Cannabis Software, Choosing State Markets & More – John and Rob Join the CannaCurio Podcast

Our own John Manlove and Rob Fess joined Ed Keating and Amanda Guerrero to discuss the history of Apex Trading, how we select state markets, how we draw boundaries on what we offer and so much more. Here’s excerpt:

Ed Keating: So, when you go into a state, what does it mean in terms of compliance, or if you will, almost an onboarding perspective? The reason I ask is I just did a report on software companies in the cannabis space and how they’re connected, and Apex actually scored really well on that because you’re in multiple states. But what does it mean? Is there a lot of rules and regs you have to internalize into your system in order to say, “Yeah, we planted our flag in Michigan; our clients are good to go now.” How does that work?

John Manlove: Gosh, that’s a great question. One of the unique things, sometimes it makes it really hard for a software company as each state inherently is different. Some states are Metrcs, some aren’t, right. Some have different rules and requirements regarding products, and some have different ones.

The thing that we’re always really focused on is, obviously, we’ve structured our platform to be agile, so each state has essentially, its interstate commerce. So, we’ve been able to really tailor each specific state if they have specific requirements or things. We’ve really, from a data standpoint, we’ve structured the platform to account for those nuance differences.

I think the other side is, really from a marketing and a sales standpoint, Rob can speak to the marketing side, different messages and there’s different wants and needs within each state as well. So, it’s not only from a platform standpoint, we have to be very cognizant of what those differences are and be able to react and be agile enough from a development side to offer the right solution for that state, but also from a marketing and sales standpoint, it’s different messaging, right?

So someone in Massachusetts reacts differently to sales and marketing or messaging than someone in. I’m sure from the … I assume that you guys are aware of that as well, and I’m sure Rob can speak to that. So, I think for us, it’s really spending the time to understand the market, the people within those markets, their wants and needs, how that market functions, and then be able to really tailor not only the platform, but the way that we approach those markets in that manner.

That’s something I think, from being industry veterans, we are very aware of and having worked in a lot of different states and run distribution companies, et cetera, we recognize that. And I think it’s really prepared us for being able to obviously grow this company for not only addressing these markets today, but the ones that are coming on inevitably over the next few years.

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