BofC Live is a podcast from Business of Cannabis. Delivering cannabis news and exploring the companies, brands, people, and trends driving the cannabis industry.
Dan Sutton is the CEO of Tantalus Labs – a premium cannabis producer in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. Sutton recently made cannabis news by posting a corporate update via a Twitter thread that shared his company’s successes over the past year. We wanted to connect with Sutton about his post, about Tantalus’s year in review and what he expects about the future of Canadian cannabis.
The thread continues to include additional details on the steps Tantalus Labs took in the past year, including:
2021 was tough for everyone in Canadian cannabis. Tantalus went through some critical personnel changes, low THC harvests, packaging supply chain overhaul, not to mention heat dome, flooding, COVID, and ongoing stockout issues with distributors.
We had some weak harvests in Q1 and Q2, and that meant substantial price concessions to move them through sub brands and higher volume, lower margin SKUs. THC rules this market, and we had to iterate our genetics almost across the board to get back in our target range.
My team took that opportunity to look at a top down overhaul of our quality metrics beyond THC. Terpene content, bud moisture content, smoke and flavour, finishing protocols, and a move to glass packaging were all imagined and strategized around mid year.
We sought feedback from distributors and customers and let our favourite advocates inform our quality choices, and it started to pay dividends. Supply chain in cannabis can be slow, and even though our harvests increased in potency, yield, and quality through Q2 and Q3…
Customers didn’t get product in their hands truly until Q4. Prerolls lead the charge for us, with SKUs like Pacific OG and LA Kush Cake delivering consistently delightful smoke and effect. Another function of our success in quality was a 95% reduction in product complaints!
Sutton has been featured on Business of Cannabis previously, including:
- May 26, 2021 | Real talk from Tantalus CEO Dan Sutton
- March 18, 2021 | Q+A with Dan Sutton of Tantalus Labs
- March 13, 2020 | Dan Sutton of Tantalus Labs talks about operating while preparing for COVID-19
- November 25, 2019 | Dan Sutton of Tantalus Labs talks about growing quality BC cannabis and remaining a privately held company
Listen to this episode of BofC Live, and all BofC Live episodes, as a podcast:
Dan Sutton Interview Excerpt
That thread was definitely a humble brag. On behalf of my Tantalus Labs team who just had a breakout fourth quarter. We actually had quarter over quarter revenue growth of 86%, which as a smaller revenue company, it’s easier to achieve. But I think it still puts us in the running for one of the fastest growing cannabis companies in Canada today.
And what was interesting to me as I reflect on the last year 2021, which was a grind for every human on earth, as well as any business operator and operations team and cultivator, and everyone in the cannabis industry has been especially up against. We didn’t have access to a whole bunch of capital to inject. The market has not exactly excited about cannabis companies as of right now.
And thus, we had to do it the old fashioned way: roll up our sleeves, figure out what our customers want, continue to iterate on that kind of quality promise and make sure we’re putting high potency, high moisture content, high terpene cannabis in peoples’ hands. That sounds so simple when you say it that way, but it really was the culmination of a strategic planning process that lasted probably the first couple of quarters and then implementation block and tackle steady Eddie day after day for the second two.
But I think the message that I wanted to put out with that tweet thread and that I really want to put out today is that this is not rocket science. If you have a cannabis company that’s oriented towards flower and pre-rolls, you really can deliver financial results with investing in your culture, around how much you care about the details and investing in that end product quality in a way that your customers can tangibly feel.
So I’m really proud. And I’m proud of the little ankle biters that are coming out of the woodwork to snatch up market share from some of the larger companies that have had a really tough time holding on to their market share. 2022 is going to be a year of substantial transition for the cannabis industry in Canada and I really believe and hope that it will be a transition from large centralized, big brands towards smaller craft operators.
Maybe a little bit idealistic in that because those big guys have hundreds of millions in their treasuries and they’re not going anywhere. But, I think Tantalus is a great case study in how you can deliver value for customers and you’ll deliver value in a fund in your financials as well.
