by Brittiany Ralls
I was doing a little math one night and I was wondering how many active grow licenses Oklahoma had in comparison to the amount of residents. When I looked it up, the number quite surprised me. There is a cultivation for every 663 people in the state. We can probably assume some just got approved and may not actually be in operation yet.
There will be some that didn’t make it and are closing their doors.
Which isn’t the only variable to consider, there are cultivations in different sizes and stages. Showing there is a wide range of factors to include when thinking about that number and what it really means. Maybe not as crazy as one may initially think when doing the math. Nonetheless there are plenty of those out there vying to have their piece of the Oklahoma cannabis industry. A major factor that some of the cultivations end up missing out on is the opportunity to brand themselves.
When a grower has harvested they have a few different ways to sell their flower. They can choose to be a grow that’s purely for processing. All of their product is sent off to make concentrates or edibles. There are a few reasons grows would do this, but we won’t go into the details in this post, I’ll save that for another time. What quite a few end up doing is bulk selling to some broker or going in a deal with a large dispensary and let go of their harvests all at once for a low price.
When this happens most of the time, they aren’t pushing your brand.
These groups or brokers, are then bulk selling all your product to someone who will probably not really care to learn where the product came from since they are typically looking for just the best price. The cultivators may also choose to hire someone to sell their product for them. By literally going door to door or by making connections through events. When it comes to vertically integrated type establishments they will most likely sell the primary portion of their products at their dispensaries. Then they may supplement it by selling some to other dispensaries, thus furthering their reach for themselves. If you are wanting your brand to be recognized, bulk selling is typically not the way to go. Some of the other options are better especially if you utilize a combination of other marketing avenues to help patients know who you are.
Just for shits and giggles, when you do the math for the actual percentage of patients currently active there ends up being a cultivation for every 46 patients or so. 663 patients seemed a little bleak, when you see 46 patients for every cultivation you start to wonder how many are actually going to be able to make it with such stiff competition. This is when factors like branding do become so important. Especially if you are branding the company to be one that gives back to the cannabis community. Being a brand that patients recognize and providing quality products regularly can help set you apart from the pack.