Ontario Cannabis Store Unveils "Craft"

From north of the border, The Growth Op reports on a new initiative from the Ontario Cannabis Store with the headline: “Ontario Cannabis Store’s New ‘Craft’ Designation Helps Customers Connect with Small Producers”.

The OCS has learned its consumers want quality product that “also connects them to the producers.” So, it’s giving Big Love to its Smallest Brands with a new designation: “CRAFT”.

Like “Hand-Made” or “Small Batch,” CRAFT is defined as

• Hang-dried

• Hand-trimmed

• Hand-packaged

• From a facility that produces less than 10,000 kilos a year.

What I found interesting in this story is that the Ontario Cannabis Store is the only online cannabis retailer and wholesaler in the Province AND it’s owned by the government.

Finally! A Canadian government understands it’s OK for companies NOT named Tilray, Canopy, Aurora, or Cronos to be successful. Three cheers for the little guy!

Kidding aside, Americans are hardly strangers to big brands crushing little guys by buying all the shelf space, all the advertising on the Super Bowl, and even creating Soap Operas.

But the one superpower a small company has is its ability to build a better brand.

Unless you're in Canada, where:

• Every cannabis package must have a big red stop sign with THC / cannabis leaf inside. The stop sign is Canada’s way of saying, “If you pass this point you could die.”

• The company logo cannot be larger than the big red stop sign.

• A company slogan cannot be larger than the big health warning.

• Packaging can only be one color, and NOT metallic or fluorescent or glossy or embossed or textured, no coatings, no foil, peel-aways, no cut-outs, or inserts.

• And advertising? Canadian cannabis brands cannot advertise “glamour, recreation, excitement, vitality, risk or daring”.

In other words, it can only show Canadians who passed the big red stop sign.

THE LOOP BACK

I’ve only been naming Companies and Products and Buildings and Nike Sneakers for 20 years, but I believe “Canadian Craft Cannabis” is a GREAT BRANDING TOOL.

If I were in Ontario, it’s the only kind I would buy.