Hi there, and welcome to The Dealers Diary - my musings on the cannabis industry, California, and building Halara.

If you missed past emails, I recommend checking out the Dealers page where you can see the past emails I sent.

In today’s entry: Quick Hits | 420 in 4 Days | The Mystery Strain Is Loose | Our First Solventless AIO | A New State This Summer

Hey Dealers,

On April 10th, we crossed 1,002,065 lifetime carts filled. I've been sitting with that number for almost two weeks now because I wasn't sure how to talk about it without sounding like one of those LinkedIn posts where someone humblebrags about "the journey." So let me try something different.

A million carts is a million individual smoking sessions. A million times someone twisted one of our products onto a battery or pulled on an AIO and trusted that what they were inhaling was clean, tasted right, and did what it was supposed to do. That's a million times we couldn't be in the room, couldn't explain ourselves, couldn't make excuses. The product just had to work.

When I think about it that way, it's less of a celebration and more of a weight. A lovely weight, but a weight.

If you'd told me we'd get here back when Nick was bartending and making vape formulas between shifts, I would have believed you. (That's one of my flaws. Irrational optimism.) But if you'd told me we'd get here after the third time our bank account hit $6K and we had to decide between paying ourselves and ordering more hardware, I might have paused. There were real moments where this company was one bad month from not existing.

We made it through those months because the product moved. People kept buying it. Budtenders kept recommending it. And that, more than any milestone number, is the thing I'm proud of. Not that we filled a million carts, but that a million carts got sold because people liked what was inside them.

We're now in 300+ dispensaries across California, Washington, and New York. But none of that matters if the next cart someone buys from us is worse than the last one. So that's the job. Same as it was at cart number one.

Onwards and upwards,
-Malcolm

420 was the biggest promo war we've ever seen. Our sales team was out in the field across all three states this weekend, running between shops, dropping off snacks, checking in on partners. What they came back with was pretty consistent: the deals were insane. And the data backs it up. Nationally, 84% of 420 transactions included a discount (up from 76% the year before), with the average transaction discounted 34%. In Washington, some shops were running $1 joints and $5 carts for the first 200 customers. One dispensary manager called it "a race to the bottom."

Here's the tension. 420 is supposed to be the industry's biggest day. And it is, in terms of foot traffic. But when nearly every transaction is discounted by a third, you have to ask what we're actually building. Are customers coming in because they love the product, or because they're trained to wait for the sale?

I don't have a clean answer. Part of me thinks aggressive promos bring in new customers who stick around. The other part thinks we're teaching people that cannabis should cost less than it does. Both are probably true.

Vapes officially overtook flower in California. This one's been coming for a while, but it's now official. In CA, vapes make up the largest product category, ahead of traditional flower. Nationally, pre-rolls passed flower too. And cannabis beverages had the largest category growth for the second year running (up 177% at 420).

The convenience factor is real. No grinding, no rolling, no "is this compatible?" conversations at the counter. We saw this shift early enough to build out our AIO lineup alongside our 510s, and right now AIOs make up 44% of the CA vape market compared to 39% for traditional 510 carts. If your local shop only carries our 510 carts, tell them to ask their rep about the AIOs.

Meanwhile, the vape recall crisis is getting worse. California alone saw an 800% surge in cannabis vape recalls last year. Pesticides, heavy metals, undisclosed additives. Eight hundred percent.

And it's not just CA. Recalls are climbing in New York, Maine, Colorado, everywhere regulators are actually testing. If you're smoking carts from brands you haven't vetted, now is a good time to start asking questions.

Check for COAs. Ask about testing. Look up whether your brand has had any recalls. Your lungs are worth the two minutes of research.

We got this review last week….

And what??? AND WHAT??? Sir, you can't just leave us hanging like that. If this is you, please reply and finish your sentence. Nick and I need closure when we read these reviews.

Know a budtender who'd dig this? Forward it. They subscribe, you get a Dealers hat.

Already got 1 referral? You've got a hat coming. DM me your address if you haven't yet.

Halara · Emerald Triangle, CA

P.S. Writing this one from South America, so the playlist has a little Latin flair this week: