Retailers take note! By Ray Mwareya

First, the data. Newly released trends data from industry data from Headset, shows that: pre-roll, concentrate and flower shoppers are especially likely to be sticklers for one category, and their preferred product made up at least 50% of the shopping basket. Headset, based in Seattle, is a data startup that provides actionable and real-time business intelligence for the legal cannabis industry.

This latest trends data is important because retailers, informed by numbers, can go out to grab customers in the increasingly competitive marijuana storefront space. First, store shelf arrangement is critical to increasing cannabis product sales. Don ́t lump pre-rolls, beverages, flowers in a haphazard way on your store shelves in the haphazard mix.

You waste shoppers’ time because they will spend energy shifting through a forest of cannabis magazines, vapes, oil, pre-rolls until they find their favorite weed cake! At this time where in-store mingling is actively discouraged, disorganized store shelves are a put-off and potentially a health hazard. A clever store operator should make lives easier for their shoppers by displaying an array of pre-rolls on one shelf. Customers will thank you, pick, purchase and dash out in fewer minutes.

Secondly, the data shows cannabis beverage shoppers are the most diverse item customers and filled their basket with 34.3 % of edibles too. This means that though the majority of customers are one-category loyalists, there is a sub-group of buyers who are open to variety.

A clever retailer should seize this data and display beverages with a variety of items because that niche of shoppers (the beverage lovers) is the subgroup more open to filling their basket with a diversity of items – pre-rolls, canna-butter, vapes, etc. The takeaway? Don’t ignore what the data is telling you about a minority section of buyers. Thirdly, don ́t stress over deciding whether to be a variety retailer or specialty seller.

This is one area that keeps cannabis retailers awake at night. To be a niche seller of vapes only risks bringing envy when the market enters a bull run of cannabidiol. Yet to be a variety retailer who hoards vapes, flower, canna-butter means you are spreading your store too thin on vapes if suddenly a new liberal law sees an upshot in vape sales.

The solution is, if the data in your locality shows cannabis flower retailers are the highest single category shoppers snapping up 67.1% of flowers into their basket, it might be wasteful of your marketing or startup budget to have a variety of items in stock. The ultimate takeaway – while the national cannabis retail data gives you a big picture, mine the data to see what products buyers in your town or neighborhood want.