Business View Magazine | October 2019

246 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2019 oils, tinctures, concentrates, and topicals, and a commercial-grade kitchen where it crafts edibles and confections. The company has dispensary locations in Cambridge, Somerville, and Needham, where it sells medical marijuana to state-approved patients, and is currently awaiting licensure for adult-use, retail sales. Recently, Business View Magazine spoke with Sira Natural’s Founder and President, Mike Dundas, to find out more about the company, and where the legal cannabis industry is headed in the state. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation. BVM: What prompted you to create Sira Naturals? Dundas: “We founded this organization in 2013, at a time when Massachusetts had just legalized medical marijuana. After surveying much of the industry in the western states, I saw a need to raise the bar in terms of professionalism in the space. Regulated cannabis, after all, is an industry in transformation from an illicit, underground economy into a regulated marketplace and that transition, in my mind, necessitated a more systematic and professional approach to the cultivation, manufacturing, and retailing of cannabis products. So, my team and I set about trying to design a state-of-the-art cannabis cultivation and products manufacturing facility, and looking for a prime retail space to sell the products that we manufactured.” BVM: Now that adult-use cannabis is legal in Massachusetts, how have you transformed the company from medical to recreational sales? Dundas: “We’re currently still in the midst of that process. We were operating as a medical marijuana facility, licensed by the Commonwealth, and in order to operate as an adult-use producer, as well as an adult-use retailer, we have to go back to the state and apply for those licenses. We have received our adult-use cultivation and products manufacturing license, and we are now awaiting our retail licenses. So, we’re probably about 50/50, today, and once we get the retail licenses, we expect to expand the adult-use side, and probably end up with about 20/80 medical to adult-use. “Unlike under the medical marijuana statute, which requires that each license holder be vertically integrated and in control of their entire supply chain from seed to sale, on the adult use side, these license types have been broken out. So, there’s no longer a requirement for vertical integration and that has given rise to a robust wholesale market between manufacturers and retailers, and we are participating in that market, today. On the medical side, someone can walk into our shops and buy medical marijuana.” BVM: What kind of competition is there in the space? Dundas: “In the early days of any state marijuana program, because the businesses are given licenses by the state, they start off as somewhat smaller marketplaces. Today in Massachusetts, we are operating in a very competitive marketplace. As producers as well as retailers, we compete on all of the things that producers and retailers compete on in other industries: price, quality, and customer service and experience.” BVM: Where do you get your product from? Do you produce everything yourself, do you import it, or is it a mix of both? Dundas: “We produce all of the products that we sell, both in our retail stores and at wholesale.” BVM: On the federal level, cannabis is still listed as an illegal, Schedule 1 drug, and I’ve read that banking has been a consistent problem for legal cannabis companies, forcing them to operate on a cash-only basis. How do you navigate through the thicket of conflicting state and federal laws?