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From the 2019 CA Cannabis Business Conference: Scaling Business Across the State

At the NCIA California Cannabis Business Conference in Long Beach, CA, Oct. 8 and 9, experts offered their views on packaging volumes and maintaining quality while expanding brands.

Papa & Barkley’s Guy Rocourt, Kiva Confections’ Caroline Yeh and GeekTek IT Services Eric Schlissel at the 2019 CA Cannabis Business Conference.
Papa & Barkley’s Guy Rocourt, Kiva Confections’ Caroline Yeh and GeekTek IT Services Eric Schlissel at the 2019 CA Cannabis Business Conference.

Scaling and rollout across states

Guy Rocourt, Chief Product Officer at Papa & Barkley, feels that as legacy brand it's important that they have a role in rolling out the cannabis industry correctly. He noted at #CACannaBizCon that in some states—more on the east coast—cannabis is being looked at solely as a medical product, where it’s being turned into powder or only allowed in vape pens. Some see this as eschewing the original California cannabis culture, both the product form (flower), its potential effects and its historyRocourt said, “It can’t be looked at strictly as a medical product. It’s a wellness product.”

With so much continued change in the industry, Caroline Yeh, Director of Commercialization at Kiva Confections, advised attendees not to order a year’s supply of packaging at once. “It’s a bad idea.”

Rocourt echoed the sentiment that there can be a lot of packaging waste, adding that Papa & Barkley had 100,000 units of reclosable child-resistant packaging on its way from China when they became aware that the package actually only needed to be child-resistant on first opening and that the more robust packaging en route was not required.

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