Where can licensed companies confidently find other licensed companies to do business with? Licensed cannabis businesses often struggle to find other licensed cannabis business to buy or sell their products too. Mark Restelli identified this problem and formed CannTrade a cannabis & hemp marketplace for licensed companies. Mark Restelli joins Dan Humiston to talk about his company's current crowdfunding campaign hosted by MicroVentures. Produced by Podconx https://podconx.com/guests/mark-restelli
Where can licensed companies confidently find other licensed companies to do business with?
Licensed cannabis businesses often struggle to find other licensed cannabis business to buy or sell their products too. Mark Restelli identified this problem and formed CannTrade a cannabis & hemp marketplace for licensed companies. Mark Restelli joins Dan Humiston to talk about his company's current crowdfunding campaign hosted by MicroVentures.
https://podconx.com/guests/mark-restelli
Dan Humiston: [00:00:00] Just a quick reminder before we start today's show that the Cannabis Dispensary Spotlight series sponsored by Helix Bio Trac begins on March 6th. This 12 part series features cannabis dispensary owners from throughout the United States and Canada. Listen every Thursday and Sunday to hear fascinating insight into all the different strategies that these pioneering retailers are using to crack the national and international expansion code. Tune in on March 6th to hear Episode 1 of the Cannabis Dispensary Spotlight series sponsored by Helix Bio Track and playing exclusively on the Raising Cannabis Capital podcast.
Dan Humiston: [00:00:43] From MJ Bulls Media, I'm Dan Humiston. And this is Cannabis crowd-funding.
[00:00:52] Fear.
Dan Humiston: [00:01:07] Today on Cannabis crowd-funding, we're joined by Mark Roselli from Can Trade. Mark, welcome to the show.
Mark Restelli: [00:01:13] Thanks for having me, Dan.. Happy to be back.
Dan Humiston: [00:01:15] Well, for our Raising Cannabis Capital listeners, you'll remember Mark was a guest. But a year ago, but for those who didn't have an opportunity here, that show, Mark, you talked about how challenging it is for license Cannabis companies to find other license Cannabis companies to do business with. Let's start here. Why is this so important?
Mark Restelli: [00:01:34] Right. Yeah. So in a newly regulated market, you know, coming out of, say, Prop 215 days in California, basically everybody's trying to figure out who has what. And they're kind of using old connections. And what happened was the market got saturated with ultimately brokers, middlemen, people in the middle. There were fake deals, fake contracts, fake buyers, all that type of stuff. And if you speak with somebody that's been in that market since Prop 215, they've got multiple terrible broker stories about being burned. So, I mean, there was no credibility in the supply chain. And that's the problem that we set out to tackle with can trade.
Dan Humiston: [00:02:13] Let me just see if I can frame this. Say I'm willing to buy some stuff from you. I send my money and it turns out you're not even legit, your vaper. So the money's gone. And that was sort of the circumstance that was going on before.
Mark Restelli: [00:02:24] Yeah. If you got that far to sending the money, you've already made a mistake. Here's what you've got. Somebody whose claims to be a buyer, whether they are the real buyer or they're possibly representing a buyer seeking product and they're asking for things like d.o.a.'s your lab testing and then ultimately proof of life that that product actually exists before they're ready to kind of engage and start the sales process. And then on the opposite end, if you have the product product sitting right in front of you, but you're getting bombarded with buyers that aren't necessarily real, you're not really sure how to kind of filter out who is and who's not. So you ask for things like proof of funds or you need the funds put into an escrow before you're going allow them to actually go see and do lab testing on the product. That's what was going on. Basically, there's fake deals all around. And one of the funny things you always hear is when things like proof of funds or c.i.a.'s get shopped around so much that if you sent them out, they actually at some point can make it back to you. And there's a lot of cases where that happens, where let's say I'm looking to buy one hundred liters of distillate and I have the money in my account. I send out my proof of funds. And then somebody, whoever that sent to is now shopping that around to could try to find that hundred liters of distillates. And ultimately, at some point, that proof of funds makes it back to me from a broker saying, hey, do you have a hundred liters distillate? I've got a buyer. And it's like, whoa, whoa. I can't say that's happened to me, but we've seen seaways proof of funds. We've seen them shopped around, gotten reports from multiple people that this or that was fake. Those are the types of things that we look into to make sure we verified the businesses that enter our ecos.
Dan Humiston: [00:04:06] Well, let's talk about hand-raised now and how you're helping people avoid those circumstances.
Mark Restelli: [00:04:12] It starts pretty simple. Every business that we engage with or that we allow into can trade our marketplace eco system. They have to provide a certain level of information. In most cases, it's EAI in sales permit, state I.D., state license, and then that information has to match up with what we've already got in our database for that business. And then Paul is good. That's really step one. Step two. We have to be in contact with them. We'll basically verify the business through agents and contacts as well. Once they're approved, they gain access. Once they're in the ecosystem, you know that every business that's gotten in has jumped through the same hoops that you've jumped through. And now you can buy sell trade with confidence and know that can trade is there to assist either party, buyer or seller and ready to step in if there's any problems or disputes. Things along those lines. So really adding that credibility back into the supply chain and knowing that you're talking with real buyers, real suppliers.
Dan Humiston: [00:05:15] Now, you may I just can't imagine that there is a system that was not like that prior to here. Involvement. It's crazy. It's called Wild West for a reason. That's true. So in this model, house can trade compensated in this process?
Mark Restelli: [00:05:30] Let's make sure we can verify and provide these resources to our businesses. There is a subscription model. So ultimately to get verified as a supplier, the businesses have to provide that information. They also have to provide resources and the funds in the manner of a subscription to us so that we can apply an agent to their account. And then ultimately, once they do that, our agent will go to work, helping to market, helping to kind of direct as far as here's the types of businesses that would be most likely to engage with your offering to help kind of open up some new buying opportunities there.
Dan Humiston: [00:06:07] Many of the seeds of today's Cannabis revolution were planted in the music of the 60s and the 70s. And no one band had a bigger impact on Cannabis than the Grateful Dead. Their music created a safe environment for their followers to discover. Cannabis has many benefits. Today, Deadheads are playing pivotal roles in the Cannabis movement, joined Deadhead Cannabis attorney Larry Michigan and Deadhead Cannabis C.P.A Jim Maadi each week on the Deadhead Cannabis show as they talk to the latest Cannabis and jam band news. It's your great dead stories with their guest.
Dan Humiston: [00:06:45] Let's jump ahead and let's talk about your campaign money, your page on Micro Ventures right now. I can't believe how quickly it's filling up. I love the fact that you're letting people buy in for hundred dollars. Ken, tell us a little bit more about the campaign and what you plan on doing with the proceeds.
Mark Restelli: [00:07:02] Yeah, yeah, sure. Micro Ventures has been great. We got set up with Micro Ventures to kind of do this crowdfunding campaign for a few reasons. One, we thought it was important that the stakeholders in the industries. So let's say Cannabis and Hemp businesses have the opportunity to support someone such as castrates that that is trying to add that credibility in the supply chain, in these resources to all these businesses. So if they support us, they're basically saying, OK, we're now part of can trade as well. And we wanted to provide that opportunity to everybody. That's what we've been able to do through micro ventures. Now, as far as the campaign, we just released it and we've already surpassed the minimum 30 jump pass.
Dan Humiston: [00:07:42] I I saw.
Dan Humiston: [00:07:45] And with the proceeds from the campaign,.
Mark Restelli: [00:07:47] They're going into improving the application. They're going into marketing, sales and support. We get so many businesses into our network. It's very resource intensive to be able to verify them and support them so that they have the ability to be successful in our markets. We want to add, you know, as much as we can on the support side. So that business gets in and they've got that buyer seller, concierge service, which can trade and got the power of our application and our software to support both buyer and seller. And our agent who's servicing those accounts.
Dan Humiston: [00:08:23] And, you know, this is up and running. I mean, this is like I think the important thing that anyone is thinking about investing can take away from this interview is that this can't trade is up and running. This isn't an unproven concept. And, you know, I'm reading on the page right now that there's there's fifteen hundred registered customers and you guys have facilitated over 11 hundred supply contracts. So I can't imagine from the last time we spoke until we are today, the amount of growth has just been crazy. I can't imagine not doing it with more people. This is you know, you're ramping up like crazy.
Mark Restelli: [00:08:57] Yeah. Yeah, we're we're doing exactly that. And when we last spoke, our application only service the California cannabis market at the time. And since then, we've actually released it in early January. Our Hemp markets data. So now we've got an entire new segment of the market that our application is servicing and supporting. And since the release of that, we've had over 100 new businesses join, so were well over fourteen hundred. Now it is definitely growing very quickly. What's interesting, though, is the Cannabis market. They've been regulated. They've had some years under their belt. So they've started to stabilize a bit more. But the Hemp markets is is they're very much like the Cannabis markets were two, three years ago in California. It's back to the Wild West. The exact same issues. And actually the reason we started working on these Hemp markets is because we were having our kind of our doors kicked in by businesses saying, hey, we need this, we need this for this space. The markets, they run parallel obviously to the Cannabis markets are state geo fence and you can only participate within your market in your state. But the Hemp markets, those are nationals' long as your state doesn't restrict him in general. Then you can go ahead and jump in there and do exactly what the applications are designed to do, connect buyers and suppliers based on kind of our our matching algorithms and what people need. And then to track those orders through fulfillment and then also to manage the clients. If a business joins our ecosystem right now, they can offer a much simpler, easier way for their own clients to purchase. And on the back end, because we know what it is that that business supplies, whenever someone comes into our application that needs something, they get matched right up. Our suppliers receive a notification saying, oh, you've been matched with a new buyer, you're firing. Is this. Would you like to contact them? And then they can go ahead and contact them right there.
Dan Humiston: [00:10:55] Wow. Like I said, this is not a startup. This is a proven concept. Everything seems to be in place for this rapidly expanding industries. I should say, because there's. More than one. Well, we've been speaking with Mark mostly from can trade about his crowdfunding campaign, which is currently live on micro ventures. And we'll have all the company's information in the show, notes in on MJ Bulls Web site, including the link to can trace funding page on Micro Ventures. As I mentioned earlier, you can own a piece, a can trade for as little as 100 bucks. Before I forget, if you want more information, go to the Web site. There's more information you could possibly ever read through. There's so much including a good video. I like the video, Mark. Thank you. Yeah. Mark, it's always a pleasure to have you on the show. I wish you the best on this campaign. I don't think you need any luck, though, because I can't wait now. It's going to fill up quickly. Thanks again for being on the show.
Mark Restelli: [00:11:51] Thank you for having me. You know, one one last thing I'd like to mention about the campaign. Not sure the exact number at the moment. I mean, there's around 200 investors that have participated. What's really cool about working with micro ventures and this crowdfunding campaign is now we've got 200 individuals that are evangelists of us ready to support us, ready to help us be successful. So that's just really cool and not something that you would necessarily get as a business that went another funding route to get, say, one venture capitalist firm to invest your organization. So that's the reason we we went worked with micro ventures and went to the crowdfunding route.
Dan Humiston: [00:12:27] You mentioned earlier that a lot of the people that have made these investments are people that you're already working with. They know the company. They have confidence in the company. And it makes sense for them to be owners.
Mark Restelli: [00:12:39] Right. And if we went any other route, they wouldn't have that opportunity.
Dan Humiston: [00:12:42] Well, let's stay in touch. I'm looking forward to this thing closing and moving into the next chapter of the Cannes trade history.
Mark Restelli: [00:12:49] Excellent. OK. Thank you so much for having me.
Dan Humiston: [00:12:52] It's always a pleasure.
Dan Humiston: [00:13:00] Today's show was made possible by the generous support of our sponsors, like all 36. The country's premiere blockchain payment processing platform that's providing dispensaries and its customers with a safe and secure payment option other than cash. To learn more. Go to all 236.com. Today's podcast was produced by MJ Bulls Media. The industry's premier Cannabis Podcast network with original music, produced in part by Jamie Humiston. I'm Dan Humiston and you've been listening to Cannabis crowdfunder.
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