The big box stores may have Black Friday for the holidays, but cannabis retailers can soundly call April 20 their time of rejoicing. According to a new Akerna Flash Report, this year’s 420 celebration saw US$154.4 million in sales of cannabis products in a single day. That easily surpassed the US$112 million spent last 420 – which until now was the industry’s largest sales day on record.
According the Denver-based Akerna (Nasdaq: KERN) – an enterprise software company that has created a global technology ecosystem for cannabis management and analytics – sales of recreational and medicinal marijuana totaled US$485 million during the week of the event.
FRIDAY (4/15/22) $94.3 M
SATURDAY (4/16/22)$68.9 M
SUNDAY (4/17/22) $38.9 M
MONDAY (4/18/22) $60.9 M
TUESDAY (4/19/22) $67.9 M
WEDNESDAY (4/20/22) $154.4 M
TOTAL: $485.3 M
To put that six-day sales figure into perspective, the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division recently reported the state’s largest year of liquor sales ever – which surpassed $400 million for the first time. This means that the U.S. cannabis retail industry brought in more sales in just six days than Iowa did for liquor sales in a record-breaking year of their own.
Once again, women customers added significantly to rising cannabis sales on 4/20. Akerna – which provides operators, investors and regulators with the industry’s largest, statistically relevant database – has been tracking a steady rise in sales among women. This trend continued on the 420 “holiday,” with purchases made by women’s breaking the 40% mark for the first time ever.
Since 2010, Akerna has tracked more than $30 billion in cannabis sales. Akerna’s Flash Report looks at buying trends in the cannabis market as captured by Akerna’s flagship solution, MJ Platform. Its integrated MJ Analytics software allows cannabis businesses to make strategic decisions for their businesses by leveraging data-driven insights.
“Using our historical Akerna data, we released a prediction report that the period around 420 would bring in a total of $494 million, only –1.79% variance from the actual sales of $485.3 million. This is a testament to the power of our data analytics,” said James Ahrendt, Business Intelligence Architect at Akerna.