 Our next panel we're going to bring out you know the stereotype of the cannabis consumer of course is the slovenly tie-dye slacker but that that isn't necessarily really where the consumer is starting to go. We are starting to see a real emergence in the luxury cannabis category and so our next panel is going to cover that. We've got some great brands here that have really targeted that luxury cannabis consumer. I'm going to go get them and bring them out. Alyssa has a great background in the edible space so she's got a lot of experience with food and beverage, particularly beverage, so I will let her tell you about that and then she will introduce our panelists. Thank you. Yeah my name is Alyssa Jank. I am the manager of custom research and consulting services for Brightfield Group based in Chicago so I always love being able to come out to Southern California especially in the winter. But yes I started at Brightfield Group a few months ago and before that I was at Constellation Brands and I worked a lot on our consumer research strategy and concept development for our project up in Canada with Canopy. So yeah I'm excited to talk about luxury edibles especially in the last slot before lunch so hopefully we get you all salivating over everyone's brands. But before I start I'm going to introduce our panel really quickly. We have Yvonne De La Rosa from 99 High Tide, Eric Eslau from Tifonce, Tracy Mason from SACA and Estella Perez from Garden Society. So I have some slides that I am not sure if they'll be up there. Okay can you go to the next one? Okay so edibles have come a long way in the last 65 years. Obviously people have been interesting cannabis for thousands of years but in 1954 LSB Toklas published the official first recipe for hashish fudge. She's I think everyone has probably heard of her. She was Gertrude Stein's partner and she was also a writer. Then in the 80s there was a renegade outlaw baker named Brownie Mary who started baking edibles for AIDS patients in San Francisco and now today since cannabis is increasingly becoming legalized for recreational use this has really paved the way for some of the luxury brands that we're going to talk to today. So before we start talking to the panel I'm going to give a brief overview of the cannabis consumer because that's what I do at Brightfield Group. We have a lot of consumer data on cannabis and CBD users and since we're talking about luxury we're going to focus on cannabis consumers that make over a hundred thousand dollars because that's the sweet spot for these kinds of brands. These kinds of consumers are younger they are highly educated a lot of them have families and about 42% of them are women. As you can see these are some of our Brightfield Group consumer personas the biggest groups are the liberal elite which are highly concentrated on the east and west coast the typical stoner which is just someone who uses cannabis every day and the single yuppies the newbies which are more likely to be female and the baked brownie moms which are women who have children and who use cannabis pretty frequently and mostly use edibles. Next slide. So these consumers that are have high incomes and consume edibles baked goods and chocolates are the most popular among them. The other categories are still fairly popular but I think baked goods and chocolate are what is really readily available in every dispensary it's easy to get access to and some of these other categories are just smaller overall so I think that's kind of explaining this discrepancy. Next slide. Okay so this was something interesting in our data these people that are making over a hundred thousand dollars they're probably really busy they probably have high-powered jobs a lot of them might like I said have families it's interesting to note that a lot of them are using five or more times per week so they're heavy users of cannabis but they also prefer a lower dosage so 46% prefer that their edibles have less than 20 milligrams of THC which is interesting and I think this kind of speaks to the trend of micro dosing so a lot of them might be taking a tiny bit throughout the day a few times a week but yeah I think we'll probably get into this a little bit talking about dosage. Next slide. And then obviously if you're a luxury cannabis consumer price is not going to be very important to you these consumers rank taste and dosage as being more important than price which makes sense 30 about a third of them are spending more than $50 per product and almost half of them are spending more than a hundred dollars per month and this kind of goes along with the trend that we've seen of edibles pricing going up per unit. So I'm gonna turn it over to our panel now and find out a little bit about how they decided to enter the luxury cannabis market and how they decided on their naming and brand as which is very important in any kind of luxury products. So Yvonne you are one of the first high end dispensaries probably in the world. I want to hear a little bit about what that experience was like how you determined that that was a need in the market and I guess how you ended up on your branding. Thank you. Good morning everybody. Yeah you know there wasn't anything back in 2007 that you could actually take your mother to. So that's that was the inspiration behind 99 which back then was 99 high art which we opened on Abik Kinney in 2008. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 and you know I did my research and you know I already knew a lot about cannabis and so I convinced her to use cannabis and she had never done it before in her life. She had never even had a drink in her life so it took a little bit of convincing but then I said okay let's go get your recommendation mom and then I said okay now let's go to dispensary and it was really an awful experience because we went to many and in LA and you know it was the the typical ones that you know some are still around today that you know have the bars on the windows and the little sliding glass window and they'd slip your application through and just made you feel like you were doing something wrong and that you were a criminal. The first one I actually went to there was a pit bull in the corner when we walked in that was like being held back and growling and I was I was kind of laugh at that because I'm like really and so that's when I was like and I've always been like this my whole life my friends call me a fault finder fixer where it's like I can go anywhere or do anything and I always find a fault in something but not in a bad way more and like I could fix that I can make that better and it was it the same way for this I was like why isn't there a nice dispensary why isn't there like a luxury dispensary why isn't there one with art you know and like groovy and with like beautiful music and and so then I set out to do some research and I was like my god you know it was the time it was the wild wild west you know where everybody was opening up there was no regulations which was amazing and on so many levels but so we we found a location on Abbot Kenny and that's where we wanted to be and it was it was a really great time because we were you know able to do things that you know a lot of people hadn't done and that was just having a beautiful space we it was a also a hybrid art gallery a visionary art gallery where we hosted a lot of famous artists you know that are even more famous today and you know one of our first exhibits was ayahuasca visions which back then people are like what but um it was a it was just a really beautiful space and we made sure that when you walked in you felt like wow this is this is really nice and of course the underlying you know drive behind it was somewhere I could take my mom to somewhere that I would want to go to somewhere my friends would want to go to and you know build it and they will come it it's so true because sure enough it was it became like the be in of you know the early 2000s or the mid 2000s where people were like oh my god this is a place to go you know and even back then as far as product we wouldn't just take any product we knew our vendors intimately they became our best friends and so we made sure that we always had the best product even before testing came out we knew it's like oh we knew how things were grown we knew where our cannabis was coming from and that was really important too so people trusted us like oh this is the place to go for like the best and we had a lot of events which you know like West Hollywood is allowing that now but we had like the first cannabis lounge where we consumed cannabis and again there was no regulation back then so that's how it came to be I mean really it boils down to I wanted to create a beautiful space where my mother could go to Eric your brand was one of the first luxury brands in California and so as a pioneer in the space how did you decide to enter the luxury segment and how did you choose Defonse's name and brand nickname and am I saying it right yeah it's Dave on say Dave on site I'll start with that question first so I started my career over at Apple and if you kind of look at the names of all the Apple products are typically pretty boring like it's iPhone iTunes or Apple music now so I kind of have that kind of DNA still in me so we kind of looked at that and we just couldn't name the product edibles or I edibles and I was just like that is really boring so we looked up French names and we so Dave on say actually means fucked up on drugs so and well if you're French it's funny and it's not it's tongue-in-cheek but that's literally the translation of it and I really like the dichotomy between something that looks really fancy and presents really well like Newsweek named it like one of the best products and it's as hilarious to me that like all the French speakers are just like laughing when they read that so so that so that's that's the name of the product and then for in regards to I think the first question was like how did we enter in the space so I don't think it was a exercise of trying to create a luxury product I think one of the things that I just learned over at Apple is that you just really care about making a good product and that begins with having truly high quality products in the process and also even the people so instead of like you know just hiring you know somebody that knew how to make brownies or cookies we actually hired a R&D director from Cho Chocolate one of my it's one of my favorite chocolates out there that don't have cannabis in it and you know we source really good chocolate like our chocolate currently is we source it from Belgium and we're just and it's not a play where you just create nice packaging and the product actually sucks inside like it's the packages is telling a narrative of what's inside like if you at any point of the consumer experience you disappoint somebody even if it's like you know like you know like like a good example like you know if you have your phone break like two months later it just doesn't you don't fulfill that promise of luxury so I think for me it was really an exercise of just making a good product and if it happens to be or to be defined as a luxury product it wasn't intentional but I appreciate that it is so okay and then Estella can you tell us a little about a little bit about Garden Society's origin story and how you ended up on a luxury in a luxury focus absolutely hi everyone I'm Estella Garden Society so the name Garden Society actually originated from where we originated from the root of it the actual physical location and that's thanks to our founder Erin Gore she's based in Sonoma County Erin has a corporate chemical engineering background so she's traveled the world in her corporate past life managing teams all over the world Asia Europe America and so Nina to say she was always gone and meanwhile she was still trying to maintain that that good quality of trying to be a good friend a good partner a good daughter everything and realize that she was turning a cannabis just to help manage all the chaos and you know in life in general especially being a working woman trying to manage household and everything with that so when she was able to come back home she took the time to bond with her friends and started inviting her girlfriend's over she lives in Sonoma County on a little micro farm so all the women are gathering around why you know she's baking cannabis goods and as well she's experimenting with dosing because clearly she's a chemical engineer and that's what they do so and that's when it came it came down to it you know everybody gathering and just you know binding together and sharing stories and she realized holy crap I'm not the only one going through this everyone has the same you know trouble points and pain points and that's when she realized that was the spark to and at the time it was in 2016 so we're looking at she realized that there's a need for good quality edibles a good quality cannabis properly dosed so that the audience her friends could actually enjoy this and feel comfortable and save so right there in her garden in Sonoma County these gatherings commenced hence called the Garden Society she wanted to create a community where women were able to feel comfortable and have an approachable product to go to so she created the community to destigmatize the cannabis stigma that it has so that way it would welcome the people that were there and hence which is the reason why it's it's perfect into the luxury market because that is our consumer right now women who and I say women because that's how this originated who appreciate a good quality properly dosed product yeah and combining that whole community of of just wellness and destigmatization so that's Garden Society okay thank you and moving on to Tracy can you tell us a little bit about the origin of Saka and who the consumer is and how it kind of became a luxury brand sure so I mean I think some of the biggest components of luxury brands are all about a couple of very important things one of which is authenticity is that it's tying back to something real a real narrative about the brand itself and that narrative actually ties back to the founder so in the instance of House of Saka I'm I'm the co-founder and the founder of the company Cynthia Salarizata who is here somewhere the the notion of House of Saka is actually inspired by a society of ancient female warriors who once ruled the world and conquered all they desired so if anyone seen the beginning of the of the most recent version of Wonder Woman that's kind of the House of Saka and these women were known to rule the earth centuries ago primarily in East Asia and the Middle East where Cynthia is her heritage is Persia so having that narrative and tying that back to something very specific is really meaningful for us coming together as an all-female company in all-female board we felt it was important to really target the female consumer having you know now worked for some of the largest cannabis companies in the world I know that it's still a very bro-minded culture I mean people like garden society and and what's happening at 99 high tides are beautiful but there's still a big still big mountain to climb there so for us targeting a luxury consumer a consumer that's kind of curious that we can benefit that will reap the benefits from the quality of the product that's not only inside of it but also outside that's something that will resonate with them our approach to branding specifically was around very high art we wanted the package to appear and to be a true reflection as as Eric said earlier about what was inside you know we're using a state-grown Napa Valley single vineyard Pinot Noir is the base for our beverage we can't say wine we can't even say Pinot Noir but now you know and that what that's done is given us a fantastic foundation for the product itself that that I think really gives a consumer a beautiful experience very similar to what they would have if they opened a bottle of Rose when they came home from work and on top of that the way that the product is dosed it's about five milligrams a glass we also have a proprietary blend of CBD in our emulsion which allows for a nice body high that that will complement the sort of mental high that you get with THC so the product itself has been really thought out from a beverage point of view and when we launch our our beauty products in the next couple of months I think you'll see that same that same notion reflected through that as well okay you mentioned like authenticity as a signifier of luxury can Eric can you talk a little bit about what you think makes a brand luxury beyond just having a higher price point or fancy packaging this one works right okay cool so what are some of the elements of like a luxury brand I think one and it's been a common theme and the words been used is you know there's intention and also a narrative I could so we'll start talking about the narrative first like so it's like not putting like lipstick on a pig and just it's really a matter of being very thoughtful about every decision you make whether it's like the radius of the corners of the desk flaps in your packaging to like let's say like a you know where you source the walnuts or the almonds for a particular skew so I think having that a very thoughtful having intent in what you're doing and always just being very careful naturally just creates a narrative that a lot of people do appreciate the fact that I could tell you where you know the almonds are sourced and the you know and the person that owns the actual farm you know those are things that like if you're very careful about your supply chain and you're very thoughtful about your products those it creates a naturally just a narrative and I think again the intention for us wasn't to create a luxury product but I think that's the way that we go about creating products as a function to just made it a luxury product within a cannabis space Stella do you have any thoughts on what else makes a brand high-end or luxurious beyond some of the things that have been mentioned sure absolutely so it goes beyond just creating a product it's also creating garden society looks at creating a lifestyle that's aspirational and attainable also and it just it's a feeling and it's a community that empowers women to give them the the choice on what to you know let them feel comfortable with choosing a certain product so they can fill joy and we're looking at what do these type of consumers look for they are they clearly they look for uncomprising high quality and with garden society we for sure bring down it's transparency so you know exactly we source from farms that we partner with that have the same values that we do we look at I mean our chocolates are fair trade a loyalty and then so with the high quality that this these consumers automatically go to they want this positive experience also a positive experience because from the start to finish from the dispensaries that they go into that the part that we've partnered with to what they you know our education formats that are out there they want a great experience so they're looking for high quality and great experiences for sure yeah Avon can you talk a little bit about what consumers are looking for in I guess luxury branded edibles and also what you're looking for when you're choosing what to stock and your dispensary great question well our dispensary 99 high tide is in Malibu so we have a very discriminating clientele I was looking at your pie charts and I'm like oh my god that's us but yeah you know well with Eric I it's a lovely story with defonce a we're one of the first and only I don't I don't know if there's any other all vegan dispensary and even though some of the brands here aren't all vegan we love defonce so much that when we were like oh god you know it's like we're like we're all vegan we can't have this we approached them when we said you know is there any way you guys can make a vegan product and they did they did for us and it became one of our best sellers and according to Eric one of their best sellers now at almost all dispensaries so that was very important to us and I just wanted to So but for us what we look for being on the you know retail side in fact we have all these brands at our dispensary not surprisingly they we we look for again the highest quality products super important you know consumers nowadays or they're getting very savvy you can't really like trick people and you shouldn't trick people anyways people you know are looking at you know the ingredients and products you know they don't want palm oil you know it's but and you know especially in Malibu people you know they know they you know they shop at you know PC greens or now Whole Foods and you know they they they're label readers so they want to know what's in their products so that's very important for us what are the ingredients also of course the packaging you know I started in the day where you would buy you know like rice crispy treats with like you know saran wrap and a ribbon and it's like wow that looks nice so you know as things started changing and packaging came into the picture for us it's very important we've actually consulted with brands where we're like oh my god what great people and you know their product you know is grown you know beautifully and organically and great ingredients and my god their packaging is awful you know we're like we can't have this on our shelves you guys but we'll actually sit down with them and go could you you know and again people have changed their packaging I wouldn't say just for us even though it was originally for us but I think it has helped them and I think that's something we can all do you know and whatever you know line of business we're in is help guide people who you know are trying to make it in this business who may not have all the exact skills just yet and that's something that we like to do we like to help shepherd brands so again packaging super important you know like garden society is just so lovely so pretty when you see it it's like oh my god that's so lovely the font say again you know it kind of feels like upscale you know Charlie and the Wonka you know it's like oh the golden ticket is it in there you guys that you can you can take that you can take that idea the golden ticket and so that again those are I would say some most important things and also you know where it's a still a small industry company ethics if we get wind or and we don't just listen to rumors we look into it if it's a company that is not you know ethically you know how do I even say that not morally but you know just not with the ethics of what we believe in yeah there's no chance in hell they're in our shop so again if you're a good company good ethics great ingredients amazing packaging that's I think what we look for Sam anything else that's my partner and has been Sam right right so you know again we're you know we're expanding however being in Malibu again we have very discriminating clients and people come from all over the world just to go to our shop because and I know there's a lot of I don't know if there's a lot of brand vendors here but you guys would know we're very hard we're I mean we're nice but we're like you know we won't just take anything some dispensaries you know you'll go in there and it's like a warehouse of everything but we we have very specific brands that we carry and I think that for us has been our success in the luxury category and upscale category that people when they come to us they know like they've gone through the rigorous process of getting through us and if it's on our shelf it's one of the best okay yeah that makes sense having a discriminatory shelf chooser is important so Garden Society and SACA were both founded it sounds like specifically for women but I wanted to ask Eric have you seen your consumer shifting more towards being female or has it always been more female because it seems like women are more drawn to obviously chocolate and then on top of that more high-end packaging so it's naturally just always geared more towards women my what actually we I founded the company with my wife and she was the I'll still at Apple when we started the company and she was a proxy CEO because I couldn't disclose it to Apple at the point at that point and then and then we had two kids and she kind of backed away and now she's actually coming back as a CEO CEO which is great to have her back in the office but I think doesn't just naturally I think the product is again like I think our intent wasn't to go over or to try to target the female audience but I think that some of the elements of the product is is appealing yeah that makes sense and then for Estella and Tracy have since your packaging and branding is so female focused have you had any trouble trying to attract male consumers or are you not concerned with that no we're not concerned with that at all because actually a lot majority we've got a large population of I mean percentage-wise of males seeking out our products for gifts it's for their loved ones or for their significance and it's also it's welcoming in the house so if you know somebody's trying to go in the males trying to go in to buy something you know the their partner their wife or their girlfriend or their sister or mom or whatever or more susceptible to say yes this is beautiful packaging I mean look at the pretty flowers on it we welcome this into our home so yeah so no we are we like I said we specifically are focusing on women to empower them and and this is well known with their partners as well men so yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna second that I mean when you're when you're looking at luxury brands you know the idea of targeting a very specific target is what we've all done for as long as luxury brands have been luxury brands and you know and that means sustainability and for us to be for us it makes more sense for us to really go after with the ruthless focus against the kind of consumer that we want to be part of our tribe if you will and then and then give them what they want in a really beautiful way I mean I when it comes down back to luxury branding I mean it's really about a ruthless and I mean a ruthless focus on your brand standards now whether that's the brand standards that live and breathe at 99 high tides and the values that they attach to that or whether it's our brand standards that say you know around price promotion packaging positioning all of those things just being completely uncompromising in how we approach those you know luxury brands don't go on sale you know luxury brands don't take bottom shelf positioning luxury brands bring in something to the retailers that are meaningful they're bringing consumers and they're bringing luxury margins which are a beautiful thing so for us you know we're happy to help encourage more consumers coming into the dispensary environment with because they're seeking out our products and and we're excited about the emerging female consumer in cannabis across the board thank you so since we're talking about edibles we have to talk about dosage and potency I always like to say that everyone has an edible story or they know someone who does where they had a bite of something they didn't feel anything six hours later they wake up and they realize they haven't moved in like three hours or that doesn't hit them until the next day and they're at work and they're freaking out and not to go home so I think that's definitely and the consumers that I've spoken to a lot of them have been scared away from the category a lot of them are very wary of what they'll consume and I think having obviously luxury brand helps with that because it probably puts the medis a little bit but how did you decide on dosage and potency and have you changed it at all since you started Eric let's start with you yeah so when we first started the the milligrams of our bar were actually 180 milligrams and it was just a it was just to be par pursued with Kiva and it was just because we got so much pushed back at the very beginning of just being of equal dosing but I felt like the way that person like at the end of the day it's like what the purse serving is right so I still brought this up about gifting and I think one of the nice things about new products these days is that there's an opportunity to actually give these products in the same way that you bring like a bottle of wine to dinner part on Friday so when we looked at our new skew list like we actually looked at that as not not just creating products for for me to consume but also looking at products that are giftable that I give to you for like you know let's say it's your birthday or for a mother's day or whatever it may be and then also for us to share so you know those are the three consumption behaviors of any food product so so that when we looked at servings we wanted the servings to be actually very controllable so we have these little squares that are five milligrams and doesn't say that you know you could if five is perfect for you eat five if 30 is perfect for you then eat six and nothing stopping you from eating more and and the chocolate is actually enjoyable so that's another good thing about our product but then we even have really super super micro dose where we have chocolate covered hazelnuts which are one milligram each so there's folks that like you know let's say two to three milligrams is perfect for them or it's to get them you know to oh no to power through like a toll season on Netflix as you know their favorite show so we looked at those occasions and you know we were everyone's talking about like the new the new consumer and if you're not coming up with new cons if you're not taking consideration new cons new consumer consumption you're not really understanding or you're not really targeting that new that new consumer so again we looked at as low dose as possible our products taste good so it doesn't you know they have to eat more it's more normalized to food or snacking habits like I think it just makes it a lot easier to get over that hurdle and also prevents what you mentioned is over consumption because you don't want that first experience to be a bad one Tracy or Stella well I mean for for House of Saka when we initially conceived the product our first prototypes we we were at a 20 milligram per bottle for the still and a 40 milligram per bottle for the sparkling we've actually changed that and that was really driven by by flavor profile and what married to the base the base wine product and so we've increased our our TAC to 25 milligrams and with another five milligrams of CBD which really dramatically changes the flavor profile in a very very positive way so that equates to five milligrams per glass for a five a standard five ounce glass of wine that you would that you would have any day coming home the the difference is with an infused beverage such using nanotechnology which is an emulsification that essentially makes cannabis separates cannabis oil into tiny microscopic particles that become then self-homogenizing and and quote-unquote word soluble and what happens with that is it becomes extremely highly bioavailable so the the TAC component the CBD components rather than going through your liver and having to be digested like a standard edibles so you're not really sure what you're gonna feel like in an hour you feel the effects of the onset effects of of of Saka wines in the same way that you would alcohol within five to 15 minutes so it gives you tremendous amount of of information self information on how to dose yourself so in rather than drinking a glass and realizing oh my gosh an hour later that you're really screwed up you know you're gonna know exactly how you're feeling as you're drinking the glass of wine and then you can make the decision for yourself based on how you feel and based on what your tolerance level is and if you want to continue to have another another glass or two just like Eric said if you want to have a few ounces just have a few ounces if you want to have a few more have a few more that's the topic of milligrams and dosing so with garden society it's very interesting because I see that we've got two channels we have a direct to consumer channel and that's only in Sonoma County because we have a micro business license and and then we have a wholesale channel so our direct to consumer market that's stayed the same as low milligrams we have low-dose products for a direct to consumer and it's totally fine everybody loves it and our core consumer they don't bat an eye at the price of our chocolates because of I mean that's what they're spinning on a bottle of wine or a yoga class or a spin class so it's yeah so they're just they're looking for quality but what we have done is in our wholesale channel we have raised the milligrams so so we see the low dose for a direct consumer and then a higher one when we're partnering up with our retailers and I think that that's it's interesting because there's there's a there's it's kind of like broken in the sense of what buyers are seeing the consumers coming in and the conversations that they're having with them right now it's just all you know milligrams milligrams milligrams high dosing but I think that that's and so that's different from what our target consumer is but what I see and I strongly believe happening is that once the market matures is that companies like Garden Society and talking to everybody they're going to be able to gear this consumer that likes luxury quality transparent product to the dispensaries and yeah to drive to retail so so that's what I see happening and it's about breaking the stigmas so saying it's okay to have a good quality product yeah and get the great effect so Yvonne can you talk a little bit about what your Malibu clientele is looking for in terms of dosage are they looking for lower dose or is it not as big of a concern for them they want to get fucked up and I'm just kidding kidding um no there are those that do but well we came up with something because you know the consumer is getting you know older they don't want to get wasted you know and a lot of times you know we've all had those stories I have many and you know including my mom eating an entire cookie that was in the fridge and like 9-1-1 no I didn't call 9-1-1 she did and it's like mom that's the worst thing it could have done but so it happens and that's horrible and you know you can laugh about it later years later but so we came up with five is fine that you know in fact we should probably start a campaign if anybody else wants you can take it just give me a shout out five is fine that's what we found generally is good for everybody so when people come in you know one of the things we're known for is our consultants go through a very rigorous process before they become consultants at 99 high tide and one of those things is dosage because a lot of people ask and we came up with you know five is generally fine so five is fine but there are people that you know even one milligram will send them into you know like outer space so but that's a rare person so you kind of have to go with the general you know general public as far as like what is good like for soccer wines you know I think I have a high tolerance and I do have a high tolerance but but it's so nice to have a glass of wine but you know it's the alcoholized but and have it be cannabis and just one glass was fine I remember you know being at an event and having a glass of soccer wine I was like oh that's so nice but it's true you know after a little bit I'm like you know I could have more but other people might be like you know I'm okay right here that's great so for us it's very important to always with every consultation every single person that comes in our door we make sure we let them know about milligrams you know because even the experienced people think I got this and it's like oh no you know yeah I think as a technology improves that's gonna become more even more important but yeah five is fine that's a good slogan I'm gonna start telling people that so our last question before I open it up to the audience what has been everyone's experience with attracting investors and what are they looking for from luxury brands is it just the packaging is it the quality is it like your dosing technology that you talked about Tracy let's let's have Tracy start this one oh investors you know I think that there's so much interest right now in the cannabis space in general whether it's in the luxury space or or not that there's a fair bit of people who are interested in investing in the space I think what what really differentiates that investor and draws them in is the idea of of something that's truly unique and I know with with House of Saka the story behind it the branding the the target consumer the the quality of the product itself the background that I have an alcohol beverage for almost 30 years I started when I was really really young and and Cynthia's background in understanding how to really publicize within the do public relations within the within the cannabis space I think has has given us a fair audience and so a lot of people that that are now coming in a seed investors are actually people from the alcohol space that that are interested in now expanding into into the cannabis space so I think you know attracting investors important having a great business plan having a great brand having good people behind you are the most important elements of that so yeah I can well yes everyone knows that trying to raise money is very challenging that's why Aaron does it but I think that so everyone knows that there is a shortage of capital right now in the market for other reasons but there's investors new investors coming in on a weekly basis and our experience is that these investors are looking for brands which a brand like garden society that has growth potential and for not only in California but in other states as well they're looking for brands that will win customer loyalty through education hence garden society we have podcasts we you know we partner up with community wherever we can just to share and create community and they're also looking for innovation from our experience as well whether that's in product services or or both of them yeah for sure Eric so I think for Dave on say we have the benefit of starting before rec and things were a little bit looser so we're able to kind of bootstrap a few things but I like to date I think we've raised a little over ten million dollars over the last four or five years that we've been doing been doing this and I guess like to the root of the question I think I think if you're to start an edible company today I wouldn't recommend doing it unless you have like five million dollars and at least two years of runway just in the rec market right now with the regulations with things that you don't even take in consideration like the cost of testing and how you have to optimize for the batch sizes the quality of employees you have to hire these days it says expensive endeavor but when I first started it was I was able to sell just a there was a seven stock split at Apple I was able to sell that and then start start this but I wouldn't recommend doing it for less than five just as a word of advice anyway that's thing about starting edible company yeah for us you know as a dispensary you know and one of the oldest we're also going to expand into our own line of products and yeah you know currently raising money I think what also expanding our dispensaries to only groovy places around the world we don't want to be everywhere just in the best and I think what we've encountered is I echo everybody here and especially Tracy is just uniqueness you know it's becoming such a you know tourist industry as well you know people coming from all over the world you know at least for here you land at LAX you don't want to go to a generic place or you know some shabby place you want to go to the best you want to go to a cool place and experience as well so I think that's what what really has been attracting investors as we're raising funds to expand is our uniqueness and I think everybody here has that definitely are there any questions in the audience way in the back yes you you might have to yell sorry even before they were one of the dispensaries and all the new entrants of the campus market so-called curious folks were just now coming in and that there's some products that you know cater to the legacy customers and some products that cater to the new entrance into the market and even some brands are kind of sticking a claim to say look for the new customer or for the whole school customer so I guess my question is two part in that one does this mirror your experiences in that you tend to attract one or the other kind of consumer and two if that is the case you know do you think that there's a hope for bringing that legacy customer and convincing them of the value proposition of a licensed luxury canvas brand even though it's more expensive than what they're used to even though it's kind of messaging and you know things that didn't always appeal to them okay so the question was about the difference between the legacy cannabis consumers and more of the typical stoner person versus new entrants who are looking for more luxury and if it will be possible to bring that legacy consumer into kind of a higher price tier more high-end sure well I like to say that we like to consider ourselves legacy the garden society I mean because this is a 2016 when it launched at the Emerald Cup and it started with a bunch of quote quote stoner women in a garden right so but just but just a better quality so I think being legacy and isn't really being legacy shouldn't be different from being a luxury product being meaning because people are now looking for high quality stuff so we do have our OGs going to because we do have pre-rolls and all of our pre-rolls you know sungrown flowers we stick to the roots of the earth we stick to the the local farms and partnering with that so to me that's OG so I was formerly the the chief strategy officer and innovation officer at Cantercraft which produces an incredible array of brands across every kind of category within cannabis and so the answer your question absolutely there are brands that are highly targeted toward that legacy consumer brands like ABX for example that really talked to that consumer that that's that's been in cannabis a long time they want potency they want quality they want they want innovation through different form factors but nonetheless they want that and then on the other side of that you know there's brands like Saka and brands like Satori that are bringing new consumers and so if we're looking for a bridge I think the bridge is ultimately going to be the other way around I think is as new consumers come in and become more educated their tolerance level goes up with cannabis I think actually the the the canna curious will become legacy and not the other way around and that's how I see that and I and I think that's what we all hope to happen is because that consumer is extremely loyal they're extremely knowledgeable and so loyalty and knowledge when you're building a brand are two really important factors so that's what I see happening in the space okay next question as a mic my name is Greg Lincoln I have background in PR and marketing and branding for the past 20 years with brands like Patron and two-faced cosmetics and dry bar and then the past year I've pivoted to the cannabis and CBD space and I have a lot of celebrity and high-net-worth individuals that don't feel comfortable going to a dispensary or having ease or a delivery service come to their house so I want your opinion in terms of the best way to reach those consumers and get them to want to buy your products which I think they would obviously love well we actually have a lot of celebrities that come in in person because they like to it's a very special space we also have delivery and we also have people's you know personal assistants come in and I think you know if I understand your question how do you get your clients to maybe I misunderstood the question but I guess is how do you what what's the platform in order to engage them to make them feel more comfortable as opposed to whether it's a delivery service or going into a dispensary because I've had numerous conversations it's not really about my clients it's more about a lot of people that I know and have access to and I've had conversations they're not going to come to these kind of events but they're open to coming to events but obviously more exclusive I just don't know in terms of the regulations and the parameters in terms of how we could engage these these type of people because they're very kind of curious and they consume cannabis but mostly from people giving it to them as gifts right oh I think that's how it starts you know as them getting good products and going wow I like this and I think it's wouldn't be just for celebrities or upscale clients if you will but I think anybody that is kind of curious wants to feel safe and comfortable and I think that goes back to again packaging we you know and ingredients and of course PR marketing and all it's all it's all involved but you know we saw the change last July 2018 when you had to clear all your shells from your big jars of weed and destroy it which we did not destroyed it in many different ways but it suddenly like literally overnight you had these big jars of weed in your shop and then you walk in and saw packages and it was really weird for me it was hard you know the transition if you will I was like no my god the weed I want to smell it but then you know after a few days everyone like looks really nice looks really clean looks really pretty and the clients were like wow oh this is you know there seemed to be more consumer confidence now that it wasn't coming out of a jar with tongs being measured it wasn't you know so much like the old-school candy store it was like oh here's you know a packaged item so I think it goes back to confidence in in your branding you know I'd like to add a little just to touch on what you're referring to about so I get it there's some people that don't want to go into dispensaries but like dispensaries like Yvonne's and Malibu beautiful welcoming there's a lot of other ones out there what garden society we kind of started on that basis because of the women so we do hold and right now I'm collaborating with a lot of special deliveries so we can continue our traditions of garden parties which are private events so that's maybe something do you want to talk to me about later more than happy to but we do so I'm collaborating we're collaborating that way and we bring the education to private groups and we have an open forum we have a discussion and with the collaboration under the regulations we are able to partner where we have an actual say maybe there's a coupon referral so they can go experience it or we have a delivery service you know ready to go when they're ordered so that's the kind of stuff that we do at garden society hi there I'm Lisa light CMO of Canada gather LA and my question first to start with is if for Yvonne you've mentioned the beautiful experience when people come into your dispensary but how do you get people there what have been the most effective ways to bring in customers the kana curious and others into the store and also what do you wish that the brands would do to help drive traffic into into your store how great question you know we're in Malboa in a bit of a bubble so and we've always sort of been very rebellious in a lot of ways and one of the things and I don't recommend this to everybody one of the things that we have done is to never advertise and that that I think has worked for us it has made people feel like oh it's like they're discovering something and you know in Malibu also we don't we don't advertise it's all word of mouth and that's how we did it back in the day because you kind of had to on a bikini it's like we didn't have a sign we didn't advertise it was all word of mouth and those are the people who become your most loyal customers you know as far as bringing in more people I mean I'm not saying we're we have we've had a lot of stories written on us a lot of media but that's different than an advertisement in a magazine but I think to bring new people in we do a lot of events we're very involved in our community we do monthly beach cleanups we just created a surf team my husband was the captain for surf aid which provides you know clean water and healthcare and a lot of resources to rural areas where a lot of surfers go in and they realize like oh my god these people you know are really suffering and here we are surfing their waves so surf aid was created so we do a lot of things like that a lot of community things to to put ourselves out there not just in Malibu but wherever we can very charitable and socially active for us I think has been has been the secret to our success and people read people hear about us and again word of mouth you know I there's nothing better than word of mouth I don't think okay I think that's all the time we have thank you very much one last question I'll take thanks I'll make it really quick I am sorry if this looks a little self promoting but I wanted to mention because this keeps coming up people have a lot of concerns about over-consuming and overdosing and there is a product that exists if anybody wants to know about it it's called undo and I'm happy to tell you about it it helps clear your head in an emergency it helps with a tolerance reset and it helps with morning fog and so if you've got the canna curious and you've got people learning about cannabis they're a little afraid or they're getting into edibles or the places where they ban edibles this really helps people to learn how to use cannabis and I think we have some of those samples of undo on the tables on the mezzanine level where lunch is happening now so I want to thank our panelists for taking time out of their busy day amazing products that they have