Columbia Care announced Sept. 19 that the multistate cannabis operator is rebranding as The Cannabist Co., a name unveiled in 2021 as the company’s retail brand, which now includes 36 dispensaries across the country.
Here, Jesse Channon, The Cannabist Co.’s chief commercial officer, shares the inspiration behind the company’s new identity, as well as insight into what it takes to rebrand a multistate cannabis operation.
Melissa Schiller: What does “The Cannabist” mean? What do you hope the new brand name will evoke in consumers?
Jesse Channon: The reality is it's not necessarily a new brand name for us; it's the retail concept that we rolled out in 2021 under The Cannabist, which was a huge success both internally and externally. It's an award-winning platform and the performance has been fantastic, but the name and the brand and the whole ethos behind that rollout really resonated internally. Most of the strategic activities that would've taken place in an earlier time were on pause out of respect for the process with the Cresco integration. When that transaction ultimately broke apart and didn't move forward, we revisited that and we said, “This is probably a perfect time to lean into that brand.” And for us, what it really is, is it’s a closer alignment culturally with where we think we are as an organization today, where we think this company is going moving forward, the evolving consumer base, and the communities that we serve. That name and that brand architecture just seem to resonate really well, both internally and externally, for those purposes. Columbia Care was the name and the banner that got us where we are today, and it was perfect for that moment in time. And I think that as we've evolved as an organization, The Cannabist Co. is much more aligned with who we are today and where we're going.
MS: Since some of the legwork with the rebrand has already been done when the company rebranded the retail side of the business a couple years back, what additional steps did the company have to take to rebrand the rest of the business as The Cannabist? What immediate steps are you taking or have you taken to make this rebrand happen?
JC: The truth is that it wasn't an incredibly costly exercise. I think that the biggest compliment that we've received so far with the launch of it is a lot of people have said, “Wow, it looks like they spent a lot of money on this rebrand.” And the truth is that wasn't the case. That's always the ultimate compliment when you do a lot of work in-house, is when it looks very expensive. A couple of years ago, we acquired a creative agency out of Atlanta. That team, in conjunction with other internal resources that we had on the technology side, the brand marketing side and the communication side, ultimately did 100 percent of the work with regards to this rebrand. All the videos that you see, all the production, all of the creative and communications, it was all done in-house, and so for us, the parent company rebrand, which is slightly different than what you see in brand treatment for cannabis at retail, was all about tying together all of these banners and these brands that we operate right now.
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We had already done a lot of work into freshening up things, like the website and other owned properties for Columbia Care. About a year and a half or two years ago, we did a big refresh there. This was really a lighter lift when it came to a lot of that, bringing it up to the brand standard for this new Cannabist Co. rollout. And the rest of it was just iterating on what we had done on the retail side and providing a new overarching brand for the company. So, it was not incredibly cost intensive. There was a lot of work that went into it, but that work was done internally and was done really efficiently.
MS: Do state-by-state regulations come into play when rebranding an entire cannabis company like this? How has The Cannabist navigated the state-by-state patchwork of rules?
JC: I think we had a huge leg up, again, because of the retail platform. In a number of states we've already fully converted or partially converted to Cannabist on the door as far as the retail. In a state like Florida, which has a lot of complexity with regards to the company operations having to be on every door and every product, all of that had already been done for Cannabist, so it made that a little bit easier. There were obviously some hoops to jump through from a registration point of view and the securities point of view. We're going to begin trading on the Cboe in Canada under CBST on Thursday. So, there was some work to be done on that side, but from an overall brand point of view, it was actually a little bit easier than when we had to introduce and convert for the retail cannabis footprint. That really did pave the way to make this a much more efficient exercise.
MS: Now that you’ve been through this rebranding process, what are some lessons learned? Do you have any tips or best practices when it comes to cannabis branding?
JC: I think the number one thing for us was you have to know your audience. Anytime that you're engaging in any of these branding activities, I think you have to know your audience, and I think you have to be OK with making sure that you do something that is meaningful and authentic to that audience. We've received a ton of compliments and there's been a lot of chatter about the rebrand from an external point of view. For us, this was all about how it was going to be received internally, making sure that we had a brand that we felt resonated with our stakeholders, with our employees, and something that they were proud of and that they were excited to be a part of and to bring to market in their local communities, and even nationally. And, again, we had sort of a cheat code because we knew that Cannabist, when we rolled it out at retail, resonated with the team.
We had more inbound requests for swag with Cannabist on it from our internal teammates than any other brand that we had ever launched, including in markets where we didn't even have cannabis retail. We would receive emails saying, “Hey, can we get some of The Cannabist hats or swag?” So, we knew we had a brand that the employees really enjoyed. That's what it was all about. There's an incredible video that the team produced that really highlights a lot of our team members across the country and speaks to the things that we think are cornerstones and important sort of moments for this launch and this brand. That was a ton of fun to make and really brought it to life, having so many different team members be a part of it. We've received more inbound messages internally on that video and feedback on this launch than anything that I've been a part of over the last four years. I think it resonated with the right audience for sure.
The Cannabist Company from The Cannabist Company on Vimeo.
MS: Looking ahead, what are some of the company’s shorter- and longer-term goals as we wrap up 2023 and head into 2024?
JC: We're ready to lean back into innovation. I think that was a hallmark of what we started to build our brand and build our platform around prior to the announcement of the potential Cresco acquisition. So, a lot of our technology initiatives, a lot of what we had hoped to build from an innovation point of view, got put on pause and really lost a lot of momentum since the breaking of that transaction. We have been back to work, and I think we're laser-focused on solving some problems with technology that we believe will empower us to just be a better operator in an industry that's still very nascent when it comes to solutions. We're definitely back to work on that, on leaning back into innovation. I think we are back to work on brand expansion, so continuing to launch more SKUs under our national brand architecture and ultimately getting back to flipping existing retail locations to our Cannabist platform because we believe that is a best-in-class experience when it comes to retail in our space. We've got to lean back into that and get everybody operating off the same sheet of music for retail.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for style, length and clarity.
