Camaraderie

Camaraderie uses LeafLink Platform to bring efficiencies to their licensees’ businesses, saving its team $100,000 a year and 80+ hours a week

Since 2018, Camaraderie’s licensees, Syntrophia Colorado & Wheelhouse (MI), which manufacture and sell the Summit, Summit Select, Mayflower Farms, & Sirona Cultivated brands, have built a strong partnership with LeafLink in the states of Colorado and Michigan, centered on cross-collaboration, open communication, and being brand advocates for one another. Today, Camaraderie’s licensees coordinate the process of selling bulk inventory, shipping orders of finished goods to dispensaries, and processing payments, all via LeafLink’s full platform.

LeafLink offers a full turnkey solution that unlocks a world of efficiency, optimization, and cost-savings for Syntrophia and Wheelhouse so that they can automate the entire lifecycle of an order using a single tool, and free up time to focus on what matters most – creating exemplary products and providing the best customer experience to their retail partners. Read below to learn more.

Years in business

6+

in sales on LeafLink

41.5M

Years on LeafLink

5+

Company overview

Founded in 2017 by an eclectic group of individuals that came together because they shared a profound appreciation for the positive effects that cannabis brings to the world, Camaraderie’s first licensee, Syntrophia, initially launched Summit Concentrates in Colorado. Their passion for growing and extracting premium cannabis products is at the core of all that they do. They oversee every step of the production process from clone through finished product, using innovative technology, state-of-the-art facilities, and a lifetime of experience to bring their full suite of products including terpene-rich live resin and live rosin concentrates, rosin sauce vape products, and meticulously grown flower to the ever-expanding cannabis market. Camaraderie relies on an entrepreneurial culture and has built a house of brands including Summit, Summit Select, Mayflower Farms, and Sirona Cultivated.

Product Focus:
Accessories, Cartridges, Concentrates, Edibles & Ingestibles, Flower

The challenge

While adult-use marijuana legalized in Colorado in 2012, Syntrophia first opened its doors in 2017, during a time in which the market was booming and experiencing ever-higher demand. New companies needed to ensure they not only had the supply to meet the growing demand, but that they also had the tools and resources to manage the influx of orders at scale while providing their licensees with easy-to-use, turnkey solutions and SOPs. Additionally, brand exposure, awareness, and easy access for buyers is critical during these early stages, as is building a new audience and developing close customer relationships, which is fundamental in the cannabis industry’s competitive market.

Camaraderie was eager to find an online tool from which their licensees could easily upload and manage their entire product catalog, connect with prospective buyers, and keep track of all their orders using a single system.

The solution

First came Marketplace….
Being LeafLink’s OG market (Fun fact: LeafLink first launched in the state of Colorado!) Syntrophia’s team was already familiar with the LeafLink Marketplace. They didn’t have a sales team at the time and needed a tool they could get up to speed on quickly to receive and approve inbound orders, track order statuses, and digitally share order details and invoices with customers. The LeafLink Marketplace helped increase the brand’s discoverability across hundreds of different dispensaries in the state of Colorado, and within 6 months, they had transacted a little over $2M in order volume for Summit via the platform.

“The initial draw to LeafLink was the marketplace. We wanted our licensees to have a way to get in front of as many dispensaries in the shortest amount of time, build our brand presence, and not have to rely on phone calls and spreadsheets to manage orders.Through LeafLink, they have this one place to manage their entire menu, keep track of all our customer interactions, and update it in real time as new products come in…it’s a really seamless experience overall. Once we were ready to expand in Michigan with our licensee, Wheelhouse, we already had a B2B platform we were comfortable with. We have a handful of different licenses and brands across multiple markets, and LeafLink makes it easy to manage the brand as a single entity across multiple businesses in different markets.” – Cooper Gillespie, Director of Sales and Marketing, Camaraderie Brands

Soon after, the Camaraderie team purchased both myBI and MarketScape, LeafLink’s Insights tools that convey both account-level and market-specific analytics – helping cannabis operators understand what their current and prospective customers value, establish performance benchmarks across their entire organization, and leverage those findings to inform their sales and procurement strategies.

“You could call me a power-user of LeafLink. I’m constantly using it, and it is always open on either my phone, tablet, or laptop. MyBI plays a crucial role in helping us monitor the performance of the sales teams, plan effective sales tactics and analyze the progress of the entire business. We can easily slice and dice the data to see what top customers are purchasing, and I’m probably saving 2-5 hours a week from not having to manually build these reports. I’m downloading these reports all the time and frequently present them in investor meetings to show the growth trajectory and price movement of our brands.”

“MarketScape takes it a step further by analyzing top trends in the entire market. It’s a great way to know how we’re stacking up against our competitors, and what everyone is stocking up on. We are able to stay ahead of the curve, and this was especially useful when strategizing on how to enter the Michigan market. It’s great to know what consumers are buying and where.”

Then came Payments….
Around the same time, Syntrophia found that a lot of dispensaries were demanding payment net terms from its sellers, so they could order more, pay later, and keep more cash on hand. This became a common practice as dispensaries were eager to keep up with the increased demand of consumers. Camaraderie’s licensees wanted to offer net terms to its retail partners, but increasing production and expansion efforts while perpetually waiting on dispensaries to pay up created an ongoing cash crunch. They needed access to funds quickly and efficiently to easily make payroll, manufacture more products, and invest in the growth of their business.

Syntrophia began using LeafLink Flexible Payments, becoming one of the earliest adopters of LeafLink Payments in Colorado. This meant that they could offer net terms to their customers but still get paid quickly following delivery confirmation – LeafLink assumes all the risk and works directly with each individual buyer to handle payment collection so that the seller’s payment is guaranteed. With Payments, Syntrophia speeds up their time-to-cash so they can allocate the working capital into other facets of their business, centralize and simplify their Accounts Receivable processes, and give their customers more purchasing power with an approved line of credit.

“One of the biggest advantages to using LeafLink is streamlining and speeding up our Accounts Receivable process. We’re in an industry where a lot of buyers dictate the terms, sometimes as much as 60 days, and we have to comply if we want to do business with those customers. But that leaves us with a cash flow problem. We really needed to find a way to fast track payment collection. LeafLink Payments has made our cash flow more predictable, and contributed to a really strong relationship with key customers. Collecting the funds digitally and having all of our invoices live in one centralized place has also been a huge time-saver for us. We essentially went from having a full-time AR position to a part-time position that works about 15 hours a week on collecting and processing payment – that’s at least $20K in savings annually!” – Cooper Gillespie, Director of Sales and Marketing, Camaraderie Brands

Then came Logistics…bringing efficiencies to all!
In 2022, LeafLink partnered up with Green Parcel Service to expand its offering in Colorado. We introduced the market to LeafLink Logistics, a software-enabled, B2B cannabis delivery service, in which brands can easily schedule shipments to anywhere in the state, as orders come in on LeafLink Marketplace. Our industry-leading tech, combined with GPS’s best-in-class cannabis transportation and compliance experts, offers operators a quick, reliable, and cost-effective solution that gets their inventory to customers in record-time.

Syntrophia was already leveraging GPS for their wholesale cannabis shipments, so when they came to learn about the new LeafLink partnership, they were ecstatic to bring another core part of their operations into the LeafLink platform. Not only has the new offering stopped the team from toggling between multiple systems, but it has also made it easier to manage and track the entire order lifecycle, from when it is placed on the Marketplace to when it is delivered to the storefront of their customers. No orders go unaddressed, the fulfillment workstream is streamlined, and customers are notified when their deliveries are on the way.

“I am able to get orders out the door so much quicker now that our delivery services have been outsourced to LeafLink. My team uses the LeafLink Shipping Dashboard over 50 hours a week, and the end-to-end workflow from receiving the order to preparing it for shipment is super seamless in the app. Not having to toggle between the LeafLink and GPS systems is huge. It gives me time back in my day to ensure that I’m prepping the orders for delivery correctly.” – Migdaly Franco, Fulfillment Manager, Syntrophia Colorado

“I can’t begin to tell you how easily the tech assimilated into our existing fulfillment operations with GPS. It makes getting things out the door easy and way less confusing for our Fulfillment team. It also means less headcount since everything is so streamlined, accounting for at least one less full-time employee on our fulfillment team. I can’t imagine our business functioning without LeafLink at this point!” – Anne Leigh Gilmore, Director of Operations, Syntrophia Colorado

Over the years, Camaraderie and its licensees have obtained tremendous value from LeafLink, simplifying the complex supply chain processes of the cannabis industry for its licensees. Without having to manually manage every step of the process, they can spend more time cultivating and extracting exceptional products while providing better customer service and using a single system to manage the entire order workflow – from inventory management to shipping to payment.

“LeafLink is at the crux of everything we do and how our licensees get their products to retailers. It is the WAY we conduct business. We use it to manage inventory of finished goods, process orders, accept digital transactions, track Accounts Receivables, and deliver orders to their customers. LeafLink is a trusted partner and has always been willing to go above and beyond to help. The entire order process is centralized into a single, highly-efficient B2B system. Across the board, I estimate that each of our licensees is saving at least $100,000 a year by outsourcing these different aspects of operations to LeafLink.” – Cooper Gillespie, Director of Sales and Marketing, Camaraderie Brands

“Cannabis is a challenging industry in numerous ways. We have handcuffs on us all the time. Having a partner that’s constantly innovating to find new, creative solutions to assist the industry is extremely important for us. We are grateful for the ongoing partnership and how much time and cost-savings we’ve seen along the way. We are continually looking forward to seeing their capabilities expand.”

The results

Annual cost-savings

$100K

Hours saved weekly

80+

Delivery on-time rate for LeafLink Logistics

98%

LeafLink is automating workflows that are required for wholesale cannabis orders to be submitted, fulfilled, and purchased in a single, integrated experience, so that cannabis operators can reduce costs, increase efficiency, and focus on scaling their businesses. Reach out to sales@leaflink.com to learn more!