High Life Farms

High Life Farms Partners with LeafLink to Take the Burden Out of Distributing Samples, Sees a 3X ROI

Distributing trade samples is a very time-consuming task and comes with a lot of costly, operational headaches. In Michigan, state laws prevent brands like High Life Farms from being able to self-distribute products above a certain threshold, which means they have to rely on a third-party transportation provider to deliver their products of high quantity — samples included. A major challenge with this approach is reaching an order volume large enough to achieve viable unit economics on deliveries, since there is no price differentiation between delivering a standard order and delivering a trade sample. The high cost of delivery becomes difficult to justify.

As a workaround, High Life Farms would rely on their Sales Team to deliver these trade samples, but that meant cutting into meeting times with customers and limiting the number of retailers they could distribute trade samples to within a given month.

See how LeafLink’s Sample Program takes the burden out of distributing samples in the cannabis industry, and gives brands the opportunity to cultivate relationships with new retailers by giving them access to our extensive retail and logistics networks!

Company overview

High Life Farms is a national privately held, vertically integrated cannabis company based in Michigan with operations in California. Their best-in-class portfolio includes cultivation, manufacturing, distribution, in-house brands, brand partnerships, white labeling solutions, and ownership stakes in numerous dispensaries. The company believes in the cannabis plant's potential to improve health, wellness, and happiness, and that everyone should have the right to make choices that improve their personal wellbeing.

Since recreational use was passed in 2018, Michigan’s cannabis market has exploded. One in five Michigan residents use cannabis today, and retail sales totaled $1 billion in 2020. As the state continues to issue licenses and the number of cannabis dispensaries continues to grow, brands are eager to find ways to create more awareness of their products, and build customer loyalty.

The challenges

Sending trade samples to retailers is standard practice in the cannabis industry, and an important step in the product discovery process, allowing retailers to see whether products have a good nose, taste, and high. It’s especially useful for budtenders, who do a majority of the heavy lifting by recommending products directly to customers in-store. Once a retailer can determine that a new product will serve their end-consumers, they are more likely to commit to larger orders and become brand advocates.

Unfortunately, distributing trade samples is a very time-consuming task and comes with a lot of costly, operational headaches. In Michigan, state laws prevent brands like High Life Farms from being able to self-distribute products above a certain threshold, which means they have to rely on a third-party transportation provider to deliver their products of high quantity — samples included. A major challenge with this approach is reaching an order volume large enough to achieve viable unit economics on deliveries, since there is no price differentiation between delivering a standard order and delivering a trade sample. The high cost of delivery becomes difficult to justify.

As a workaround, High Life Farms would rely on their Sales Team to deliver these trade samples, but that meant cutting into meeting times with customers and limiting the number of retailers they could distribute trade samples to within a given month. Another challenge was mapping back ROI to their sample distribution, as it would require them to have a data management system that can aggregate sales and automatically map them back to respective sample recipients.

LeafLink’s Sample Program offers brands new retailer relationships, efficiency, and transparency

Luckily, High Life Farms found a solution by using LeafLink’s Samples Program, which gives brands access to our extensive retail and logistics networks. LeafLink can ensure cost-effectiveness by delivering trade samples to retailers that are already part of our scheduled routes. LeafLink can also guarantee sample delivery to at least 100 unique retailers over the course of 4 weeks while offering brands prime advertising placements within the LeafLink platform, all for a one-time, flat fee. More importantly, LeafLink is able to deliver meaningful ROI reports, so that brands can easily stitch together data to prove that these efforts are growing their customer base and driving sales.

As cannabis continues to grow and brands are increasingly time-constrained, LeafLink’s Samples Program also gives brands the opportunity to cultivate relationships with new retailers by expanding their reach. In High Life’s case, brand ambassadors will follow up with retailers following the delivery of trade samples to serve as an additional educational resource that effectively communicates the value of their products, strengthening the relationship even more.

“LeafLink’s Sample Program allowed us to enter dispensaries that we may not have been able to reach under normal circumstances. The onboarding for our internal staff, and the daily communication and intake of products has been very smooth and efficient. We look forward to leveraging LeafLink for trade sample distribution throughout 2022!"

Erin Mulkeran | Product Manager, High Life Farms

Key Results

After leveraging this program twice across the span of two months, High Life Farms saw a 3X ROI.

Number of unique retailers that purchased a sample product: 19

Total sales of sample products: $45K

Return on investment: 300%

As the Michigan cannabis market continues to grow and evolve and competition becomes even more fierce, brands like High Life Farms will need to invest less time in business operations, and more time in establishing strong, long-term, mutually beneficial relationships. Data will continue to be an essential component of this, as it improves operational efficiencies and validates the effectiveness of marketing outreach and initiatives. With LeafLink’s Samples Program, High Life Farms can rest assured that their samples will be delivered to licensed retailers quickly and efficiently, paired with a user-friendly online interface that will give them detailed, real-time insights into sales and key performance metrics.

Interested in learning more about LeafLink’s Samples Program? Reach out to marketingservices@leaflink.com to get started!