How to protect your cannabis brand from the host of issues that might arise
By John Shearman, September 2, 2020
Marijuana Business Daily
When the cannabis industry says growers should “protect their cannabis brand,” what does that really mean?
Just like other consumer brands in the marketplace, cannabis brands have become vulnerable to counterfeits, diversion, safety issues, product defects, legal action and regulatory compliance – just to point to several key ones.
According to Forbes, in 2018 counterfeiting was the largest criminal enterprise in the world.
Sales of counterfeit and pirated goods totaled $1.7 trillion per year, which is more than drugs and human trafficking. That total is expected to grow to $2.8 trillion and cost 5.4 million jobs by 2022.
The cannabis industry already has its issues with counterfeits and misrepresentation by brands. And the issue will only get amplified as the industry continues to grow around the world.
If the proper best practices and technologies are implemented in tandem, it will help alleviate or lessen the impact if one of the above issues occur. It will also help avoid contributing to the existing $1.7 trillion problem that already exists.
Developing a brand-protection strategy as part of your overall business plan is paramount to the success of any company.
The challenges of starting a new cannabis business in the United States are very difficult for many reasons, and even if you are one of the lucky ones to get a business up and running successfully, then it would be devastating to have it impacted by counterfeit.
Making sure you protect your brand requires all the functional groups within a company – for example, marketing, R&D, logistics and operations – to analyze the vulnerable areas within their particular expertise and map that to the other groups to determine commonalities and alignment points.
Once this mapping exercise is complete, the company can holistically develop the brand-protection plan with the appropriate best practices, standard operating procedures and technology platforms to capture all the data points to support the plan and provide both internal and external audiences with open traceability and transparency associated with operations and products.
