Investor
Ideas #Potcasts 649, #Cannabis News- Interview with CEO of NorCal Cannabis
Delta, Kelowna, BC, February 28, 2023
(Investorideas.com Newswire), investorideas.com, a global news source covering leading sectors
including marijuana and hemp stocks and its potcast site
release today’s podcast edition of cannabis news and stocks to watch plus insight
from thought leaders and experts.
Listen to the podcast:
https://www.investorideas.com/Audio/Podcasts/2023/022823-Cannabis.mp3
Read this in full at https://www.investorideas.com/news/2023/cannabis-potcasts/02281Interview-NorCal.asp
Hear Investor ideas
cannabis potcast on iTunes
Hear the investor
ideas potcast on Spotify
Today’s podcast overview/transcript:
In today’s podcast Investorideas
interviews Jigar Patel, CEO of NorCal Cannabis, one of the largest cannabis
operators in California and number one seller of indoor flower, powering
beloved brands such as lolo, 1Lyfe, and Panacea, where we discussed surviving
in the California cannabis industry, brand creation, inflation on cannabis
sales and California cannabis cafes.
Patel has over 20 years experience in the cannabis
industry and has been a key player in California’s explosive legal market.
Founder of four cannabis businesses as well as being an industry leader in
bringing local regulatory compliance to many jurisdictions including San
Francisco, Santa Rosa, and Sonoma County, Patel’s leadership brought NorCal’s
revenue from $2m to over $70m in just three years.
Patel began his cannabis journey in true
organic fashion as he stated, “I guess my cannabis journey really began with
consumption of the product at a young age. Like a lot of folks in my teens, I
started trying cannabis and for me it was really an eye-opening thing. As the
son of immigrants, I sort of had this path where I was supposed to, go be a
doctor or a pharmacist and get a house and get married. And that was what the
immigrant story was of the American dream. And I think, cannabis opened me up
to a whole world, which I didn't really see prior to that and introduced me to
lots of folks from different backgrounds.”
“When I went to school at Purdue, I ended
up meeting some folks that were growing cannabis back then. Obviously in those
days it was highly illegal, and some of those same guys actually had moved to
California in the late nineties because of Prop 215 here, and I stayed in
contact with them, learned about what was going on in the space and quickly
knew that I wanted to be in it. I really dove into the culture of cannabis here
in Northern California. Really seeing what it was about and what was this whole
prop 215 thing, right? Not many people in those days really understood what it
meant, and it was the quasi-legal way of providing medical cannabis to
patients. So I quickly realised this was where I wanted to be, moved out here
in the early two thousands, then jumped into the political realm and started to
understand how I could help effectuate change at the local level and worked
with Sonoma County, worked with the city of San Francisco and a lot of other
cannabis policies early on. Fast forward to 2015 and I jumped in with two feet
and built a grow in San Francisco and that was really the beginning of North
Cal. During that time, I'd come across my other two co-founders, Blair Carter
and Doug Cortina, who were doing a very similar thing in the same neighbourhood
in San Francisco. We quickly realised we were stronger together and that
initial partnership was at the beginning of NorCal and today we operate about a
hundred thousand square feet of production with almost 30,000 square feet of
canopy in our Santa Rosa campus.”
When asked about how NorCal helps
differentiate itself from the competition and work towards true brand
creations, Patel commented, “for us lead cultivators that have been working
with for almost 20 some years, we've stayed together as a team, which is very
rare in this space. So we operate three brands. One Life, panacea and Lolo.
Really that's the good, better, best of indoor flower, and along with that we
also make other products, but our core capabilities are in indoor cultivation.
We really believe we are some of the most efficient operators in this space.
Because we are efficient it allows us to, especially in our brand Lola,
actually lead with quality, consistency, but also price.Because we are so
efficient at what we do, we're able to provide that value to the consumer
consistently and we believe we have the makings of a real brand. I don't think
we've truly seen a real brand in cannabis yet and I think we've latched onto
something really good with Lolo. I think it resonates with the consumer. I think
the value proposition is perfect.”
When asked about the difficulties when it
comes to marketing a brand like Lolo, Patel went on to say, “when we started
NorCal, like everybody else, we'd raised a bunch of money and we had brought on
a strong marketing team. I think that even when you talked to those folks that
were part of that marketing team early on, I think what they will tell you is,
everybody had grand ideas for how to really market cannabis, but nobody had
ever really done it. They didn't understand how the system worked, they didn't
understand the supply chain and as we brought in these great marketers, who
came from very diverse backgrounds, I think what they realised quickly was this
wasn't digital marketing, this wasn't Twitter, this wasn't any of the stuff
that they were used to. This was a knife fight, those were their words. I think
it became clear that these monster marketing budgets weren't really doing much.
They weren't moving the needle, right? You would get media play out of it.
They'd get a lot of attraction, but the ROI of actually selling cannabis wasn't
there.”
Patel continued, “I think what we did,
which was a little different, was when we did our marketing push early on, we
spent a lot of time on business intelligence. What we were able to do there was
utilise some of our historical knowledge of what happens in the space, combined
with data that we finally had access to, and we were able to look and say, what
does a consumer really want? What does a power consumer want? If you look at
the power consumer in California, it always came back that they cared about
quality, consistency, and price, and a bell went off for us. We don't have to
do much. We don't have to spend a bunch of money on marketing. If we can hit
those three things and provide that to the consumer, it will resonate. If you
look at Lolo over the last year, we sold almost 1 million eighths of flour,
which is pretty crazy to think about in a state like California where
competition is crazy, and the fact that it's indoor flower I think says more.
When we look at other states and realise that most states don't have the
ability to grow outdoors, you start to see how Lolo can actually be a brand
that actually resonates nationwide, right? As long as the feds don't legalise,
which they’re not gonna do anytime soon in our opinion, you'll be able to have,
I almost think of it like Coca-Cola bottling plants, different indoor
facilities in different states producing the same type of product.”
In recent news, a new bill introduced in the
state legislature by San Francisco Assemblymember Matt Haney, Assembly Bill 374, would allow cannabis
lounges and retailers to offer food, drink, and live entertainment.
When asked about this new change for the
Cannabis Cafes, Patel said, “I think the cafes are great. I think the one issue
that we've seen is just the inability to have food and or drinks really takes
the recreational aspect out of it. I'm a firm believer in letting people do
what they wanna do and I think the more we can normalise that and allow that,
the better it is for the plant.”
California’s cannabis industry, though
still the largest legal market in the world, has been facing some issues in the
legal industry over the past few years.
When asked what measures the state could
take towards addressing some of the industrie’s issues, Patel commented, “I
think there needs to be a reduction of the excise tax. What they did for
cultivation tax in California was great, but again, it needs to be passed onto
the consumer and I think that the conversation needs to change from this just
being about tax revenue to really about jobs and employment.”
“We have ways to tax and make money as a
state. What we really want are jobs and I think that mindset needs to change
and people need to start looking at us, not as just a source of income for the
state, but actually as citizens” Patel concluded.
No matter what market you’re looking at,
there is always a discussion about Black Market cannabis and in California this
is a large issue.
When asked about how he sees the black
market either developing or fading out, Patel said, “People have been growing
weed for 30 and 40 years on their parents' properties. You have this generation
of folks where this was their life. When you think about the black market going
away, what I do think is, I don't think you're gonna start seeing younger and
younger growers getting into the game again. I think that the old timers either
will make the transition or at some point give up. I think just if I look
regionally, and we pay a lot of attention to what happens in the black market
because it's all one market at the end of the day, when I talk to the grow shop
owners or just locals around here, what I am seeing is a lot of those 10
lighters and 20 lighters and even 50 lighters that used to proliferate the Sonoma
Napa or Sonoma Mendo landscape aren't there anymore and people have no intent
of putting 'em back up.”
To keep updated on NorCal’s business and
brands or to find out more information about NorCal Cannabis visit their
website here.
About
Investorideas.com - Big Investing Ideas
We publish breaking
stock news, stock research, guest posts and create original top rated investing
podcasts, plus sector tag articles featuring up and coming companies and
industry leaders. Investor Idea’s
original branded content includes the Crypto
Corner Podcast , Play by Play Sports Podcast , Cannabis News and Stocks on the Move Podcast , Cleantech and Climate Change Podcast, Exploring Mining Podcast , Betting on Gaming Stocks Podcast and the AI Eye Podcast. We also create free investor stock
directories for AI and tech, biotech, cannabis, cleantech, crypto, defense,
gaming, health and wellness, mining, oil and gas, sports and water.
The Investorideas.com podcasts are also available on Apple Podcasts
, Audible , Spotify, Tunein, Stitcher,
Spreaker.com, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts
and most audio platforms available.
Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity
research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and
articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright
laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for
purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should
be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities.
All investing involves risk and possible losses. This site is currently
compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing,
content creation and more. Disclosure is posted for each compensated news
release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not
compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and
followers. Contact management and IR of each company directly regarding
specific questions. More disclaimer info: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Disclaimer.asp Learn more about publishing
your news release and our other news services on the Investorideas.com
newswire https://www.investorideas.com/News-Upload/ and tickertagstocknews.com
Global investors must adhere to regulations of each
country. Please read Investorideas.com privacy policy: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Private_Policy.asp
Investor Ideas does not condone the use of cannabis except
where permissible by law. Our site does not possess, distribute, or sell
cannabis products.
Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/Investorideas
Follow us on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/Investorideas
Follow us on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/c/Investorideas
Contact Investorideas.com
800 665 0411
Get more Cannabis Stock Investor Ideas – news, articles, podcasts and stock directory
