you’re you’re looking to try to stand out and really capture that consumers eye. You when you’re looking at packaging on the shelves, if you go into a dispensary, you know, and the next time you’re in there, take a look at who’s on the shelves, who’s got their display, or who’s on his on a display, which are the things that really draw you in. And more often than not, it’s going to be those companies, those brands that have highly visible packaging, you know, really interesting label artwork, you know, again, we’re very limited by the number of things that we can actually put onto the label. And we’re limited by the you know, the types of colors because they have to contrast with the THC symbol and the Health Canada warning. But even within those confines, there’s still a lot of flexibility to try to just really build your brand in a way that helps to strengthen it and also make it eye-catching. You know, and we are talking to plenty of people at the retail level, like I said, who they report that these types of products are the ones that often move the fastest. It’s, you know, prices is obviously a factor and the things that you know, that you would normally see in any retail environment. However, the very few things that you are able to see on the shelves, it’ll often be the ones that are the brightest colors, the most interesting and eye-catching that will that will be moving. So those are some of the things that we recommend in terms of branding, some of its self-explanatory to a degree because of the limitations we have. But at the same time, you certainly can see in the marketplace, brands that are doing very well, and brands that are maybe languishing a little bit behind because they’re going a little bit of more of a conservative route. And in terms of how to present yourself best in the retail environment, you know, the things that we really try to encourage our, our customers, our brands and our partners to do is really, you know, we ask them how they’re going to be telling their brand story at the retail level, you know, when we’re coming, you know, you can tell your brand story a lot differently on social media, for example, than you can at the retail level. But you know, you’re still needing to be able to convey who you are as a company, what your ethos is, you know, what you believe in, and so on. You know, conveying that at the retail level is challenging, but it’s absolutely doable. And it’s one of those places being an age-gated environment where you have a little bit more flexibility provided you can work well with, with the retailer in question. Another thing that brands are increasingly doing these days, and it poses some challenges from a design perspective, but it’s a challenge that I think most of us in the industry are relishing, and that’s you know, being more transparent, and trying to provide more information to your customers to the consumers of your products. Because more information is considered better. You know, I, I recall seeing, you know, the first some of the first brands out there, providing terpene information and all of a sudden, you know, people are going crazy because while terpenes are a thing now, you know, the hardcore people, the people who have been in the industry for a while have known about terpenes but it’s only been kind of coming to the mainstream. And then in the last sort of year, two years, I would say where it’s really caught on and you’re seeing a lot more brands trying to be more transparent with that you’re talking about growing conditions and you know, it’s beyond moving beyond just THC and CBD values as as dictated by Health Canada. And then finally, you know, again at the retail level, trying to really maximize your visibility through having visual tools and learning opportunities, sharing knowledge, sharing information with both the retailer’s themselves who are in fact people who are going to be gatekeeping your product to the consumer, as well as being able to provide some some interesting information some visual cues to consumers when they’re in the retail space to try to choose your product over a competitors. So you know moving from just straight packaging into actually telling your story is one that I am that a lot of brands struggle with, you know, not really, you know, they put a lot of effort into their packaging and their you know, their They’re growing, but they don’t necessarily take that next step into the trade marketing aspect. And really looking and leaning into the retail and retail relationships that they have to try to present something to both consumer and retailer and bud tender, that helps you know, through these visual and like physical items to be able to really tell that story. So, you know, we’re we work with plenty of clients who are looking to find unique and innovative ways to display themselves at the retail level. And so it’s, you know, working with dispensaries to try to find those opportunities to take over a shelf, for example, have a display that seasonal, you know, having the sales team, you know, having to have a relationship or develop a relationship with specific retailers or chains, in order to have a, you know, a value-added place where your brand can really stand out. And it’s these types of places where having vanity packaging can come into play, having different types of trade displays, and you know, those types of things, really showing off the brands and the brand ethos, the brand, opportunities, the brand options that exist for consumers, you know, a lot of these types of things, you know, the packaging that you see here is entirely vanity here. But it certainly helps convey a message that you might not otherwise get just from purchasing something off the shelf or having it in a Mylar bag, because you don’t actually get the opportunity to see something interesting and unique and learn about the brand. So being able to tell that visually telling it with physical items at the retail in the retail space is incredibly valuable. And when it comes to transparency, this can both be, you know, using the limited space on the label, which we definitely encourage, but also trying to find alternative ways to do so. So you know, depending on the product that you’re putting into a package, you may have additional information that you can, or additional space that you can add that information to. So whether you’re adding you know, additional cannabinoids like CBG

Jeremy Nemanishen  42:08  

CBGN, you know, or if it’s terpenes, or listing the different the top terpenes you know, some, some LPS these days or even putting, you know, the growing conditions that we’re using the soil medium, you know, these types of little bits of factual information are increasingly sought after by particularly, you know, cannabis connoisseurs, but you’re seeing it more creeping into the mainstream as well. Lots of different brands are starting to see that their consumers are interested in what you know what goes into the product, we don’t have the luxury of, you know, being able to just shout from the rooftops, everything that we do. So you really have to find the right way to do it. And part of that is comes down to packaging and sharing everything you can on the packaging side. But there’s also ways to, again, engaging with the retailer, utilizing services, that the grab that data from your from your CEOs, and help display that information on your website, or through the retail or, you know, passing that out that information on being transparent is a huge boon to any brand these days, because both consumers and retailers are demanding more and more information from the brands that they sell, because they want to stand behind those brands. And the best way to do that is to leverage the information that you have, through an information-sharing platform through your sales team through whoever it is that manages those relationships, to try to provide that information to to retailers and consumers alike. And then finally, you know, when again, back to the to the retail level, you know, finding ways that you can work with budtenders and retailers to provide information, giving them learning materials to learn about your brand. And that can be anything as simple as a strain card. It could be digital signage, it could be some, you know, maybe a fancy new development platform that allows you to engage with bud tenders directly for product knowledge training, you know, all of these things are valued and and the the more information that you can provide and develop as part of your part of your creative solution to getting your brand out there is going to be you know, it’s going to come back to you many fold just in the in terms of the the in person engagement that you’re going to get from the people who are are indeed the gatekeepers for your sales at that retail level and also through the the inevitable churn, you know, the people that are trying your product, the bud tenders as they try the product, it’s understood it’s from from surveys that we’ve done and project projects that we’ve run through organizations like the budtender or bud tenders Association, that if you you know, if you’re sampling a product as a budtender You’re more likely to recommend that product, if assuming you enjoyed it, you know, within the within a certain timeframe, because it’s fresh in your mind, you know, you’ve just experienced it, you’ve just gone through the process, and you understand what it’s like. And it’s easier at that point to recommend it for someone. So, you know, it’s those types of engagement opportunities that we always encourage, you know, finding ways to engage with the people who ultimately are, you know, whose hands it is, in whose hands it is to help share your product with the consumer. So, you know, you neglect the retail space at your peril, is I guess, the bottom line. But there are still you know, if within the restricted environment that we work within, there is still plenty of opportunity to share information to have eye-catching designs, and to really invest in these types of marketing, and sales materials to really get the brand across. So I’ll I’ll stop talking there. I think that’s, that’s, that’s good for us. Anyhow. So thanks for listening to at least the HighDeal side of the presentation, I will pass it back to Vegar. I think you’ve got a little bit more, more on the goal.

Vegar Samuelsen  46:11  

Is that right? Yeah, that’s correct. Thanks, Jeremy. Great information. Well, welcome back, everyone. So we’re just gonna go focus on our CRM module right now. So you know, we can access it from the sidebar here, or just jump over here. So our customer relations management Management module, you know, we’ve got our accounts, basically, everything that comes into the software and goes out, goes through an account. So you know, whether it’s a license holder or retailer, a lab, they can all be configured here. And you can kind of get an overview, you can set an expiration date if you need to review your accounts on an annual or bi-annual basis. But yeah, there’s our human horizons, their license holder. So we got a PIO from them, they want to have four kilograms of product. And we’ll ship it out to them. So why don’t we go ahead and jump into the orders, I can go down here, or I can just kind of head over here. But you know, on this page, you see a lot of extra information, approved orders, orders awaiting approval, the total shipments, you can kind of drill down and filter as well, as you move down here, right? So yeah, why don’t we go ahead and just create that order. So I’ll go under orders. I’ll say add a new order. Let’s get healing horizons on the board here. And of course, their address will pre populates the order was placed by me. Let’s place the order today. Let’s enter industry. And the due date will say you know, let’s get this out today. Alright, so here we have an overview waiting approval enter industry depending and there’s no price yet, but you can see the order created dates. And then I got to add a new item here. So first thing to do, let’s, let’s add an item to this order. So I see I’ve got some golden goat here. 

Vegar Samuelsen  48:19  

And let’s do I don’t know to four bags all right. Alright. So at this point, so I can kind of review I can change the price I can, you know, edit taxes, I can set up a fallback tax if I’d like to in my system. But I’ve already kind of got that figured. So I think it’s about 4500 per unit. I’m gonna go ahead and approve this order. And of course, at this point, you know, we can receive payment against it, we can upload any documents, add a note, print a label, download an invoice. And right now let’s go ahead and fill the order. So let’s just fill it we’ll choose the lot that has the available inventory, I can select it here and manually add the items or I can just say you know, fill it right there. Go to next “create a new shipment”. So now we have a shipment ID 142 We can also go over to the shipments tab right here and also go into the shipment. I can mark the shipment as packaged once it’s been packaged. Say it’s our shipping domestic. And then once we get a tracking number, we can update it here as well. So can update the tracking number. Let’s put one here. And this is kind of nice because our application integrates with after ship track. So basically, you now have the tracking number it will link to after ship track which tracks kind of all the major carriers in the world so you can know where your packages at any point in time based on the last carrier scan. I’ll just close that for now. And we can mark it as shipped. Then once we know that order is delivered, we can mark it as delivered as well. And our responsibility is complete for this order. Go ahead and do that. Success. All right. Yeah. So that’s just a quick rundown of you know how to get an order moving through the system. It’s fairly easy. self-explanatory. I would even say, and, yeah, of course, if you want to learn more about the application, you can always reach out to our team, Rob, or Marion from our sales team as well. They’re happy to do some demos and really drill down and get in-depth on certain topics. But yeah, I guess we’ll open it back up. And thanks again, everyone.

Rob Perry  50:40  

And that’s, that’s perfect. Thanks. Thanks very much, Vanguard. That was a good run through and Jeremy and Nick as well, I knew that was some great info. And I know those questions are floating around out there. How people can get those sales up? So I think, you know, it really, really helped a lot of people out today going through it. I know we’re running short on time, but we do have enough time for maybe, you know, one or two really quick questions. So what I’ll say to everyone is, if they do have questions, you know, get them into the chat, or raise your hand and I can activate your mic. There’s also kind of a Q&A question section, you can you can get them in there. And alternatively, to that, if you want to take some time, come back with a question later on. Yeah, feel free is Vegar of saying email, email, any of us will reach out to everyone who’s on the line, make sure you have our contact info. And we can we can get you hooked up. Well, there’s actually one question that has come in for the ideal team. Here. It’s Do you directly manufacture or distribute? And do you manufacture domestically International? And I’m gonna add this piece on because I know we have a lot of a lot of international groups that that are probably on the line, you know, are you able to help them out as well? If someone’s in Europe, you know, which is maybe a little bit newer to cannabis consumer packaging? You know, I Yeah. How would you position yourself there? Maybe I’ll push that one, too. You know, Nick, or Jeremy is?

Nick Sanders  52:32  

Sorry, I’m talking about the Q&A questions here. Or did you have another question?

Rob Perry  52:37  

I know what that was, I was just reading the first question there.

Nick Sanders  52:41  

Yeah, I was just looking at that. Um, yeah, I can take that. Yeah, so we do both. So we directly manufacture we work with a number of factories, we own moulds with a number of our manufacturers as well. So we do a lot of that. It’s something we’ve really done a lot more of in the last six to nine months. We also distribute for a number of very well-known reputable brands. You know, we do guys like APAC flexibles, we’re in a very good relationship with those guys. We’ve worked with them for multiple years. Steven Gould safely lock, you know, the advent of lots, lots of really great guys. Where does manufacturing take place? Mainly, it takes place in the United States, as well as overseas, we are working with a number of companies within Canada to try to bring some more domestic options in depending on what the product is anything like, you know, non-child resistant, cardboard labels, bags are all done locally. For the most part, we do have options overseas for a number of those as well. We, we have a number of ranges and options that depend on you know, what our clients basically need. So, you know, if they need a quick and they want really high quality you know, good local supply, then when we do it here, it’s going to cost more, but it’s gonna be fast. And it’s, it’s going to come to you really quickly and you can turn really fast. The other option is, you know, obviously overseas, if you know, there’s if price point is a key factor, and you know, you have some time to wait, you know, we do sell a lot of stock kind of thing as well, where we’ll purchase a large amount of products for our customers or warehouse it for them for a quarterly or semi-annually basis.

Rob Perry  54:28  

Excellent. And there’s another follow-up there that I find really interesting, especially you were talking about the ocean or clean plastics, and you know, what an issue is now, you know, that I think we’re all aware of and, you know, for anyone who’s bought a cannabis product or seen a cannabis product in Canada, I mean, it’s just I mean is covered in packaging. So the next question, you know, how often do people do you see people moving towards sustainable packaging?

Nick Sanders  55:01  

Yeah, I mean, we, we see a lot of interest in it, I should say, you know, almost everyone we talked to asked about sustainable stuff. And we, we love to, you know, promote it and really put it forward because, you know, it’s something we really stand behind. We’ve seen a number of our clients switch over to it, a lot of us clients for us have switched over to it. As I said, you know, during when we were talking, you know, it’s really a price point thing. You know, so we really are trying to, you know, really narrow those prices down and get the best best options for the best, most cost-effective way I should say, for our clients, because at the end of the day, it’s just, you know, when you’re going from A to that cost 10 cents to a to the cost 30 for say, you know, just to give an example. It’s it’s really hard for something like that to happen, especially with the margins and synastry. So, do we see a lot of people doing it, or how often we see it somewhat, it’s more not so much compostable, though it’s more post-consumer recycled, compostable, just like in in where the technology is now, it’s just not there at a point where, you know, it’s something that we see a lot of people converting at this time. So postconsumer recycled is it was what we’d see is our number one right now.

Rob Perry  56:20  

Excellent. Excellent. No, it would be interesting to see more of and in my opinion. Now, I see a few more questions coming through. But unfortunately, we’re we’re pushing up against the limit of our time here. Some good ones on, you know what the custom packaging process is, you know, what you see where you see packaging going in the future. So what I would encourage for, you know, anyone who is on the line does have questions that they put in the Q&A or the chat or wherever they gotten them out. Yeah, please feel free to reach out directly to ideal solutions. Nick or Jeremy, I know we’ll be happy to take your emails and questions. And yeah, feel free to meet reach out to me or Vegar or anyone and GrowerIQ. And, yeah, we’d love to hear from you. We’re always happy to share ideas. So that you know, Jeremy, Nick, thanks very much for your presentation today. And to all the participants. Thanks very much for taking the time and I will hope to reconnect with you on the next HighIQ webinar, if not before. Thanks again.

Vegar Samuelsen  57:38  

Thanks, everyone. Thank you.

Nick Sanders  57:39  

Thanks. Take care.