CloudWalker Farms | James Walker
What is different, everything is a bit more of a challenge in this industry in that in a more evolved market — in kind of referencing my most recent history within beauty — one of the retailers I was able to land Well People in was Target. And so it doesn’t get any bigger, more exciting, than working with somebody like Target, to compare to Target to maybe an MSO, and Target is evolved enough to know that there’s a place for mass, there’s a place for discovery, there is a place to maintain a level of relevancy and credibility in the market by demonstrating discoverable emerging brands and kind of cobbling those together in a very synergistic and productive way. Right? that’s how retail works. That’s how it really must work to survive. And I’m not sure that experience and knowledge, much less deployment, have really found a place here. Which is totally understandable in theory. I mean, people are just starting out without ever having done a retail business before, ever, and in some cases maybe even popping off multiple locations, but the thoughtfulness and curation in terms of — and look what do I know?
What I suspect and i guess maybe just from this side of the counter what I see is perhaps a gravitation and consistency quite likely because of ease of use and access to some of those larger, obvious commodities within the community, brand-wise as you were suggesting — some of the bigger players from outside of the state are in fact rolling in to maintain leadership in the category. Which again, is totally fine, and it has been interesting to contend with that a bit more at the risk of being naive than I anticipated. And so yeah it’s interesting not to answer your question as far as approaching a customer, someone like Target, though cracking Target was not easy by any stretch — believe me it was something that took probably a year but, there are lanes for connection, for communication, and from a strategic perspective wanting to maintain a certain productive blend that I was talking about. And dedicating resources from their side as a retailer to that. Having buyers that are actively “I am the discoverable, emerging brand” or “I am now assuming the wellness department”, which Target for sure has created, along with that type of department existing in probably every single major category one can think of. You know, that hasn’t happened here yet. But that’s cool. I mean, we’re a small state, it’s a brand-new industry, we have brand-new retailers, so I think we’re all just doing the best we can to make it work.