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The Millionaire’s Club: 3 recreational pot shops with over $1,000,000 in total sales

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Three recreational marijuana stores in the state of Washington had over $1,000,000 dollars in total sales last month, according to the Washington State Liquor Control Board. Thus, landing them into the millionaire’s club. Two of the pot shops are located in Vancouver, Washington and just one in Seattle. Look at the elusive millionaire’s club as the exception rather than the rule, especially when more shops open their doors and add to the competition.

Here are the 3 cannabis shops with over a million dollars in sales for last month:

 

Main Street Marijuana

Total Sales: 1,525,035

Tax revenue: 389,259

Location: Vancouver

 

New Vansterdam

Total Sales: 1,144,792

Tax revenue: 286,198

Location: Vancouver

 

Uncle Ike’s Pot Shop

Total Sales: 1,153,517

Tax revenue: 288,379

Location: Seattle

 

3 Recreational Marijuana Questions For 2015

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Welcome back everyone for a brand new year: 2015! Its crazy to think that just over a year ago, Colorado opened it’s first recreational marijuana shops. And since then, Washington has followed with the beginnings of its’ legal retail industry, while Alaska, Oregon, and Washington D.C. has voted to join the party. Imagine what everything will be like another year from now? But before we do that, we still have a year to live so let’s do it! Let’s hope there is a pot shop on every street corner in 12 months time!

3 recreational marijuana questions for 2015:

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Will all recreational marijuana stores be open this year?

With marijuana legalization being different in every place you go, it can be hard to know what’s going on for dispensaries. At the moment, all the new and growing dispensaries are having to look into resources and tools like POSaBIT that can help them improve their customer service, all while having to worry about staying within legal guidelines and following legislation. So, the answer to this is a complicated one for both dispensaries and customers, depending on where you are.

If you asked us this question a couple of months ago, we would have thought: of course! But here we are, about 6 months since Cannabis City became the city’s first marijuana store to open its’ doors, and we only have eight legal retail shops that are open. Nine, if you include Ballard’s Herb’s House, a medical marijuana dispensary that just passed the recreational inspection last month and will be converting to a legal outlet soon. Even if physical stores aren’t quite open, you will still be able to purchase weed online from websites such as https://theherbcentre.net/buy-weed-online-vancouver/, which many people view as being much easier than purchasing in person.

It took six months for eights stores to open. At this rate, we should have all Seattle pot shops up and running by the end of the year, but that is barring any setbacks such as failed inspections, financing, or any other hurdles the cannabis retail outlets may face. In addition, the Washington State Liquor Control Board may hold a do-over in April to allow over 900 shops a chance at a retail license. This may increase the number of shops in the city and the chances that we see openings into 2016. It seems that marijuana is becoming increasingly more acceptable, people can easily buy things like tuna kush, so it makes sense for more pot shops to be opening.

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Will the tax issue be confronted that is setting the industry up for failure?

One major complaint of customers as they exit a recreational weed shop is the enormously high retail tax that they just paid. But tax issues isn’t just affecting the customers, it’s affecting everyone including the legal retail shops, the growers, and the producers. In fact, if this tax issue is not dealt with, it could have a crippling affect to our industry and even the prospects of national legalization. After all, we have chosen ourselves to set an example. This is what James Lathrop, owner of Cannabis City, wrote us last month:

In Washington marijuana products are taxed at a multiple compound rate: That is 25% from the grower to processor, plus 25% from the processor to the retailer, plus 25% from the retailer to the customer [each of these levels of tax pay tax on the previous tax], plus another 10% of regular sales tax, city tax, and B&O [which includes taxation of the excise tax itself]; then there is an additional Federal tax of another 25% [that is a fed 35% tax on the ~70% gross profit [gross after cost of goods] falling out at about 25% of gross – including Federal taxation on the State excise tax itself.).

So on the retailer side alone that is ~60% of the product in pure tax, with ~30% going to to cost of goods and ~1-5% left to actually run the business; the growers and processors are in a similar situation.

All cannabis businesses in Washington are set to fail under this unreasonable and compound tax structure; many will fail, some will survive; but none can exist under this tax structure for very long.
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What effect will the Oregon recreational marijuana industry have on ours?

Last November, Oregon voted to become the 3rd state to legalize marijuana. This makes Washington and its’ neighbor to the South, the first bordering states to legalize the plant, which brings up some questions:

1) Vancouver’s recreational marijuana shops have seen some phenomenal sales, especially New Vansterdam. After all, the town is conveniently located about 10 minutes from Portland. We are not sure if Portland will see its’ first store open this year but if it does, we wonder if it will have some effect on Vancouver recreational store sales? From what we here, there is a healthy number of Oregon residents crossing the border to visit the legal pot shops. In addition, will Portland see an increase of Vancouver residents crossing the border to purchase cannabis to save money because the tax burden is less?

2) When Oregon allows marijuana legalization to happen on the first of July, residents of the state will be able to grow their own plants within the confines of their home. Oregon and Alaska will be the 2nd and 3rd state to practice this along with Colorado. Are we going to continue being the stubborn mule or allow our neighbors to the South to plant the seed and help us reconsider?

Two industries, side by side, in the same region. What better way to observe to see what is working and what isn’t. We should take this opportunity and do just that. Work together to make the local marijuana industries a success.

What recreational marijuana questions do you have for 2015?

Reality Tax: Recreational Marijuana Stores Gouged

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The high retail tax imposed on marijuana in the recreational industry is nothing new. Residents, customers, and tourists have conveyed their frustration with the high prices of cannabis. But what is often overlooked is the entire taxation burden which is imposed on recreational marijuana stores.

We interviewed the owner of Cannabis City, James Lathrop recently, and published the exchange a couple weeks ago. When asked ‘What is the most challenging part of running Cannabis City?’ Lathrop replied with, “paying the HEAVY taxes imposed by I-502 and Federal Code 280e. These two laws put the taxation of the product at a compound rate of 85% (25% + 25% + 25% + 10%) at the state level, PLUS an additional 35% at the Federal level.”

When looking at the numbers published by the Washington State Liquor Control Board for the month of October 2014, it shows Cannabis Citys’ total sales at $632,878. The WSLCB also publishes the retail tax amount owed which, for this month was $158,220. It’s easy to look at these numbers and think, ‘not bad at all.’ But, the amount published by the WSLCB is only 25% of the equation. It’s just one side of the story. According to Lathrop, the total compounded tax rate imposed on recreational marijuana shops is at 85%!

If this is the case, Cannabis City’s total tax burden for the month of October is roughly $537,946. Which leaves less than $100,000, for the month, to pay producers for the product, pay for overhead, pay for the lease of the store, hire security, pay employees a decent wage, and maybe pay yourself?

Wow.

 

 

Guest Post: Cash Only Businesses Create Unwarranted Risk

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It’s been an concerning couple of weeks for the cannabis industry from a security point of view here in Washington State state and it’s only going to get worse as we roll into the holidays.

The recent stories in the news about people getting hogtied or pistol whipped to get cash and weed out of them is alarming. These criminal elements are only attracting more crimes and potentially creating copy cats. So how do we fix it? The holidays are here, crimes of opportunity will present themselves with the holiday shopping season. So how do we combat that here in Washington state? And how can we prevent this from happening to other up and coming states with medical and recreational shops to open?

In my opinion, we have to educate the public and change public perception on marijuana and a cash only businesses. The public must know and understand that marijuana is not that hard to get your hands on. Criminals and the black market are selling it everyday. On the black market, it’s cheaper because there is no quality control and there is no tax on it. Anyone with a internet connection can research how to grow and care for a marijuana plant. So the real problem isn’t the plant or the marijuana itself. It’s the cash that surrounds and attracts all these criminal minds. It’s the fact that the government isn’t allowing a reputable tax paying business to keep and store their transactions in a bank.

The longer the government and banks hold out on doing business with marijuana companies, the longer the crimes will continue to occur. Criminals think business owners and their families are taking these huge duffle bags of cash home every night. That’s just stupid. Money and product goes into a huge vault that will take you a godly amount of time to TRY to get thru. By then you have tripped a silent alarm, a secondary regular ADT type of alarms, cops are on their way and your actions have been caught on cameras. Dumb criminals think that by cutting the power, they won’t get caught. They never considered a back up system that keeps recording and sends the data to the cloud.

There has to be a better way to prevent future cannabis crimes where the potential owners of pot shops are covered and do not have to constantly worry about thief’s trying to break into their facility. The recreational 502 and medical owners that are working in this industry must understand the risks and be willing to take certain security measures if they are to survive such brutal tactics.

3 More Seattle Marijuana Stores Open: Grass & Mary’s by Michael Perkins & SODO’s Ganja Goddess

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North Seattle Gets Two Shops By Marijuana Mogul

Michael Perkins is a busy man. When we spoke to him, he was in the car on the interstate, headed towards his next big marijuana business venture. His goal is to create an eventual brand of recreational marijuana stores spanning the country.

Perkins grew up in the famous Humboldt County for 14 years where he learned the tools of the trade, before opening nine medical marijuana dispensaries and four hydroponic retail stores in California that would have been distributing products grown hydroponically using controlled environment agriculture designers to improve yield rate and quantity within the facilities. In 2012 he relocated to Seattle where he opened a handful of medical marijuana dispensaries.

In July of this year, lady luck was on his side as Perkins landed not one, not two, but three recreational marijuana licenses. Two of the licenses are for retail shops in Seattle, and one in Snohomish. He insisted he didn’t fill out a bunch of applications, but instead ‘got lucky.’

The two Seattle recreational marijuana stores are both open and fully operational. Articulately named Grass is located in North Seattle at 14343 15th Ave NE, and eloquently names Mary’s is located North of Green Lake at 12230 Aurora Ave N. So far, only the Grass website is up and running.

The 3rd shop, located in Snohomish, will most likely open in December. The name of this shop is still undecided at the moment.

Ganja Goddess Opens Today in SODO

It’s about damn time. That’s what we like to say over here. SODO finally gets its’ 2nd pot shop.

A while back we had a little too much fun and envisioned a ‘Little Amsterdam’ of sorts in the SODO neighborhood of Seattle. But if you compare the area to the industrial area in Amsterdam, North of Centraal Station, you just may see some similarities.

Ganja Goddess opens today, located at: 3207 1rst Ave E., and will hold grand opening festivities between 10am-9pm. Stop by and say hi to store manager Tammara Wells, who confessed to us, ‘this wasn’t easy, it was very difficult.’ We don’t pretend to imagine it would be easy opening one of these shops, especially with all the regulations and with it being a brand new industry. If you’re unlucky enough to not live anywhere near any of these shops, however, don’t despair as you can still buy seeds from a site like https://sweetleafmarijuana.com/best-seed-banks-that-ship-to-us/. They can ship a wide variety of seeds to places all over the US, so no matter where you are you can always access the benefits of medical marijuana.