Courtesy of HIGHOPES and Creative Director/Co-Founder Patrick Toste
HIGHOPES is a leading cannabis design and branding agency, specializing in branding, packaging, and web design. Visit www.highopes.co for more information.
Outlook: What is the first piece of advice you’d give to a business considering going into/expanding into Cannabis?
Patrick Toste, Creative Director and Founder
Know your market. Often, when we explore the challenges our prospects are facing, we recognize an underdeveloped understanding of their own market. Starting out, you must challenge yourself to understand your market’s numbers, psychographic targets, and niche in order to have longevity in this industry.
Challenges: What are some common missteps/mistakes you see?
On the branding side, we identify a failure to niche as a big problem within the industry. Failing to commit to specific use cases, demographics, and psychographics breeds ineffective marketing and strategy. At the end of the day, your target customer should be so well established that you can write a journal of their day accurately; and we mean it.
Success Stories: Can you share any notable achievements of businesses who’ve been able to hit the ground running?
We’ve seen great success with our clients such as Have a Heart expanding stores all across the West Coast and Midwest, VidaCann’s expansion and acquisition, and Nuvata’s disruptive brand power in California. Despite how success is measured within these companies, they have all had the commonality of grit and empathy that have colored their efforts within the market.
Future: What do you expect the next couple years will look like from a growth perspective?
We are experiencing the beginning of rapid growth on the East coast of the United States, and expect the Eastern markets to outweigh the West marginally within a number of years. We hope to see a larger share of new and re-engaging users that were initially predicted in our current recreational markets to support market growth, but we aren’t holding our breath.
