The Standard Dose Scandal

What happened & tools to get paid.

The Broccoli Report 
Friday, May 19, 2023
Time to read: About 9 minutes. Contains 1,816 words.

By now, you’ve likely heard about the Standard Dose kerfuffle. How the CBD-centric online retailer owes many brands quite a bit of dough and has stopped responding to inquiries for payment. This, unfortunately, isn’t unheard of in our industry, especially over the past year. It is no surprise to any CBD founders reading this who’ve dealt with the overall slowdown in cannabinoid-related sales.

However, this particular fall from grace hits closer to home. It impacts many brands I respect and enjoy, brands that work hard to do things right and foster the creative, sustainable, and ethical industry I dream about.

So, I set out to write a follow-up piece, checking in with the brands mentioned in the Beauty Independent piece, hopeful that some had received payment by now. I also reached out to the author of the article and SD’s founder, Anthony Saniger, and learned of a pretty wild detail that helped illuminate some of his state of mind over the past couple of years.

Keep reading to catch up on what’s happened since the story was published, as well as hard-won advice and valuable resources from fellow entrepreneurs with experience chasing late payments in this space.

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What Went Down

Digital publication Beauty Independent ran the original story on March 27. In it, author Claire McCormack shared anecdotes from a dozen brands alleging Standard Dose owes them money and has stopped responding to requests for payment, most as of 2022, but two brands hadn’t been paid since 2021. Standard Dose didn’t provide comments on the allegations. Some brands had already written off the unpaid invoices as a loss, and others were holding out hope. It seems as though not every brand stocked was getting the same ghost treatment—one brand McCormack spoke to mentioned it was paid in full “after months of delinquency when its founder pursued Saniger on social media.” Another hadn’t been experiencing any payment issues at all. 

Two months, multiple conversations with other brands not mentioned in the article, and a chat with McCormack later, the plot has thickened considerably.