A mystery that's no mystery at all

Takes on High Times' Top Brands of 2023, Pt 8: West Coast Alchemy

From High Times:

“It’s hard to say if anyone else in the game right now has a higher output or longer reach than West Coast Alchemy. Even message boards out in Europe are filled with people trying to figure out what jars to try and cop.

These guys push an impressive amount of jars out a day and never seem to have any problems dropping new flavors and cutting-edge single-origin cultivars. Though finding them online might take wading through a pool of fakes, these jars never fail to deliver on flavor since they partner with some of the best names in the scene right now.

The recent drops with Pure Melt have been incredible and worth the hunt for scooping a couple jars.”

Original post here.

BrandDOPE POV

This is a relatively short post, even though analyzing hashmasters West Coast Alchemy (WCA) took twice as long as any of our prior studies. Can you guess why? Stay tuned for a surprise ending that shouldn’t be much of a surprise. PLUS: A special epilogue commentary that closes the loop.

As established, we came across the coverage of WCA in High Times and found another few articles that mentioned the brand, including recaps of their famous collab with The Ten Co’s Blue Zushi as covered in our last post.

Jumped to Reddit, where there are dozens if not hundreds of posts and mostly raves about WCA, which is impressive considering the jaded nature of the platform (though to be fair, Redditors seem pretty honest, not to mention passionate, about cannabis).

Big reputation. Big reputation…

Through the press and Reddit, we learned that WCA has collabed with a. number of other brands as well, including:

• Dee Thai (as noted in another of our posts)

• The Firm

• Kaya Farms

• Feel Good

• ABR Farms

• TheGardenboyz710

• Cutright Cannabis

• Mendoja Farms

Further enticed, we proceeded to Google and were ready to dig in when the story took a turn.

The brand’s site doesn’t have domain authority. Ok. That can happen. Still, the #1 ranked URL is a dodgy-looking LA delivery service that doesn’t exist in Leafly.

The brand’s site ranks next, only… it’s not the brand site. Not only isn’t it the brand site, but it’s likely a scam — unless the global and US delivery of cannabis-based hash secretly became legal and we missed it. (Another tell here: payments are only accepted from Zelle, Apple, and CashApp.) The next site was another fake/questionable national delivery service.

As a sanity check, we stepped back and Googled WCA images Again, this brand does seem to exist. YouTube confirms as much, too.

OK, so there IS no brand site.

Edgy approach, but not unprecedented. These days, IG may be enough for a consumer brand — assuming the marketing team can keep the account from being taken down.

Speaking of which, there are multiple WCA accounts on IG — all of which appear to be fakes

That’s a lot of shenanigans. Clearly, there’s something to be gained in pretending to be this brand.

Several fakes use what looks like a retro “West Coast” graffiti-style logo vs the 40’s monogram stamp/guild logo (has a bit of a vintage VW vibe) that appears on all the products we’ve seen.

The most followed fake IG (23K+) drives to a Telegram account that we shall not discuss, but sufficed to say does not or no longer appears to offer craft extracts.

Discouraged, we bounced to the big menus, but there was little positive reinforcement to be found.

Nothing on Jane. Nothing on Leafly. Got a hit on Weedmaps for the DeeThai gummy collab. No resin, but the find did reinforce that collabs would/should show in menu searches. To that point, a Cannmenus search — which has 70% POS coverage in CA (soon to be 80%+) did not log any WCA sales.

So where does that leave us?

Clearly, WCA is a thing. But why would they have zero official brand channels? And where are these collabs distributed?

Now don’t call us crazy… but is it possible that WCA operates outside the realm of legal cannabis?

How could that be, though? Surely, while informal networks of illicit cannabis dealers still exist, it’s not as if there’s enough size and structure in the black/grey market to support what looks like an expert, less-than-legal extract brand with some real scale?

For a brand like that to flourish, it would require selling with the mass efficiency of… of a network of illicit retail partners.

And how could THAT be? THAT would require dozens… maybe hundreds of illegal retail storefronts, living, breathing, and transacting in broad daylight. Law enforcement wouldn’t allow that. Nor would state and federal departments of taxation. Nor would the tens of thousands of people who are deeply, professionally, and personally invested in legal cannabis sales.

Admittedly, that’s an outlandish picture we just painted. Still, with the incredibly remote chance that this far-fetched scenario is true, what would the lesson be for regular old adult-use cannabis marketers?

Simple: it’s a reminder.

The market you know… The market you’re tracking… The market you’re measuring yourself against is probably not the whole market.

Researchers say there are significant differences between legal and illicit market buyers, with most overlap occurring in the high volume, high-frequency, highly price-sensitive segment.

But we think there’s more overlap than that. Because in a world where… Or, more specifically, in markets where — theoretically — legal and illegal retail are equally convenient, equally polished, and offer equal selection and quality of products…

In many major metros, any canna-consumer can be and probably is an illicit market buyer.

Let the seller beware.

Addendum:

"Your assessment of their brand is spot on. At the end of the day, they are a black market brand. They don’t want a website or menus or anything because that leaves a trail. 

They are all word of mouth and they have the biggest heady boys talking about them through their own IG and Snapchat channels. They are like a Supreme type brand with the cult following they have. 

It’s very high quality product and they command a high price point, usually $100+ per gram. 

There’s this notion now that you can actually find a higher quality product on the illicit market than the legal market because the legal guys have all these cost hurdles of taxes and overhead while a black market guys can put all their resources into their product and push it out through their network of 'distributors.' 

Also this heady crowd believes the best extractors are the OGs that have been around and stuck to the black market in Cali. The people in the black market care about the plant and process while the legal guys 'are just suits on a cash grab.'"

-- Wesley Donahoe, CMO, Co-Founder, The 9th Block

Do you have additional thoughts on this brand? Have you seen more of their marketing? Can you help connect the dots? Please share your knowledge, takes, questions, and/or examples so we can build on this post.

• Sales estimates via Cannmenus and their real-time dispensary menu data. Don’t sell weed without it.

• Shoutout to Carree Syrek, social marketing guru extraordinaire, for contributing to this post.

• Shoutout to Kaelan Donadio and Wesley Donahoe at The 9th Block for contributing to this post. They know their cannabis marketing cold

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BrandDOPE is a running collection, analysis, and dialogue around cannabis brands and marketing.

Analysis is based on findings from publicly available desk research.

BrandDOPE is led by Todd Lowe, a veteran brand strategist and digital marketer. Todd is a Senior Advisor at Tuatara Capital, one of the cannabis industry's leading private investment managers — currently overseeing over $390 million in cannabis-focused assets. Tuatara’s portfolio companies include Kiva Brands, Willie’s Reserve/Remedy, Green Dot Labs, Hana, GreenFlower, Demetrix, and many more.

BrandDOPE’s opinions are its own and do not reflect the perspectives of anyone else, including Tuatara Capital and its portfolio companies, as well as Cannmenus.