Hi everyone,
Haven’t posted a bunch here, but I am making a point to be more interactive, social, content forward, and communicative in 2022.
We are a wholesale distributor with 2 brands in the CBD/Delta 8 space. Prior to that we brokered biomass before the crash and did flower drying/processing services for farms all over Oregon. In 2019 we dried over 1 million wet lbs (link to some media provided, it was a hoot to say the least).
I’d love to have a frank conversation about what the industry is and has become. Clearly 80%+ of the operators have converted to Delta 8 and alt cannabinoids for the majority of their business. Thousands of farms have bowed out as they didn’t expect the intense labor needed for processing as well as the need for a strong sales force.
Brands have converted to alt cannabinoid brands for the most part. Somehow THC flower has become the same price if not lower thank some hemp flower (mind blown). I mention this because in 2018 and 2020 my mind was made up as far as supply of THC flower directly correlating with the demand of CBD flower. Bad actors were spray CBD flower with D9 all over the place, they all lost their customers in 2019 and 2021.
As far as consumer adoption, it feels that the big name brands have somehow solidified a foothold even though their pricing is absurd. We price ourselves up to 30% less than many of the bigger brands out there.
Anyway, open forum for all to release some of their thoughts about what 2022 holds! Also, don’t we have a 2022 Farm Bill approaching? Haven’t heard much about that.
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Cannabis/hemp is going to continue to drop in price. This is because of the innovation that has been brought to the table.
The alt cannabinoids are a thing because consumers are exploring and smaller and less effective labs are trying to survive.
Automation is now majority of smaller lab owners enemy. I foresee a micro grow (growth) cycle in the coming years, very much like the evolution of the beer industry.
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Put your energy into mushrooms, it’ll be the next wave.
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If your price and product are right increase your brand/marketing efforts. Good luck in 2022! It’ll surely be another roller coaster.
A lot of good points made. I think we’ll see a lot of brands expanding into new territories as well as consolidating.
Agreed on the mushroom end as well. Many here with a lot of headstart.
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Tinctures\edibles with blends of all the minors. So people can tap into that HHC etc to update or addon to their existing CBD lines. Upradde, with two D’s for a double dose of that minor cannabinoid pimpin goodness…
I’ve got a good understanding of what to do. Making the products is trivial, it’s just the legal risk.
Don’t do this. You have to understand the market looks very different. People are not consuming those the same way as cannabis. If you end up sitting on stuff which can’t move don’t say I didn’t worn you.
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mushrooms aren’t really a commodity good in the same way weed is. I guess people microdose more often now, but the (relatively) lower demand coupled with super low operating costs means either a quick race to the bottom or a bureaucratic nightmare
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I think that the feds of all kinds (fda, dea, etc) will attempt enforce some anti-d8 policies and by extension will require states to regulate cbd much more strictly
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Wouldn’t be surprised if they treated CBD like a watched chemical.
CBD to d8/d9 is the lowest hanging fruit for illegal drug production by a wide margin
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2022 will be the year CBD is called precursor more often than medicine.
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Energy = mushrooms = energy = mushrooms
I did recently create a formulation for micro dose capsules that I am currently self medicating with to test. Thank you for the friendly advice!
So long as there are $300 CBD isolate kilos there will be a flood of D8/D9 conversions in the market.
Don’t see that changing without regulatory pressure.
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There is a lot that’s wrong with the CBD industry, first off the shitty salespeople are the ones that are fucking things up. You go to ANY hemp group and people are first and foremost touting how their hemp/gummies/etc are life changing. Whereas even the finest THC extracts are just sort of a ‘hey try our shit you might like it’ attitude i’ve noticed most damn near everything in the hemp industry is HOLY SHIT YOUR LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME, YOUR DICK WILL WORK, YOUR DOG WILL COME BACK FROM THE DEAD AND YOUR PARENTS WON’T BE DISAPPOINTED IN YOU! BUY OUR CBD LOLLIPOPS!
Now, Let’s get to the extraction side of things vs marketing - because isolate was killing it no fucking farmer under the sun who bought a hemp farm because of isolate and bio prices in 2018 will not fucking budge on per lb prices, very few will - the majority won’t. So these old crotchety farmers won’t scale pricing based upon the industry, just what it was at one particular point in time which in the grand scheme of things is a very, very short time in the timeline. I’ve even went over the math with them so they knew how the extractors, distributors and everyone in the supply line derives any sort of payment from that…you get “WELL YA GONNA TELL ME HOW THE GUB’MENT GONNA SUBSIDIZE ILLEGALS BUT YOU CAN’T PAY AN EXTRA 2 DOLLARS A LB” (literal response from a farmer).
And the biggest part of this for me is QUALITY. It seems as though a lot of these farmers are going and making life changing decisions to grow smokable hemp without even researching the goddamn market! Imagine that!!! So when I was actually trying to find new smokable for the last outfit I worked with i’ll say for every 40 farms you talk to advertising smokable maybe 1-2 farms will give you DECENT smokable but then will put their dick in your hands when it comes to pricing and give you prices people weren’t even paying for loud lbs of the real stuff in 2005. I know it seems hard but when i’m contacting customers I’m super nice and don’t ruffle feathers - I had this one farmer in the tobacco belt send me pictures of untrimmed D- (at least) nugs that were still on the branch, no attempt whatsoever at trimming. After showing him a few example pictures of our Hawaiian that was the best we had at the time he just goes ‘OH MINE LOOKS LIKE THAT, IT JUST NEEDS TO BE TRIMMED’. Bear in mind this stuff was sitting so long that the fucking fan leaves were gray. He then said ‘he would shoot someone in the head if they wanted what current lbs are but expected it to be trimmed’.
I would say the long and short of it is that there simply isn’t enough meat on the bone. Once the isolate boom started happening people became hella rich super quick then lost it all just as fast. The only ones that ended up staying afloat are taking way less than expected for it (even in 2022 pricing) from large wholesalers and are being told ‘Oh so you barely make shit off of that? Well that’s awful because you’re now going to make nothing - which is worse?’. I can tell you the only people who aren’t hurting in the hemp industry REAL bad (farming and wholesaling) are sketchy motherfuckers who are doing something to put the hurt on their own people.
Now keep in mind, i’m normally the hands and mouth so I get to hear what the checkbook is telling me in terms of what is financially acceptable so I get to lovingly (HA) hear both sides. And I hate everyone enough that i’ll say exactly what’s going on.
I know this is supposed to be friendly but whenever I think about the hemp market I feel like I need to get ready to fight way more than a lifetime in the normal market. Imagine that.
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