A multi-location buyer in New Jersey can now order half his catalog in under an hour. The other half still eats 20 hours of his week.
That story came up when Apex Trading CEO John Manlove sat down with Andrew Watson, CEO of Happy Cabbage. Happy Cabbage makes Happy Buyers, an inventory and purchasing platform for cannabis retailers. The wholesale cannabis buyer uses Happy Buyers, and he told John the new integration had changed how he orders for every one of his stores.
“Like 50% of the products I carry, I can just now order in less than an hour. It’s so awesome for all my stores. But the other 50% are 50 spreadsheets.”
Those 50 spreadsheets are the problem this article is about. Here’s what they cost buyers, and what changes when ordering runs through connected tools.
The real cost of ordering from spreadsheets
Spreadsheet menus look free. They aren’t. As John put it: “A Google sheet feels free because it comes with G Suite. It doesn’t really feel like it costs you anything.” For buyers, the cost shows up in four places.
1. Hours lost to cleanup. Every vendor sends a menu in its own format. The New Jersey buyer described it this way: “They come across in different standards, different times, different formats, different information.” Before he can place a single order, he has to standardize all of them. That takes him 20 to 30 hours a week.
2. Ordering without the full picture. Once the sheets are cleaned up, the buyer still has to re-enter the data into a planning tool to work out what to order. Every manual handoff adds delay and room for error.
3. The volume of data is too big to handle by hand. Andrew was blunt about how much information goes into a good order today:
“You need to be looking hour by hour. You need to be looking SKU by SKU. You need to be grouping these products into product lines. You need to be identifying cannibalization. You need to be getting your demand signals.”
No one can do that across dozens of vendor spreadsheets while also running stores.
4. Burnout, and careers at risk. The buyer told John he was “pulling my hair out” over the work. Andrew went further: a buyer still doing all of this by hand puts their own job at risk, because “technology is rapidly replacing the ability to do those tasks.”
Brands pay for it too
Spreadsheets don’t only hurt buyers. They cost brands discovery, labor on every back-and-forth, and the buyer’s goodwill. “The last thing you want as a brand is to be presenting an ordering solution to a buyer that frustrates them,” John said. Andrew added that brands buyers have to fight with will “be de-prioritized over time,” while brands that are easy to order from get the shelf space.
Watch the clip
What changes with integrated ordering
The proof is the New Jersey buyer’s own split. Brands on a connected platform get ordered in under an hour. Brands on spreadsheets eat the rest of his week. Here’s what an integrated setup like Apex and Happy Buyers gives a buyer.
- One standard format. Live wholesale menus arrive clean and consistent. Nobody spends hours reformatting vendor sheets.
- Data that flows straight into planning. Product data moves from the wholesale menu into the buying tool with no re-entry, so orders are built on current information.
- Decisions driven by demand. Sell-through, SKU performance and product-line data sit next to what’s available to order. That makes it practical to spot cannibalization and order to real demand.
- Time back for buying. Hours spent copying and pasting become time for negotiating, finding new brands and running stores.
- Faster brand discovery. New products show up where buyers already shop, not buried in an email attachment.
As Andrew said, the buyer who is “ready to get this stuff systematized” is exactly who these tools are built for.
Stop ordering from 50 spreadsheets
Thousands of cannabis businesses across 30+ state markets already buy and sell wholesale on Apex. Buyer accounts are free.
- Buyers: Create your free Apex account, connect it to Happy Buyers, and ask your spreadsheet brands to list their menus on Apex.
- Brands: Make your products the easy order. Book an Apex demo and get your live menu in front of buyers today.