Cannabis consumer marketplace Leafly and e-commerce platform Jane today announced a strategic partnership to create an improved retail experience for consumers and dispensaries alike. This merger will allow Leafly and Jane’s technology solutions to offer dispensaries powerful tools to sync online e-commerce with in-store inventory — something that is sorely lacking in the cannabis world and can also instill consumer trust in the online shopping experience, build stronger customer acquisition tools for retailers, and help dispensaries grow their e-commerce capabilities with consistency and automation.
Legal weed shoppers face some challenges when a handful of different apps report to show the inventory of local dispensaries and yet, the online menus often do not line up with the store’s real-time inventory. What’s more, sometimes other dispensaries have different ways of listing the same product. There’s a good reason for the dispensaries: there’s not an industry-standard UPC barcode and the dispensaries often have hundreds of fast-moving SKUs from dozens of vendors.
The first initiative of this strategic partnership is the integration of Jane into Leafly Menu Solutions so that retailers can manage online menus from both companies in a single, centralized location on the Jane platform, reducing time and resources spent on menu management. Retailers can choose to have Jane power real-time menu updates on Leafly.com for dispensaries utilizing both platforms. Jane’s product catalog, Leafly’s strain database and verified reviews from both platforms will come together to attract and engage new customers.
“Trust is the cornerstone of online shopping,” said Leafly CEO Yoko Miyashita. “The Leafly marketplace provides trustworthy, up-to-date cannabis information to help customers shop with confidence and delivers those customers through retailers’ doors. That information and connection with retailers coupled with Jane’s leading product catalog and B2B tools will power the explosion of online ordering for retailers throughout North America.”
Both Jane and Leafly rule the cannabis world. Over the past year, Jane powered over 17 million orders and $2 billion in cannabis sales. Jane is the trusted e-commerce partner for over 1,800 dispensaries and brands across 34 state markets. More than 120 million people visit the Leafly consumer marketplace each year to learn about and shop for cannabis products. In 2020, more than 4,500 cannabis retailers in North America leveraged the Leafly platform to bring new customers in the door.
However, despite the successes, Leafly experienced a rough patch in 2020 with layoffs and leadership changes. Yoko Miyashita took over as the company’s CEO in August 2020 and has been focused on Leafly leaning heavily into building a better online shopping experience.
Due to the cannabis business being under federal prohibition, there isn’t an Amazon of weed or even a Shopify of weed. With Leafly and Jane’s merger, the cannabis industry comes closer to a modern e-commerce business. With Jane’s ability to standardize and auto-populate product listings, and Leafly’s deep point of sale integrations, both the consumer and dispensary sees benefits.