Weed Pets & Free Hemp
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Time to read: About 5 minutes. Contains 903 words.
Good afternoon!
This week marks this newsletter's fourth birthday. Four years!!! One year as Sticky Bits, following the transition from The Broccoli Report. A huge thank you to everyone reading this, both long-timers and new faces; paid and free subs—I am very grateful to have found an audience that seeks out honest, thoughtful, high-minded (sometimes literally high) reporting on this industry.
The Sticky Bits publishing schedule has become less rigid as I juggle day gigs, life things, and newsletter needs, but that flexibility to post whenever works best for me throughout each week has been key to sustaining my curiosity and creativity. I aim to ensure every dispatch is worth the wait.
I’ve done some reorganizing of the home page to make it easier for paid subscribers to browse the existing library of business tool breakdowns like affiliate marketing, internships, email marketing, pitching to investors, and PR practices tailored to cannabis-centric businesses. Head to the Trend Reports tab for the most-read explorations of cultural shifts across hemp and cannabis industries in the US and abroad. And all the Lonely Hearts Boards are now in one place that anyone can access.
This Friday, I’m dropping another podcast-styled dispatch, this time with video! I recorded my chat with Jenny Wichman, the Berlin-based founder of accessory brand Yew Yew, and will provide a written transcript for those who prefer to skim. Our convo centers on the brand’s approach to social media content, tips for flying under Meta’s narc AI radar, bong stigma, and what she thinks made the biggest difference in Yew Yew’s success over the past few rocky years. This will be accessible to paid subs only—sign up to listen.
Thank you so much for reading and supporting Sticky Bits. Let’s catch up on the news and enjoy the rest of this summer!
One-Hitters: Cannabis News at a Glance
A reality TV relative in custody for cannabis trafficking. I have two tastes when it comes to television: heady, dark, finely-produced dramas and absolute trash reality TV. To anyone who shares the latter affinity: Ariana Madix’s brother got caught with 76 lbs. of cannabis as he was boarding a flight from Florida to Germany. Side note: it’s so weird/funny to me that this People article names the brands of his luggage carrying the weed. (It was TUMI and Briggs & Riley).
Glass House considers diving into the hemp game. One of—maybe the biggest?—California’s mega producers of cannabis is seriously reviewing a potential move into the hemp DTC realm as they feel the continued dip in revenue per pound. The scale of Glass House’s multiple football fields’ worth of greenhouses has driven hundreds of small farms out of business, and yet, despite that CA market domination, there have been major allegations of the business being involved with illicit out-of-state exports. Seems like all that scale isn’t proving sustainable! What a waste of resources.
Are things getting better? Despite even Glass House acknowledging struggles, my weekly cannabis story sweeps brought up more than one positive headline about the overall market:
A NuggMD poll showing people are buying the majority of their herbal supplies from licensed, legal operators.
July numbers showed that most regulated adult-use cannabis markets reported a rise in sales for the month.
New York has shut down over 1,000 illicit operators.
Michigan is still rockin’ and rollin’ (though new competition from neighboring Ohio may chip into that).
Curious how things feel in your worlds? What’s the temp out there?
Our Dream delivering more resources to new retailer in New York. The non-profit education and mentorship platform OUR ACADEMY is back in action with tons of resources for dispensary license-holders, including live and recorded courses on compliant operations, fundraising, tax planning, pro forma breakdowns, NYS labor laws, and marketing, as well as standing “office hours” every Thursday.
California won’t bring hemp biz under the adult-use regulation…yet. The hemp vs. adult use dynamic in California was brought to a head in the form of Assembly Bill 2223, which would restrict products containing intoxicating hemp derivatives from being sold at places like gas stations and liquor stores. But when the scheduled time came for a state Senate hearing on the bill last Thursday, the committee declined to vote. With the legislative session about to end, this essentially removes the bill from discussion for now.
Free campaign idea: pets! Vogue and The New Yorker ran big pet packages this month which I’m sure performed phenomenally. It made me realize cannabis doesn’t play with animals enough in content. I know there is concern about executing it in a way that doesn’t allude to animals getting ill from breaking into the stash, but I feel like that can be balanced out by the reality of THC and CBD having a legitimate medical role in many pets’ lives.
Another Room partners with @girlscarryingshit on a meta Jointlocker. The iconic Instagram account cataloging women’s prowess at holding all the things that don’t fit in their tiny pockets analyzed the captions of every post on their page to create a list of the most popular items to carry. Then they collaborated with accessory brand Another Room to print that list on custom Jointlockers—a tool that already helped one hold a joint and a lighter at once. Brilliant!
Your eagle-eyed and limonene-leaning reporter,
Lauren Yoshiko