Going Above And Beyond: Setting New Standards For the Cannabis Industry

Bill: Sure. Prior to the pandemic, we were working in LED lighting and energy-saving technology. That evolved into vertical cultivation technology with rolling racks, fertigation, irrigation, LED lighting for people, etc. In fact, as of February 2020, we thought we were going to be doing great. We went to the first Wisconsin Cannabis Expo, had a booth, and two presentations. Usually, a good presentation for us is 20 to 30 people; we had 100 people sitting, 150 standing. It was a five-hour trade show, and they were only expecting 1,500 people. We had 3,500 people go through in five hours. We made the mistake of going out of that show and saying, “Guys, this is going to be a great year. We’re positioned really well with energy-saving technology and cultivation technology.”

Then that night, I felt a little warm, sweated through six T-shirts, and was hacking around for three days with a fever. Turns out we were early adopters of COVID. I picked up COVID along with two people we were working with. Found out from one of the architects who went for surgery in August that he had antibodies from the same time. He called me up and said, “Hey, congratulations.” While we like to be early adopters of technology, not so much on COVID. I’d say that was worse than the influenza we just dealt with.

Anyway, we got out of the trade show, and our next trade show was a 6,500-person event we’d been in for 15 years. We usually generated between 70 and 74% of our leads at the trade show for the year. We had a 20×40 booth, four presentations, and it opened on the first day of the pandemic. Normally, we’d have 6,500 people; they had 750 vendors and only 200 attendees showed up in two days because of the lockdown with COVID. It was crickets. That was a wake-up call.

We ended up pivoting because cultivation was suffering; the price of flower had commoditized so much. Fortunately, that started to come back up a little bit, which is great. We went into temperature detection for a while. The temperature detection had eight sales in eight states over four months, then vaccines came out and killed that industry.

Meanwhile, as you mentioned, I blew up my shoulder, hated oxy, talked to my surgeon, and he said, “Hey, just check the testing, make sure the products you take are tested, but try a Delta-8 or Delta-9 gummy.” I had my first Delta-9 gummy and slept through the night because I had to sleep sitting up on the couch for two months. It really messed up the shoulder. I’ve got three pins and a redone rotator cuff. That was the best thing that happened because I tried my Delta gummy, slept through the night, and felt refreshed.

We dove into testing. We were down from 14 people to core family, myself, my two sons, and my wife, who works part-time. We went into testing over 150 manufacturers and 25 labs and found out that the government only requires testing for potency, which, if you go to a bar, would be equivalent to getting three shots of clear alcohol that says 180 proof, 80 proof, 80 proof. You take the first one, 80 proof Everclear, which is nasty. You take the next shot, which is 80 proof Tito’s vodka, which is not bad. As a consumer, you see a third shot that says 0 proof, so you expect Tito’s vodka, but instead, it’s harsher, and you actually go blind because you just drank moonshine with wood alcohol. The government only requires potency testing, so you can get pesticides, solvents, microtoxins, mold, mildew, heavy metals, and it doesn’t get tested on the standard testing.

We found that as a big differentiating factor. We did a lot of research over the next four or five months, signed up with top manufacturers, and the Ethereal Gold standard was born, which every one of our products has that complete full panel testing. It’s easy to find right on the tab with the products on our website, and when you’re in person, you can see the COAs (Certificates of Analysis).

It’s something we’ve found extremely beneficial. We grew 300% last year. We now have etherealgolddispensary.com, a physical location in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and recently launched automated kiosks for self-serve. We have one in a mall in Brookfield, one in a music venue and bar in Waukesha, and one we placed in January for 24/7 sales on our best sellers. We just launched our fourth machine in a liquor store in Wales, Wisconsin. We grew 300% last year and are ramping up even faster.