Where the locals buy their cannabis in Las Vegas Using proprietary technology City Trees is producing high-quality cannabis products and passing the savings on to their customers. CLS Holdings USA trading under OTCQB: CLSH, CEO, Andrew Glashow joins Dan Humiston to explain how they are maintaining their product's enormous Nevada market share and to talk about the growth of Oasis their Las Vegas dispensary. Produced by PodConx MJBulls - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston CLS holdings USA Inc - https://www.clsholdingsinc.com/ Andrew Glashow - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-glashow-61706747/ EndoCanna Health - https://www.endocannahealth.com/ Len May - https://podconx.com/guests/len-may Recorded on Squadcast
Where the locals buy their cannabis in Las Vegas
Using proprietary technology City Trees is producing high-quality cannabis products and passing the savings on to their customers. CLS Holdings USA trading under OTCQB: CLSH, CEO, Andrew Glashow joins Dan Humiston to explain how they are maintaining their product's enormous Nevada market share and to talk about the growth of Oasis their Las Vegas dispensary.
MJBulls - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital
Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston
CLS holdings USA Inc - https://www.clsholdingsinc.com/
Andrew Glashow - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-glashow-61706747/
EndoCanna Health - https://www.endocannahealth.com/
Len May - https://podconx.com/guests/len-may
today on MJ Bulls, we are joined by Andrew Glasso, the C E O of C L S Holdings. Andrew, welcome kind of back to the show.
Andrew Glashow: Yeah, been a long time. Dan. Thanks for having me, buddy. I appreciate it.
Dan Humiston: Well, for our listeners, because this is a little inside joke, uh, , we did an interview back in 2019, but thanks to Covid o we never had a chance to finish it. So it's great that we finally have a chance to do a do-Over . A lot's changed since 2019, but one thing that hasn't is cannabis life science continues to innovate and grow as an integrated.
producer and retailer. You've used your patented method [00:01:00] of extracting cannabinoids and your Vegas dispensary to help you continue to be one of Nevada's leading cannabis companies. You have a great business model and I really wanna dig into it and I thought, I thought maybe we'd start off with your production facility and give you a chance to talk to us a little bit about City Tree.
Andrew Glashow: You got it. So first of all, thanks for having me. I really do appreci. the invite and the opportunity to, uh, address your audience. So if we start out with City Trees, city Trees is our wholesale and our, our branded manufacturing division located, uh, about eight miles from, uh, the Las Vegas Strip.
It's technically in North Las Vegas, Nevada. We are. number one brand in the state of Nevada, in, in units sold, and that includes tinctures, concentrates, and vapes. Uh, we move, I don't know, somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand units a month. Of, uh, various products. Uh, we process all of [00:02:00] our own, material as well as we process, uh, material for others.
So When we bought this particular business, back in 2016 or 2017, excuse me, and we closed sometime in 2018, we're doing about a hundred thousand dollars a month. We now do about $700,000 a month. So in about a five year period of time, we've seven Xed the business.
We're very proud of City trees. We think that we can bring it to other markets. and our our product and our products, uh, stand for themselves and we're, we're, we're, we're really, really excited not only today, but also the future. and not only do we sell this in our own retail store, but we're really proud of the fact that 75% of the market in Nevada carries our products and their various dispensers.
Dan Humiston: That's crazy. 75%. Just think about that One or three out of four dispensaries carry your product. I remember when we spoke last time, we talked quite a bit about your patented extraction methodology, I'm gonna get this one wrong, but I'll do it anyway. You were able to get more [00:03:00] yield out of, out of the products using this technology, and I think that also enhanced the finished products.
Can you maybe talk a little bit more about it and correct everything that I've said that's incorrect?
Andrew Glashow: So the, the first part of that equation, it really starts with, uh, biomass. So we try only to use, and not only do we try, we do, we only use product that we know, uh, that we can get, you know, kind of a consistent yield out of, in a high quality product, period. So then if you take it to the next level, utilizing our process, uh, that we have, we're able to get about a 20 to 25% greater yield.
pound of dry material that we convert into, you know, some kind of liquid. and that's a, that's proprietary and it's a method and so on and so forth. . And it does two things for us. Number one, it gives us more yield, but the other thing it does is we are the most competitive as far as price goes.
for our customers in the marketplace because we're getting higher yield out of the same amount of raw [00:04:00] material, so we're able to pass those on to our customers, and that's critically important given the market environment that we're in right now, the rest of the world might be experiencing inflation.
We're experiencing deflation. Uh, in the cannabis market, particularly, with flour and, and other products that have come way down price in the last, call it six to months to a year, and I would say more so the last six to nine months, we've seen a very substantial compression in the price of, uh, of, of whole flour.
Dan Humiston: Mm-hmm. , which, so you're basically, you have better margins and you're able to pass those margins on to your customers and maintain the, even though the prices are going down, you can still maintain your profitability, which is, I mean, a lot of companies are struggling with that. That's, that's, that's really a challenge.
You, you have a. In Las Vegas, the Oasis dispensary, it's, it's 5,000 square feet.
Andrew Glashow: Yeah, the building itself reoccupied about 5,000 square feet. The dispensary itself is approximately 2000 [00:05:00] square feet in the dispensary. And this is, this is just, I, I could not be more proud of all of the people cuz I, I really have very little to do with this. It's the people that, work for this company, and that do so.
You know, on, on a daily basis. The, these, these young people are absolutely fantastic and I can't say enough nice things about 'em, but the, we have experienced something at Oasis, which is really cool. traffic. is up 30% year over year. I like to use the term fannies in the door. You can say butts in the seats, whatever term you want to use, or whatever phrase you wanna use.
So our customer traffic is up about 30%.
So we are not only experiencing customer traffic growth, but we're also experiencing revenue growth in the dispensary. And that might sound kind of weird, a year ago, Our average basket size was about 57 to $58. our average basket size is around 47 or $48, our price of the [00:06:00] basket, has come down by 20 or 25%.
Our traffic has gone up by 30%, so we're still seeing an increase. And the reason the price point of our basket has come down is two reasons. One, we're getting flour or raw material at prices that are 50, 60, 70% less than they were a year ago.
Uh, that's number one. But number two, you know, people have a. and, people's budgets are being stretched, whether it's price, gasoline, milk, bread. Think about all the things that one needs to do on a daily basis. You now have less money for certain things. So one of the things that we identified, I would say about six to nine months ago, we really identified this, and again, I give my team credit for this, first of all, we did not know Covid was gonna come around, but we said to our.
Let's be local. Let's just cater to local, local, local locals. And we've done that since 2017 because , we're not Planet 13, who do a very good job in the market. We're very different. We're, we're, we're known as the locals place. We just want to have the best damn deals, the best product quality, uh, that we can for [00:07:00] our customers.
And so our menu. and the price points are meaning the demands of not only of our existing customers, but we are just seeing such rapid growth in the amount of people that come through the door on a daily basis. It's really, you know, impressive. So when we bought that business, it was doing about a couple hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue.
So now you fast forward five years later and it's about a million, three to 1,000,004 a month. So we've taken that business and we've six or seven Xed it over that period of time. So now I know somebody might say, well, geez, we're ac you know, maybe it's because you went from medical to rec. No, actually we bought it.
had come into play, or we closed on it after we rec came into play in July of 2017. So we're really pleased with the operating results of both city trees, our branded and wholesale operation, and our retail, store Oasis. And I'll just say one other thing. I think there's a big push in the marketplace for these, for larger MSOs to try to carry a lot of their own product.
And I get it cuz they're vertically integrated and we [00:08:00] like to carry our own product as well. But we've taken the philosophy that we want our store to be a place where it features a lot of brands and so we carry. a ton of brands in the store cuz whether or not they wanna buy our city trees brand.
That's great. If you do, that's fantastic. But you may wanna buy a, you may wanna try something else. And we think that that's the way that you get consumers to embrace cannabis is to give them variety, to give them choice, and to give them best damn deals.
Dan Humiston: That's aggressive and it also gives you an opportunity to see what maybe is lacking in your. product mix. Maybe there's something that one of the other competitors or one of the other products or brands has in their mix. That's the, you may not be, you know, have, have filled that void.
I'm gonna jump, around. Actually, we, we kind of started in the middle of your. Of your integration, I should say, when we started with the produ production, and you started right off by saying [00:09:00] the reason that your products are so in demand is because you start with great product. I read recently that you did it your first harvest . Maybe. Tell us more about that. That a really exciting process.
Andrew Glashow: It really is for us, uh, it's a potential, for us to not only do we have another revenue stream, But it also allows us, to really control, our input material and we can grow it to our standards and our specifications. and we're very honored, to be a part of the Shoshone Peyo tribe up in northern Nevada.
It's on the Oregon Nevada line, the reservation itself, is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of acres. It's tremendous. We are only currently on, uh, or planting on about five acres. Next year, we'll probably grow that to 10 or 15 acres, but we just did Two successful harvest.
It's about a six or seven month season up there. Cuz right now they already have snow on the ground. You it's the northern desert for lack of a [00:10:00] so we're very pleased. We've harvested, I wanna say about six or 7,000 pounds of raw material. Uh, is what came, off of this year, and this was our first year doing it.
Next year we think it's a 12 to 15,000 pounds, of material. Uh, and again, it allows us to control our costs. It also allows us to give to the marketplace, a really very good sun grown product. this, this isn't, you know, a craft grow. It's a very good product. That meets the needs for a lot of people that want to consume cannabis, only have, call it a limited budget or, or for whatever reason they may be looking for a lower price product and we're able to meet that demand.
So far, the, the product quality has been excellent. and so far the, the demand from our products has been great. And, we have branded it under, something called Naked City. That's the name of our brand, And it has to do with the geography where we're located, in Nevada. it's, it used to be called many, many moons ago, naked City, and that's [00:11:00] why we named it Naked City,
Dan Humiston: and you're also letting the local community participate in your success, which is also great. You know, that, that involving the entire community. Well, as I said in the beginning of the show, that Cannabis Life, life Science Holdings or c l s is. A publicly traded company and we will have all the information in the show notes.
So if you wanna learn more about Andrew's company or may maybe, maybe even participate in their growth because it seems like it's , it's been going in the right direction for a long time, and it will continue to please check the show notes, click the links, and learn more. I'm glad we had a chance to do this
I mean, next time let's not wait. What is it? Three years to do this again, because too much has happened between now and then. So thanks for doing this
Andrew Glashow: , let, let's make sure this isn't a sign, that something, you know, like covid is coming around again. Hopefully that, that, that was a one time event for you and me.