Apex Trading and The Strange World of Wholesale Cannabis
A few months back, we were remodeling a section of the Apex Trading HQ building located on the edges of Portland’s historic Boise and Grant Park districts. Zip, our quokka mascot, had been crashing at our headquarters for several months, always claiming, “it’ll just be another week, I promise.” We had heard this song and dance for so long, we realized, Zip wasn’t going anywhere soon, so we decided to renovate the broom closet and give the little critter a better place to sleep than the lobby couch.
Thankfully, one of our dev guys isn’t just a wizard at creating the most amazing software the cannabis industry has ever seen. In fact, give that dude a hammer, some nails, and a bit scrap wood, and he’ll build you a palace. Anyway, we had to demo a section of the wall in the closet, because the plans called for a little alcove where Zip could keep his stash of flower, a few prerolls, and his favorite glass piece that he’d picked up at a cannabis trade show in downtown Portland.
When we started taking out the drywall, our top cannabis sales exec noticed something wedged between a couple of the ancient boards that supported the old building. He reached in and gently pulled out a dusty old leather portfolio. Now, understand the Apex Trading team has been in the cannabis industry in one way or another for decades. We’ve seen some incredible shit. We’ve helped revolutionize the way wholesale cannabis producers and their retail counterparts do business. Some of the tech we’ve created is lightyears beyond even mainstream systems. But none of that, none of that, prepared us for what was in that aged portfolio.
As we carefully slid the contents out of the binder, we realized that we were looking at some sort of vintage magazine. We saw the back cover first and one of our marketing-savvy customer success folks thought it must be from the ‘20s or ‘30s, based on the type and style of the advertisements. What happened next, was truly beyond belief.
Keep in mind, it was afterhours on the weekend and we had all been enjoying some amazing Oregon grown flower from a cultivator client and friend of ours. However, we were all snapped back instantly into stone cold sobriety when we read what was on the front cover.
It was a pulp fiction magazine, the kind that might make you think of Flash Gordon or the film Metropolis. Its title was The Strange World of the Future and the words “Cannabis Software” appeared in big bold letters. How could the word “software” have been known in the 1930s? Below that, it stated “The future is now! And its name is Apex Trading!” WHAT!?!
Apex Trading was founded in 2018 by a handful of cannabis industry experts. We built out inventory, order and sales management tools from scratch and continue to innovate and adapt to the needs of the cultivators, extractors, edibles manufacturers, and dispensaries they sell to. We know the history and lore of cannabis, why it was called “marijuana,” the origins of “420,” really, everything about weed. We are wholly committed to the plant – I mean, it’s part of our mission statement! So how could this be? Was there a rip in the time-space continuum? Is everything truly interconnected? Or, were we all just really high?
Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion of Apex Trading and The Strange World of the Future Past.
If you can’t wait to know what happens, request a demo to see how our wholesale cannabis business management platform can help your company streamline your operations with feature-rich inventory, order and sales management software designed from the ground up specifically for the cannabis industry. It really is like something from the future. Click here to request demo.