The rise of intoxicating hemp products has undeniably become an major trend across the U.S. cannabis industry over the past few years, with an increasing number of marijuana companies either pivoting completely to hemp or at least adding hemp goods to their product offerings. It’s also a trend that Wana Brands CEO Joe Hodas doesn’t expect to slow down anytime soon.
Rather, Hodas told Green Market Report last month, the obvious business benefits of hemp over marijuana – including the ability to sell online, ship across state lines and not be beholden to 280E – makes it an almost obvious, if not necessary, choice for companies that want to solidify their customer loyalty in the U.S.
Green Market Report sat down with Hodas to get more thoughts from the cannabis veteran on the potential of the U.S. hemp market going forward.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What motivated Wana to launch Wanderous and get into the hemp sector?
Hodas: We’d been watching the hemp sector for many, many years, and I’ll be honest, two years ago it was, “Delta-8 (THC) bad. We don’t want to be involved in this weird companies doing weird shit. That’s not what we’re about.” But as we continued to watch both at the federal level and at the state level, states began to form actual regulatory environments that allowed for it.
As we started seeing that momentum and understanding … there are ways that we can do this that would meet our standards and allow us to bring forward a good and safe product, we felt better about it.
And we said, it has to be part of our future because the (marijuana) regulatory side of things is still slow. Legalization hasn’t occurred, rescheduling hasn’t occurred. Markets are shrinking, companies are failing. We have to look for diversification of our revenue and of our audience.
This is a way for us to reach markets that we don’t have the ability to do otherwise.
What kind of market opportunities are out there?
Hodas: Each market is actually pretty different. They’re all growing quickly in different ways.
This liquor store (in Nashville) has their own THC cave in the liquor store. And you come to Houston, a lot of those used to be vape shops. (One I visited is) now a CBD dispensary. I started that day in this coffee store in Houston – great espresso, great pastries. And then at the counter you can also add a Delta-9 syringe for $10 or a CBD syringe for $5. The other half of the coffee shop is a little dispensary.
Is there just this gigantic market opportunity in hemp right now in states like Texas and others that don’t have functional marijuana markets?
Hodas: I don’t want to say “gigantic” yet, because I don’t have that confidence level yet. Houston, for example, it’s a crazy confused market, and you don’t have a very educated consumer there, when they’re selling 10,000 milligram (THC) packages of stuff.
We’re not doing that. That’s not who we are. That’s not what we’re about. We’re going to bring products that are more in line with what we believe the consumer wants and needs – and also that are safe. Is that a huge market opportunity for us? I don’t know.
But I do think what’s going to happen is the state of Texas is going to step in at some point – and I’ve been hearing a lot about this lately from the legislative level – and they’re going to regulate it in some way, shape or form. So that’s when it becomes interesting.
In Georgia, it’s convenience stores. That’s the channel, because liquor stores are actively lobbying against carrying these products. Whereas in Tennessee, the liquor stores are like, “Bring it. We want those products in our store.”
It’s just a mixed bag of: What’s the distribution? How do you find scale? How do you find synergies? And we’re experienced in that; we know that world. That makes us a little more adept at being able to handle it.
Do you expect a lot more coming overlap between the hemp and marijuana sectors in the next few years? It feels like it might be a short-term opportunity.
Hodas: It is a window, and I think more and more companies are realizing it. I liken it to the early days of digital music where there were companies that wanted to resist the fact that digital music was happening, and they were like, “We’re going to sue everybody. We’re going to stop it.”
You can’t stop that. That’s going to happen. And so you can either figure out how to integrate with it or you can suffer the consequences of not.
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