Marijuana Business Magazine May-June 2020

May-June 2020 | mjbizdaily.com 57 TIP 1 CREATE REDUNDANCIES IN YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN BY TAPPING U.S. SUPPLIERS. SparqOne Distributor and manufacturer of cannabis products | Los Angeles SparqOne, which serves hundreds of California cannabis business, shifted some of its sourcing of cardboard boxes, child-resistant bags and other packaging and hardware materials from overseas to domestic suppliers. The company’s clients include infused gummy maker Kushy Punch, chocolate maker Mindset Organics and vape companies Church and Smoakland. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Andrew Dorsett, general manager at SparqOne, worked with his executive team to create supply-chain redundancies so the firm had options in the event of international disruptions. “We maintain these partnerships with local and regional suppliers,” Dorsett said. “Every once in a while, we will submit orders to them just to keep that relationship going. …When we have to pivot quickly, we’re able to reach out to these people right away, and they can fulfill what we need.” In January, SparqOne reached out to its domestic partners to let them know it was expecting disruptions from China. The company switched to getting most of its packaging and raw materials from vendors in the western United States. “By making a pivot early, we haven’t had any disruptions,” Dorsett said. “Ev- erybody we deal with has been deemed an essential business in their area due to their support of different types of indus- tries. We’ve been good to go.” TIP 2 GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO CREATE STRONG VENDOR RELATIONSHIPS BY VISITING OVERSEAS SUPPLIERS AND HAVING BOOTS ON THE GROUND. The Blinc Group Vaporizer hardware manufacturer | New York The team at The Blinc Group has a de- cade of experience working with Chinese assemblers and suppliers on vaping prod- ucts. That experience has provided the firm with a greater understanding of how to minimize disruptions from its interna- tional partners, said Blinc CEO Arnaud Dumas de Rauly, who also chairs the International Organi- zation for Standard- ization (ISO) vaping products standards committee. Blinc maintains an apartment in China for U.S. team members who visit the country to meet with international partners. The firm also sponsors the Shenzhen city rugby team and invites associates from its supplier and factory partners to the games. The investment in the local community has reduced communication barriers that other U.S. cannabis businesses face when working with overseas companies, Dumas de Rauly said. “When the coronavirus pandemic was winding down in China, we quickly un- derstood through our discussions with the Shenzhen city government and Guang- dong province that not everyone would be able to immediately open their operations back up,” Dumas de Rauly said. Blinc dedicated two production lines within partner assembly lines to making face masks for the local population. The goodwill effort gave the team leverage to open the rest of the factory for producing its vaping products, he said. “That’s one of the reasons we were able to get operational right after Chinese New Year, whereas a lot of players weren’t (manufacturing) for the entire month of February.” Grove Bags Packaging supplier | Cleveland Grove Bags continued to operate at full capacity in March, running three shifts a day, seven days a week to try to keep up with demand resulting from the lack of packaging available from China. In addition to manufacturing packaging, the Ohio- based company acts as a broker and sources products for customers. Grove Bags was able to fulfill orders in part because of its strong ties to international suppliers, CEO Jack Grover said. Other companies might have struggled to communicate with international suppliers in a crisis or get their orders fulfilled if they demanded the lowest prices and were difficult to work with, Grover said. “A lot of companies got themselves into big trouble by not carrying inventory, not having a good handle on their pack- aging supply chain and not having dedicated partners,” he said. “They didn’t have relationships with vendors. They also didn’t have a lot of vendor loyalty, so they didn’t have their vendor saying, ‘Hey, we’re expecting turbulence here.’” Grove Bags has a team member in Southeast Asia who handles sourcing for the company. He works directly with suppliers. Additionally, Grover and others on his team have flown to meet its international partners.