By: Alex Rowland, NewTropic CEO
Here’s an excellent problem: Your product is a hit. Snoop loves it, Seth takes it, and Elon wants it. Customers tag it on social and retailers can’t get enough of it. Problem is, neither can you.
Perhaps you don’t have the capital on hand to purchase biomass for your next run. Maybe the state of California has just changed regulations and now your packaging is no longer in compliance. Your favorite grower has sold out of flower and you need another option — fast. The world loves your product but you can’t provide it so production slows, consumers drop off, retailers become wary, and shelves get stocked with something else.
What should you do? Back up. Start again. Find a good contract manufacturer.
DIY? DIT!
The cannabis business is built on the DIY (Do It Yourself) aesthetic, it’s ingrained in us — but as California’s market grows into compliance, the industry is pivoting to a more collaborative DIT (Do It Together) model so that brands can focus on what they do best while manufacturers exercise their core competencies. In short, it’s never been easier to protect yourself against your own success.
Partnering with a manufacturer and supply chain provider like NewTropic means you don’t need to hassle with renting industrial space or sinking capital into expensive equipment. Partnering gives you access to new resources, freeing your business to focus instead on its products, its sales, its marketing, and its retail relationships.
Let the manufacturer worry about securing biomass and edible ingredients, investing in the machinery to produce your pre-rolls, and keeping your production rolling.
Perhaps your brand wants to utilize the most sustainable packaging available; a manufacturer would use its considerable resources to obtain the best price on the best stock available. The possibilities with this connection are boundless. Your ability to scale is suddenly unlimited.
Beyond Ordinary
A manufacturer may even provide services you weren’t aware of. For example, NewTropic will handle cannabis licensing issues and finance your inventory, if need be. We’ll even hire our brand partner’s team into our employee pool because they’re already experts at the product.
When you allow the manufacturer to get your work to market, your only job is to innovate and build demand for your product. Suddenly, this crazy business seems kind of easy. (Well, okay, not really.)
Manufacturers evaluate brands just as brands evaluate manufacturers, but we’re looking at a prospective partner from a place of deep knowledge of California laws and licensing requirements, compliance needs, supply chain solutions, METRC vagaries, and operations analysis.
Because we don’t have our own brands, exclusively-focused contract manufacturers don’t compete with their customers. Rather, we collaborate with brand partners on every detail from compliance to packaging to distribution, using our own licenses, equipment, fiscal resources and industrial space in exchange for the opportunity to succeed with you.
Where do you want to go? Let’s get there together.
Alex Rowland
Alex Rowland is Chairman and CEO of NewTropic, a leading cannabis manufacturer that provides professional-grade supply chain solutions to California brands, cultivators, manufacturers, and distributors. Mr. Rowland is also a co-founder of Ensemble Brands, a cannabis brand accelerator.
CEO at NewTropic
