A potential recession. Supply chain volatility. Stalled SAFE Banking Act. No federal legalization. Restrictive laws. High taxes. Despite all of these challenges, cannabis cultivators can succeed in this ever-changing industry.

By benchmarking the strategies used by winning cannabis cultivators and setting up a plan to effectively navigate through economic uncertainty and supply chain volatility, your grow business can survive and thrive.

With that said, let’s take a look at what needs to go into your plan to beat a recession and supply chain volatility.

Planning for Economic Uncertainty

During the MJBizCon opening session in Las Vegas last month, MJBiz CEO Chris Walsh shared a recap of the current U.S. cannabis market and predictions for the future. A number of macroeconomic forces were listed among the concerns and challenges he mentioned, including inflation, a stock market slump, the war in Ukraine, and an overall investment pullback.

Successfully navigating through economic obstacles starts with a plan to increase sales using psychology and strategic investments. What worked when the economy was strong and business was great won’t be as effective when the economy slumps. To create your strategy, you need to look no further than the not-so-distant past.

During the recession of 2009, Harvard Business Review published a fantastic article, How to Market in a Downturn, that is worth reading. Both B2B and B2C businesses, including cannabis cultivators, need to understand how consumers, and thus, marketing change when the economy falters in order to get through challenging times successfully.

Bottom-line, you can protect and even increase sales during times of economic uncertainty, but you need to make some fundamental changes in your strategic thinking, processes, and investments to do so successfully.

Planning for Supply Chain Volatility

Economic uncertainty typically brings supply chain volatility in the form of shortages, delays, and higher prices. If you haven’t already future-proofed your business from supply chain shortages, then you need to do it now before problems arise.

Here are three key areas that you need to plan for in order to make sure supply chain volatility doesn’t negatively affect your business:

1. Vendors

Many vendors that cultivators rely on are bracing for an upcoming recession by keeping their own inventory levels as low as possible. This will affect your nimbleness and your ability to get what you need when you need it.

However, that’s not happening at bio365. We’re not reducing our inventory levels. As a growing company, we always anticipate growth, not retraction. To that end, we manage our supply chain differently than other vendors. We always keep a large buffer on hand and will remain reliable through a recession or other challenging times. Other vendors may not.

Recessions make everything unpredictable. Some things related to the supply chain tighten up as companies downsize, and some things may loosen up. Either way, it takes a lot of planning, but if you choose bio365 as your grow media supplier, we’ll take care of it all for you.

2. Inputs

With economic factors making supply chain volatility and higher prices more likely in the future, it’s essential that cannabis cultivators use inputs judiciously. Even better, use bio365 soil, so you don’t need to add a lot of inputs to grow healthier plants and achieve higher crop yields.

3. Grow Media

If you’ve been listening to news reports and conversations recently, then you may have heard that peat is going to continue to be in short supply in the future – even in a recession - because the entire supply is already sold out for the next six months at a minimum.

Peat shortages and supply chain delays started back in 2020. Two bad peat harvests in a row coupled with laws that restrict peat harvesting quantities each season meant a lack of supply grew exponentially when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

To fix the peat shortage problem, you need to diversify or switch your suppliers without impacting consistency. That’s what bio365 did. We proactively diversified and switched our peat suppliers early, and our peat supply continues to come in without delays.

We’ve never stopped taking orders despite ongoing peat shortages because we planned ahead and took strategic steps to ensure economic uncertainty and supply chain volatility did not negatively affect our business or our customers.

Key Takeaways about How Cannabis Cultivators Can Beat Economic Uncertainty and Supply Chain Volatility

In his MJBizCon opening remarks, Chris Walsh cited multiple macroeconomic factors that could negatively impact the cannabis industry, but the picture isn’t entirely bleak. With the right plans, cannabis cultivators can survive – and maybe even thrive despite – the economic and supply chain obstacles coming in the future.

At bio365, we’ve proven we can do it, and we’ve worked with many cannabis cultivators to help them succeed too. Contact us to learn how switching to bio365 grow media can help your cultivation business weather the storm of economic uncertainty and supply chain volatility and come out even stronger on the other side.

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