On The Ground in Colorado

News out of Colorado’s cannabis market has been troubling. Scan articles from the past six months, and headlines include words and phrases like “downturn,” “hard times,” “sales tank” and “face uncertainty.” At Cannabis Business Times, we’ve published similar reports after talking to cultivation and dispensary business leaders, noting that operators see the “bubble deflating” and that sales are taking a “nosedive.”

While that all may be true and the numbers look bleak, there’s something else that’s true: Some of the most dedicated people in the industry are doing their best work and remain optimistic despite seemingly endless and unpredictable challenges at every turn.

In May, I had the opportunity to spend a few days visiting three cultivation operations and eight dispensaries to meet with grow teams, talk to budtenders and try to get a perspective of what’s happening on the ground. Some tours were planned, others were spontaneous. But overall, cultivation staff and retail associates were not only knowledgeable, they also were energized, engaged and passionate about their work. They were excited to talk about their favorite products and what drew them to the industry. Stores were mostly steady, and growers were focused.

Stories from three cannabis companies and how they are approaching operations in Colorado’s nearly 10-year-old adult-use cannabis market are detailed in the cover story. Recent data from the state’s cannabis agencies illustrating the challenging conditions is also in this month’s cover story.

Though some noted that they were in survival mode, they also are innovating despite the distracting and discouraging economic outlook.

The crew at Denver-based cultivation company Clarity Gardens seem to be on a constant mission to improve, examining every decision in the grow to determine how they can adjust procedures to increase precision, speed up the process while maintaining high plant quality and yield and ultimately lowering one of the most important metrics in cannabis—operating costs per pound. While standard operating procedures help guide the team, everyone is encouraged to offer new solutions and suggest different ways of doing things. Being receptive to change has allowed them to be nimble and remain competitive.

“A lot of cultivators, they get held up on little things. They say, ‘Oh my manager before told me I have to do this,’” says Ryan Grabowski, systems analyst at Clarity, who spends much of his time in the garden. “They don’t ever experiment or test that process.”

Streamlining plant process flow without cutting corners or impacting quality is top of mind for the team at Clarity, especially after tripling the flowering canopy from 4,500 sq. ft. to more than 12,000 sq. ft. using vertical systems, says Lance Savage, co-founder and general manager.

“We had to find systems to make it easier for us where we could not increase the labor at the amount that we were increasing the canopy,” Savage says. “Yes, we have to spend more on our inputs because we have more plants, but we’ve also been able to balance that out with efficiencies in the garden. Necessity has been the mother of our invention.”

The positive impact this kind of teamwork and outside-the-box thinking has had on company culture is palpable.

“I always like to go to a [company] where I feel like I can transform the place through my own input,” says Robert Launder, Clarity’s grow manager, adding that he led efforts to automate irrigation in veg, improving precision, reducing labor and allowing him to focus on more pressing cultivation matters. “One of the great things about working here is the whole team works together and brings their own brand to what they do. We break things down from a first principles perspective and take every single task that we do and think of ways that we can further improve it.”

And in a market as competitive as Colorado, and in times as tough as these, that’s crucial.