Charlotte’s Web Holdings, the company that just about launched the entire CBD industry, announced this week that they have just been approved for registration on Health Canada’s list of approved cultivars (LOAC) for 2021. Three of their proprietary hemp cultivars have made the cut, gaining the company access to the Canadian market.
Jared Stanley, co-founder and chief cultivation officer at Charlotte’s Web, says they plan to lead the market in Canadian hemp-derived CBD products. “The majority of approved cultivars on the LOAC to date have been for industrial hemp grown to produce food, fiber, and animal feed,” says Stanley. “Now our approved cultivars are paving the way for full-spectrum hemp CBD demand in Canada and most importantly, will provide access to Charlotte’s Web products in Canada.”
Largely due to the difference in regulatory approaches between Canada and the U.S., the CBD product market in Canada is somewhat small. Health Canada currently regulates CBD products the same as products containing more than 0.3% THC. In the U.S., a checkerboard of state laws, the 2018 Farm Bill and the subsequent state hemp programs led to massive growth for the CBD product marketplace.
Charlotte’s Web is one of the leading hemp-derived CBD companies operating in the United States. With the soon-to-be expansion into Canada, the company hopes to develop a global footprint, says Deanie Elsner, president and CEO of Charlotte’s Web. “Today, Charlotte’s Web is the leading hemp wellness company in the U.S. with the most recognized and trusted hemp CBD extract,” says Elsner. “We aspire to be the world’s leading botanicals wellness company, entering countries with an asset light model where federal laws permit hemp extracts for health and wellness. Israel and Canada are included in the first steps of our international expansion.”
Cannabis extraction and manufacturing is big business in California with companies expanding brands into additional states as they grow. This is the second article in a series where we interview leaders in the California extraction and manufacturing industry from some of the biggest and most well-known brands. Click here to see Part 1.
In this week’s article we talk with Matthew Elmes, director of product development at Cannacraft. After cutting his teeth in academic and industry research, Matthew was approached by Cannacraft leadership to bring a new perspective to their product development efforts. The interview with Matthew was conducted on July 22, 2020.
Next week, we’ll interview Joaquin Rodriguez, chief operating officer at GenX BioTech. Stay tuned for more!
Aaron Green: Hi Matthew, and thank you for taking the time to chat today, I understand you have a busy schedule!
Matthew Elmes: Thanks – yeah, last week was pretty insane!
Aaron: Well, I’m happy we found a chance to put this together. Let’s start from the beginning. How did you get involved at Cannacraft?
Matthew Elmes, director of product development at Cannacraft
Matthew: I did my Ph.D in biochemistry at Stony Brook University on cannabinoid intracellular transport and metabolism. I then did a post-doc with Artelo Biosciences in endocannabinoid system modulation. While I was doing my post-doctoral research, Dennis Hunter, co-founder of Cannacraft, had learned about my work and reached out to offer me a position.
Aaron: Awesome, that’s a great feeling when people are reaching out to you! The next questions here will be focused on product development and manufacturing. What is your decision process for launching a new product?
Matthew: We do our best to anticipate what the market will want. A lot of our new product development comes from improving our current products. Things like improving stability, shelf-life and reducing bitterness. For brand-new products and technologies, we first get a lot of feedback from the marketing and sales teams and will then go into a planning session to decide what is feasible and what is not prior to moving forward.
Aaron: Do you personally get involved in manufacturing? Tell me about your process there.
Matthew: I do get involved in manufacturing. My main inputs are figuring out how much cannabis oil to use to hit a target potency around the size of a batch. This is the type of thing I do for all our beverage products like HiFi Hops, our Satori line of infused edibles, and the various gummy products sold under our brands Absolute Xtracts and Care By Design.
Aaron: Are you developing new products internally?
Matthew: For the most part we develop everything internally. We are very vertically integrated here at Cannacraft and we extract all of our oil in house. I don’t do the oil extractions myself. Most of our stuff is supercritical carbon dioxide extraction, but we have hydrocarbon and cryoethanol extraction facilities opening soon. For our gummies, we use distillate oils for the best flavor and for our droppers/vapes we use full-spectrum oils for a more sophisticated array of effects.
Aaron: In product development, what does getting stuck look like for you?
Matthew: Getting stuck happens a lot! You know, strict regulations make it challenging to source ingredients. Foods we’d like to source for a product are often too high in pesticides or heavy metals for the cannabis regulations. What’s good enough for the grocery store is very often not good enough to be compliant in the California cannabis industry. Fruits that are totally free from pesticides are hard to find. Our edibles brand Satori Chocolates actually might be the only player in the entire California cannabis industry that uses real whole fruit in our products rather than something artificial or a processed fruit paste. We actually had to source our strawberries from Italy to find ones that were both compliant in metals/pesticides and tasted good enough to meet our high standards! The same sort of challenges apply to sourcing biomass for oils.
Aaron: If you get stuck is it usually the same place? Or is it different each time?
Matthew: We’re so diversified. We have lots of different products. The process for each one can have its own issues. The problems you encounter with cannabis beverages are not the same ones that you’ll encounter with vapes, edibles, topicals or sublinguals, etc. We are one of the oldest players in the California cannabis industry (CannaCraft was founded in 2014, well before regulated recreational cannabis was a thing) so we have the advantage of working on all these issues for years longer than most of our competitors and we have largely figured out all the major ‘kinks’ already. A big part of it is also that we have assembled a great team of food scientists, chemical engineers, chemists, legal and regulatory experts, all with diverse specialties that allows us to quickly address any new ‘stucks’ and be fully confident in all of our products.
Aaron: Feel free to answer the next question however you like. What does your magic helper look like?
Matthew: I would love a magic helper! What would a magic helper look like to me? I think my magic helper is a recent undergrad with lab experience. I would have them take care of a lot of the quality and lab day to day activities. My responsibilities often make me too stuck to the computer screen where I don’t have time to get to all the experiments that I’d like to do…a trained magic helper could physically perform those experiments for me!
Aaron: OK, and now for our final question! What are you following in the market and what do you want to learn about?
Matthew: I am personally really interested in yeast grows and cannabinoid synthesis from biological organisms. We stick to only natural plant-derived cannabinoids for all our products, but it’s a new field that’s just fascinating to me. I also think that minor cannabinoids will have a bigger place in coming years. In particular I have my eye on THCV, ∆8-THC, CBG and THCP. THCP is a phytocannabinoid that was just discovered a year ago and exhibited very potent effects in preclinical models, but no one has been able to produce and purify it in appreciable amounts yet. We already manufacture and sell a ∆8-THC vape cart under our ABX brand, but for the others keep an eye out for new product announcements from us that are on the horizon.
Aaron: Well, that brings us to the end of the interview Matthew, this is all awesome feedback for the industry. Thanks so much for your time and insights into product development in the cannabis industry.
To sell more cannabis products, you must build trust with your customers. Design Shack Magazine explains: “Trust is a key component of user loyalty, and a reason why people come to your company or brand.”
If you don’t get your package design right, people might simply ignore your cannabis products.But building trust is a big challenge for new medical cannabis businesses. That’s where good design can help:“While a lot of trust comes from past performance and a brand’s track-record, it also comes from the design. How a website, poster or package looks can impact how users feel about it and whether they take the leap from casual looker to brand loyalist.”
For a cannabis health supplement business, the product packaging design is one of the most important ways to reassure consumers and build trust.
When a prospective customer first sees your product, they see the packaging before they can touch or see the product. Good product packaging can raise concerns or instill comfort and confidence in a potential buyer.
If you don’t get your package design right, people might simply ignore your cannabis products.
So, let’s take a look at what your business can do to create great product packaging designs that will win over the skeptics and gain customers.
Include the Right Content On Product Packaging
Designing packaging that inspires trust starts with including the right content.
Start by telling people exactly what’s inside your packaging. For example, specify what your product is (CBD Extract Oil vs. Full-Spectrum Hemp Oil Caplets), how much of it there is, a production lot number and a potency level.
Include any qualifiers that may reassure your customers – such as “Organic,” “Non-GMO” or “CO2-Extracted.”
Image courtesy of Kannabia Seed Company
Communicate this information in clean, concise language that shows you have nothing to hide. And, speaking of not hiding – include contact information for your business. Many businesses bury their contact info on their websites and packaging. Don’t do that.
People trust businesses that are transparent and easy to reach. Customers want to know that if they have a question or something goes awry with an order that they can get help.
Including your web address, support email and phone number is a powerful way to reassure clients that your business is legitimate and trustworthy.
And, no packaging is complete without branding elements to help customers identify who your business is and what you’re about. This should include your company’s logo, identifying brand colors and any other small visual elements your brand may use.
Finally, make sure to follow the FDA guidelines for dietary supplement labels.
Your content checklist for product packaging
Include the essential details
What’s inside?
How much?
What’s the potency and dosage?
When does it expire?
What’s the lot number?
Include reassuring qualifiers that your audience will value
Organic, CO2-Extracted, Full Spectrum, Contains Less Than 0.3% THC, etc.
Include your company’s contact info
Web Address
Customer Support Email
Customer Support Phone number
Include your visual branding elements
Logo
Tagline
Brand Colors
Small branded graphic elements
Keep the Packaging Design Simple
Clean, simple design is reassuring and inspires trust.
Image courtesy of Receptra Naturals
That’s because simple design makes it easy for customers to find what they need or want to know.
It’s easy to miss information in a cluttered design – and people know this.
People naturally mistrust the dense chunks of text at the bottom of many advertisements and product packages. On the other hand, clean, easy-to-read fonts and plenty of white space ensure that your audience can read your product packaging and find the information they want quickly without too much trouble.
With fewer words and graphics competing for attention, the important stuff naturally stands out. And, a simple design also sends the message that there are no hidden loopholes or secrets that may work against your customers.
Keep the Design Of Your Product Packaging Professional
It doesn’t matter how great your product is if your business comes across as unprofessional. And, for medical cannabis businesses, the bar for establishing professionalism is even higher than for most companies.
Keep these tips in mind to communicate professionalism and reliability.
Image courtesy of Sagely Naturals
Make sure your packaging is error-free
Mistakes don’t look professional. How many times have you wondered how an error could have passed through so many hands unnoticed that it made it onto the final version?
Consumers notice errors in your packaging design. They see typos and often, discover incorrect or misleading information. Errors make customers think that your business is incompetent. Or worse – they might think that your business is deliberately misleading them. Make sure you proof-read everything before your packaging goes to production.
Showcase Your Cannabis Products Well Against Competitors
People buying your cannabis products will have other options. Don’t ignore your competition and be sure to understand how other dietary supplements and medicine is packaged.
Want to build trust by encouraging consumers to group your CBD products with other trusted medical brands? Follow these tips:
Provide a list of ingredients and instructions for safe dosing and usage. People expect this from reputable medicinal brands. Your product packaging should dothis too. And, remember to follow the FDA’s labeling requirements for dietary supplements.
Incorporate a safety seal into your packaging design. You’ll notice that most medicines, vitamins, and supplements have a safety seal to protect the contents. Whether you opt for a shrink-wrapped seal over the lid or a foil seal under the cap, adding a safety seal shows that your product has not been tampered with and implies that it’s safe to use.
Incorporating these elements will create a mental link between your product and other trusted medicinal products.
Be authentic to your cannabis brand
Last, but not least, your packaging design must align with your brand. When consumers sense a disconnect between the brand identity they’ve come to identify with your business and the packaging design for your products, it creates discomfort.
Image courtesy of Direct Cannabis Network
But packaging that is in line with (or expands upon) the brand identity consumers have come to know will create comfort and trust.
Your brand’s packaging design must reflect your company’s story, product, and values. If your packaging claims a “simple” snack product with dozens of ingredients, consumers are going to be left with a disingenuous feeling about your products and company. By ensuring that your messaging, design, and visual impact is in line with your company and your consumer’s preferences, you can build instant trust.
So, ensure that your packaging design is consistent with your existing visual identity. This includes the name of your business or cannabis product, your cannabis business logo, website, and marketing design.
A united and cohesive visual brand presence looks professional and helps to build familiarity – which is key to developing trust. Ultimately, many people judge products based solely on the product packaging. That’s why it’s essential to make sure your product packaging sends the right message.
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Jared Stanley, co-founder and chief cultivation officer at Charlotte’s Web, says they plan to lead the market in Canadian hemp-derived CBD products. “The majority of approved cultivars on the LOAC to date have been for industrial hemp grown to produce food, fiber, and animal feed,” says Stanley. “Now our approved cultivars are paving the way for full-spectrum hemp CBD demand in Canada and most importantly, will provide access to Charlotte’s Web products in Canada.”
Largely due to the difference in regulatory approaches between Canada and the U.S., the CBD product market in Canada is somewhat small. Health Canada currently regulates CBD products the same as products containing more than 0.3% THC. In the U.S., a checkerboard of state laws, the 2018 Farm Bill and the subsequent state hemp programs led to massive growth for the CBD product marketplace.
