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If there's one thing the cannabis industry has in spades, it's culture and knowledge. What it lacks is tools to make the job of getting products onto store shelves and into the hands of consumers easy. Those tools exist in just about every other retail industry.
When retail buyers come to cannabis from other industries, they're left grasping at air for tools they've taken for granted. Inventory management tools are an essential component of keeping supply tight and product flowing. When they're not available, the job gets mighty complicated.
In the traditional retail environment, there are a host of inventory management tools available to help plan supply, measure demand, and make ordering decisions. From NetStock to Demand Solutions (now Logility), there are many options available to help them automate large portions of their work. These tools are often integrated into large enterprise ERP solutions, which contrary to what cannatech providers may claim in marketing materials, aren’t present at all in the cannabis industry (yet).
And so, it comes to pass that these buyers, not finding a software solution, build their own solutions … in spreadsheets. They can be the most savvy spreadsheet sorcerers in the land, but they know there are gaps.
Here’s a bit of the honest truth we hear from buyers about their beloved spreadsheets:
- Keeping them updated is hours of manual work every week
- They get too big and slow
- They’re impossible to maintain
- No one but the buyer who built it can use it and navigate it correctly
- Getting adoption among the right people in the org is difficult
Are spreadsheets better than nothing? Of course. Any retail buyer doing the job well is still going to maintain one, even with a software system to manage their workflows.
However, when it comes to planning the menu, analyzing demand at each store, building purchase orders, alerting staff to replenish stock, having backup staff do the job when the main buyer is out of town - no spreadsheet is going to suffice alone.
When we say Happy Buyers is the only inventory tool specifically built for retail cannabis buyers, it’s because we identified this gap and filled it with razor sharp software. We’re still the only player in the game solely focused on building this platform exclusively for retail buyers.
Due to regulation, integration, and compliance complexities, traditional software players aren’t entering the industry soon. Cannabis software companies building “all-in-one” solutions can’t really understand all the details of the cannabis retail buyer role.
Many of these software companies are spinning a ton of plates at once. Each plate represents another role at a company they build solutions for.
None of their primary plates are retail buyers, and when you add up all their plates, they have a hell of a time focusing on keeping each one spinning and not crashing to the floor in pieces.
Happy Buyers is crafted for a singular person, the retail cannabis buyer. When we’re only focused on that single role, we can serve exactly what’s needed. We’re not spinning plates, we’re serving an exquisite meal on a silver platter.
We’re building this category in our industry because we identified just how big of a cash problem not having an accurate software system to manage your inventory has become. It’s arguably the biggest cash flow problem in cannabis retail, full stop.
We listen to retail buyers, whether they come from the legacy market or traditional retail; they are all informing us what they need to do their job better, quicker, and more accurately. We build to the role. We’re focused, tenacious, and have an incredible team of craftspeople perfecting this product.
It’s always interesting to note what “the normie world” is like compared to our industry. To know retail buyers, inventory managers, producers, manufacturers, and consumers all have so many options to choose from to help them work, optimize, and buy helps us achieve the clarity we need to build for our industry.
It’s even more interesting to note how the challenges we face in this industry empower us to build even better products to solve harder problems. Someday, it may be the cannabis industry informing traditional retail how to effectively manage inventory.
Traditional retail buyers finding themselves in this industry are going to feel at home and even more empowered to succeed using Happy Buyers. Cannabis industry retail buyers who haven’t had a taste of that software yet are literally 🤯 when they finally experience the power we give them.
We’re so confident in what we’ve built that we are offering a 14-day free trial of Happy Buyers using your live store data to make actions and decisions today. We know the power of this product and are placing our bets on it.
Sign up and start Happily Buying today.
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