2020 Azbee Awards of Excellence

Category

All Content > Company Profile > Less Than $3 Million Revenue > Heartland

Awarded to

Jim Gilbride, Publisher; Noelle Skodzinski, Editorial Director; Michelle Simakis, Editor; Brian MacIver, Senior Editor; Paul Barbagallo, Contributor

Entry details

Dan's Gambit

Issue or publication date: July 2019
Publication name: Cannabis Business Times
Publishing company: GIE Media
Website home page: www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com

Please describe the publication's mission and readership:

Cannabis Business Times' mission is to provide state-legal cannabis cultivation businesses with strategic information, news and legislative updates and analysis that help them more effectively and profitably run their businesses—from both a cultivation and business perspective—and navigate a brand-new, high-risk (due largely to its federally illegal status, but also ever-changing state regulations), and uniquely challenged industry. We serve a variety of business types, from small outdoor grows in the California market to large-scale grows in states with advanced medical marijuana programs and/or adult-use laws (for recreational cannabis). Our readers also range from cultivators/head growers, who may or may not also be the business owners, to investors and business owners, who have little or no cultivation background. We strive to provide articles, research, case studies/profiles and interviews that ensure our coverage serves our entire audience.
We currently reach 18,000+ cannabis cultivators and cultivation businesses in North America through our print magazine and more than 30,000 with our e-newsletter.

Please describe the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

This profile tells the story of a cannabis company trying to find its place in a market already filled with giants. Tantalus Labs is a newcomer on the Canadian cannabis scene: as other licensed producers (LPs) rushed to build facilities and raise funds through public offerings ahead of adult-use legalization on October 17, 2018, Dan Sutton, Tantalus Labs' CEO, navigated his company through the challenges of remaining an independent, privately-funded operation. And while those other LPs zigged by using raised funds to rapidly scale to meet projected market demands, Sutton zagged, capping the size of his operation at 125,000 square feet (once fully built out). Instead, he's focusing on the more uncertain route of developing and licensing cannabis genetics.

In his first profile of a cannabis cultivation operation, Paul Barbagallo scoured all possible sources of information, from tweets to Ted Talks, in addition to conducting extensive interviews with Sutton and other experts, including lawyers with expertise in cannabis patent law. In all, this story serves our readership by showing that there isn't just one way to be successful as a cultivator and that those who are willing to take big risks might be setting themselves up for even bigger rewards.

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