From the Editor

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!

By David Halpert

Normally I don’t like to use this letter as a place to talk about the magazine. It’s part of that innate urge inside of me to keep what we call in the industry Church (the editorial side of a publication) and State (the publishing/advertising side of the business) completely separate. Usually the letter to the editor is a place to reflect on the state of the industry, current trends and challenges in the cannabis space, or highlight a certain theme of the given issue at hand. In recent months it’s been nothing new, between the exorbant amount of excise taxes charged to LPs from all levels of government, the constant push-pull tug-of-war between large licensed producers and smaller, craft growers, or the oversaturation of cannabis retailers in what many believe will be the demise of the private sector, among others.

As an industry trade magazine, we do our best to provide information/educational content as well as highlight fascinating cannabis companies, and the people making remarkable strides in the industry, while at the same time not being so doom-andgloom all the time. Truthfully, being both an editor and publisher of Cannabis Prospect Magazine is sort of like being a deaf composer. You create a magazine then send it out to your subscribers in the hopes that they read the articles but rarely (if ever) do you get to see them actually do, aside from the odd kudos you may receive at trade shows or during a video call. At the same time, and not entirely unrelated to my point, comes this reflective question of ‘Am I doing everything in my power to improve the cannabis industry overall?’ or perhaps a more apt question is ‘Am I doing enough?’ To that end, I wanted to take this opportunity to announce an exciting new product from Straight Dope Media Inc. beginning in January 2023: Cannabis Merchandiser. Cannabis Merchandiser will be a monthly, digital-only catalogue of cannabis sell-sheets emailed directly to cannabis retailers that are either current subscribers of Cannabis Prospect or members of the IRCC, a recently established collective of cannabis retail stores, that leverage the buying power of independent cannabis retailers for better pricing on cannabis products, among other benefits. The reasons for Cannabis Merchandiser is three-fold:

1. We want to make the experience of getting cannabis product information as frictionless as possible for the budtender. Oftentimes budtenders get their info from multiple sources and the process is both cumbersome and timeconsuming. With Cannabis Merchandiser we want to make getting that information as simple as possible.

2. We want to give mico/craft growers, as well as mid-sized LPs more of a voice than their larger cannabis competitors. Oftentimes it’s the bigger players that overshadow the little guy in terms of the number of products they produce or the vast number of resources/dollars they use to build brand awareness of certain products. We want to change that by giving smaller players more prominence when it came to showcasing their products.

3. Since we won’t be charging for those LP sellsheets to be included, we see this as not only a way to give back to the industry but also to be as inclusive and comprehensive as possible when it comes to listing cannabis SKUs.

If you’re a retailer and you’d like to start receiving Cannabis Merchandiser come January (again at no charge) or are a licensed producer that would like your products to be included (also for free), please don’t hesitate to send an email to media@cannabisproonline.com and we’ll be more than happy to add you.

President / CEO, Straight Dope Media Inc.

@cannabispromag

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