Cannabis Sales Are Rising on Cyber Week's Green Wednesday

The Turkey Five, a nickname for the days spanning Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Super Sunday and Cyber Monday, isn’t totally accurate anymore. It's now missing one increasingly important shopping holiday: Green Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving when the cannabis industry has been seeing strong year-over-year growth in retail sales. With cannabis legalized in 11 states across the country, and the industry continuing to mature, Green Wednesday is becoming cannabis’ answer to Cyber Weekend. Weedmaps, an online platform to buy and sell cannabis, reports seeing a year-over-year increase of 60.9% in orders, with traffic to the site and its app growing 36.4% year-over-year. [article_summary section="1"]“Cannabis, being a relatively new industry, is still forming new shopping behaviors,” said Juanjo Feijoo, CMO at Weedmaps. “When we look at our base and general purchase patterns, the majority of our base are cannabis lifestylers who have high frequency of purchase. They purchase enough that they’re happy to adapt their shopping behaviors to things like Green Wednesday that comes with deals from dispensaries and brands in the same way that retailers do.” In some of Weedmaps’ peak months, the company said about 4 million consumers visit the platform (web and app) in California. This year, on Green Wednesday, the company saw an increase in traffic from both web (36.5%) and app (36.2%). With orders, Weedmaps saw a 51.7% increase in deliveries and 60.1% in pickups. Feijoo said similar to Black Friday, Green Wednesday deals such as offering 8 grams of a flower (raw marijuana product) for $50 resonates with the Weedmaps consumer base. However, he added, some states see discrepancies. For example, in California, vape pens were the top product this year at 22.22%, while Colorado and Maryland saw flowers as the top-selling item, at 36.7% and 40.3% respectively. [article_summary section="2"]“Part of what’s fascinating about having a wide geographic footprint [is] understanding how different the markets are,” Feijoo said. “One of the things you see in California is increased normalization of cannabis, and what that translates to,” specifically consumers starting to gravitate toward having a brand affinity for certain companies as opposed to searching more generally on Weedmaps. This Green Wednesday, consumers were looking for brands like Raw Garden, Pax, Connected and Rove—all of which were in the top 10 list of search terms. “How do we continually adapt the platform for consumer demand when we’ve been extremely retailer focused?” Feijoo said. “What we want to do is shift to, you can find which retailer has the brand you want vs. where you can buy weed.” Feijoo added that the demographics of Weedmaps' customers is also changing. Previously, about 50% were in the 25-35 age range, and now more than 40% are between 39 and 54 years old. “[It’s] not a well understood and an interesting trend that will impact the way that retail is done,” Feijoo said. “A lot less consumers that people would traditionally think of as 'stoners.' Still, 60-75% of our customers, depending on where you look at, are weekly consumers.”

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Green Wednesday Continues to Pick Up Steam During Cyber Week

Cannabis sales are rising the Wednesday before Thanksgiving

Ann-Marie Alcántara

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Ann-Marie Alcántara