Canadian CANNAINVESTOR Magazine Canadian Publicly Traded April / May 2019 | Page 59

payment service providers have helped the industry meet the needs of customers, and thankfully U.S. federal banking reform is finally getting the attention it deserves. We’re hopeful that new legislation in Congress will help alleviate some of these challenges in the near-term future, but there is still tons of work to do to achieve fair taxation of cannabis-related commerce and Vireo is a proponent of further legislative reform.

Interesting times and opportunities ahead for sure. Your home page clearly states “We are building the cannabis company of the future – from scaled manufacturing processes and equipment to proprietary products and a best-in-class customer experience – all by bringing the best of science, medicine, and engineering to the cannabis industry”. Succinctly, how is Vireo working towards this goal and what does that mean to current and prospective shareholders?

Our vision for the future of the cannabis industry is based on a belief that meaningful intellectual property development including unique, ideally proprietary, product formulations will be key to achieving long-term success. Every multi-state operator is doing the land grab, maximizing geographic footprint and hoping to survive the rapidly approaching, full-on, commoditization of cannabis. As you can see, we are being as aggressive as anyone on expansion, but I believe you need to do more than just expand your reach to be successful long-term. Every MSO is hammering the CPG angles, branding of products, branding of retail etc. Seems the top dozen or two MSOs may well end up in a very similar place absent something more differentiating. We feel the focus on science and its derivative intellectual property will leave Vireo as the company being talked about in 5 years.

In today’s market, a premium product is essentially a distillate with terpenes or the like. We see that part of the market commoditizing quickly. We’re interested in leaning into the future in which novel products backed by science and technology are selected by all types of cannabis consumers. Eventually consumers will demand products that work and that are even more sophisticated.

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