6 Strategies for Selling Excess Cannabis Product Inventory

As you prepare to replenish your inventory, one problem can throw off your entire sales technique. Stale cannabis flower, edibles that are nearing their expiration date, and other products gathering dust can be a revenue killer. You’ve got excess inventory taking up valuable space on your shelves. Now what?

If you’re looking to free up your shelf space and burn through your excess products quickly, here are a few ideas to maximize your business and make the most out of your inventory.

Sales, Sales, Sales

This sounds incredibly obvious, but there is a method to the madness of a well-timed, well-planned, and well-promoted sale. A flash sale is a great way to unload your extra products, and positing the sale as a one-time event makes customers more inclined to stop by. Leafly users often search their area for local deals, so take advantage of this feature and entice customers into your shop with a flash sale. The FOMO is real!

This is a great time to pull out the oldest inventory from your shelves and put them on full display with a fitting price tag. Particularly in an industry where fresh flower is generally preferred by the consummate cannabis consumer, any cannabis flower that has been sitting on the shelf for more than four or five months is past its prime.

Bottom line: Slap a new price tag on slow-moving products and reinvigorate those sales.

Rearrange Your Inventory

If you’re having trouble moving products, the first step is to make the products more visible. Customers can’t buy what they’re unaware of, right? This can mean moving product to a more prominent location, updating your Leafly menu to highlight special deals, or creating promotional signage for your display cases.

Using products that are particularly eye-catching or displaying products that have bright, attractive branding and marketing is another way to draw attention to a slow-selling product.

An excellent example is Seattle’s Dockside SODO setting out a prominent display of Solstice packs of Obama Kush pre-rolls in February 2016. Stocking up on Obama Kush was likely a great play during the election season for both the retailer and the cultivator, but with sales inevitably slowing after November, putting the Solstice packs on display at the front with a relevantly political DOPE magazine cover attracts the eye and alerts customers to a great deal.

Bottom line: A prominent location and attractive branding can make a product look twice as enticing.

Bundle Your Products

This is a great way to move excess inventory quickly. If you’ve got tons of one product, why not offer a special on multiple units of the item? Consumers are much more drawn to an appealing deal. For example, offering 5 pre-rolls for $25 sounds may be more appealing to the consumer than selling each pre-roll at $5 apiece. Phrasing matters, especially in marketing.

Another way to take advantage of bundling is to pair fast-moving items with less popular items. If, for example, a single infused chocolate bar sells like hotcakes, pairing it with a slower-moving edible at a comparable price makes a sweet deal for an edible-loving cannabis consumer looking to stretch their dollar.

Bottom line: Bundling items that complement each other is another way to maximize your sales.

Find Creative Ways to Advertise

This can mean flyers, postcards, newspaper inserts, drink coasters, and more. A few carefully placed adverts in a prominent and popular location nearby is a great way to get the word out about a new deal or promotion, and placing these advertisements effectively can introduce a whole new subset of customers who might not have otherwise known about your business. However, pay close attention to your state’s cannabis advertising guidelines to make sure your advertisements don’t break any rules.

Bottom line: Effective advertising is key!

Use Social Media to Your Advantage

Placing deals and specials on some of your more active social media channels is a great way to reward loyalty for your followers. This is great for a flash sale or clearance sales on sluggish items. Add a special loyalty rewards code to give your followers and regular customers a discount. The strategy encourages extra business, which means customers will be more likely to frequent your establishment regularly. Reward your loyal customers and they’ll not only more likely to continue shopping at your business, they’re also more likely to recommend your store to their friends in the future.

Bottom line: Word of mouth is a powerful business tool!

Team Up With a Neighboring Business

This trend is popping up more and more frequently. Cannabis businesses face a plethora of restrictions–no giveaways, no freebies, selective advertising–that make it difficult to create an enticing promotion. However, neighboring businesses are a great way to spread the word about your dispensary, as well as spreading goodwill among the neighborhood.

If you’ve got a good business relationship with your neighboring companies, a great way to boost your brand’s visibility is to offer branded swag and merchandise onsite. If your shop doesn’t already have swag, this is definitely a great idea to consider. Branded sunglasses, lighters, lanyards, vape pen batteries, pins, stickers–all of these are enticing goodies that will encourage sales. This is especially useful if there happens to be a head shop, smoke shop, or glass store nearby, with items that complement your inventory.

Bottom line: By combining forces, both businesses reap the benefits and customers get twice as good a deal.

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