Do You or Don’t You?

question:

What trade shows did you attend this past year and which ones were the most rewarding for you?

• We attended Lucky Leaf Expo in Albuquerque this year and got a lot out of going to a more local event here in New Mexico. — Sam Ukpedinjagba, MyCBDPlus, Las Cruces, NM
• ICBC in Berlin stands out. We attended 10 trade shows in total throughout the year in the United States, Canada and Germany. — David Traylor, Golden Eagle Partners, Lakewood, CO
• We went to Pack Expo International and MJBizCon this year. Both are rewarding in different ways, but we don’t feel like they each need every-year attendance on our part. — Steve Wobser, Firelands Scientific, Huron, OH
• We stayed off the circuit this year but hope to jump back in, in the near future. — Philip Papendick, Shwifty Hemp Co.,
  Tallahassee, FL
• We go to MJ BizCon and we’ll be heading to the Emerald Cup Harvest Ball in Santa Rosa, CA in December. — Elise Timoney, SierraKind, Grass Valley, CA
• We went to MJBiz and two of the Benzinga Capital conferences. How rewarding was it? We just completed a new debt facility from connections we made at Benzinga in Miami! — Michael Smith, Advanced Biomedics, Lafayette, LA
• We didn’t attend any cannabis trade shows this year. — Jonathan Pratt, Life Solutions Group, Danvers, MA
• We got to go to MJ Unpacked in both NYC and Las Vegas, as well as LMCC in New York. I’ll be at MJBizCon in November. All three of these events—MJ Unpacked, LMCC and MJBiz—are rewarding. They each cater to a different client set, so attending these shows created an awesome cross-cut of the market challenges and opportunities we have. Also, having recently moved to the East Coast, it was great to see lots of brands coming East. — Michael Rosenfeld, CannVu, Doylestown, PA
• We had a blast at Hall of Flowers 2022 at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa. For us, the local events in the surrounding areas are where it’s at, more than trade shows you have to travel far to get to. — Ali Jamalian, Sunset Connect, San Francisco, CA
• Hall of Flowers was our only one—we don’t have a budget to send team members to anything that’s not local. We hosted an afterparty for it which was hugely successful but since it’s more of a B2B show and we’re a dispensary, it doesn’t always translate well to sales. — Megan Prusynski, Doobie Nights, Santa Rosa, CA
• XpoCanna at Mohegan Sun here in Connecticut was an excellent event and our participation brought in a good number of new customers, including wholesale accounts. — Cara Marcoux, Harbor Hemp Company, Coventry, CT