ERP030 - Canadian Cannabis Industry w/ Dan Sutton

Welcome to Evolve Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. Joining me on the podcast today is Dan Sutton, who's a vocal leader in the BC Cannabis industry. Dan started Tantalus Labs, a cannabis production company in 2012. Dan has been a strong supporter of greenhouse-based production of cannabis, and today we talk about the social and financial impacts of that approach. We also discussed the fast dissolving social and professional stigmas associated with cannabis. Canada is expected to federally legalize cannabis in 2018. The Canadian market alone is expected to be worth $7 billion. Dan and his team hope to position sun-grown BC Bud as a market leader in that industry. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast from. Also, be sure to check out the webpage evolvedmgmt.com/podcast for show notes, links to my guests, and check out previous episodes. Now, let's get started. Joining to me today is the CEO of Tantalus Labs, Dan Sutton. And welcome to the podcast, Dan. Great to be here, Todd. Thanks so much for the opportunity. Great. I really interested to have this conversation. Uh, as everyone is aware, the cannabis industry is growing fast, North America, worldwide, and is really opening up in Canada. Uh, what I wanted to start with from you is Tantalus Labs, the company that you started, actually started in 2012, which is pretty far ahead of the curve from what we now view as um, modern legalization and uh big business, a lot of people are getting on board, lots of money flowing around in the cannabis industry. 2012, what was your vision for what would eventually become the the modern cannabis industry? Yeah, 2012 was a really interesting year in my life. I I was pretty young, I was 26 years old and I was working as an investor relations director for a large software company. Uh, so I had the responsibility of kind of telling their story to the broader public market. And uh it was really exciting and there was a lot wrapped up in that title. I think I had a lot of my own ego wrapped up in that in that title. So, you know, having the cannabis opportunity in its really formative stages come across my desk, it was a pretty massive leap for me to say, hey, this seems like a really awesome full-time opportunity. Uh especially when no one else was really talking about it. Uh but those initial first weeks of me learning that essentially uh the federal government was putting out these consultation documents. to discuss what would eventually become the MMPR and then the ACMPR. which is essentially a large commercial scale production framework uh enabling medical patients to access more centralized production resources. I saw these things as they were kind of framing up and I was like, well, who is going to be approaching this opportunity? Uh it's probably not going to be big pharma because this is a pretty small industry or at least the medical cannabis industry in Canada was projected at that time to be maybe a $300 or $400 million a year aggregate opportunity. Uh and big agriculture probably, you know, wouldn't really be in the business of approaching uh venture capital or venture startups in quite the same way. And so I kind of felt like it would fall to dark horse entrepreneurs. And being from British Columbia, you know, I know a fair amount about our cannabis history and our cannabis culture and I also happen to have a pretty good network of agricultural professionals. Uh and so I sort of said, well, look, this is a new opportunity, this is a chance to bring the British Columbian agricultural science community, which really is, you know, one of the most cutting edge agricultural science communities. in the world, together with the British Columbian cannabis community, which in my opinion is certainly the most advanced cannabis cultivation, uh, I guess collection of minds and brains in the world. And and that was really how it all how it all started, uh, was staying up at night and thinking, you know, this really could be one of the largest opportunities for British Columbia in our history and uh I wanted to be at the forefront of that. Did you have a sense that that Canada would eventually be leading towards legalization or was your interest just purely on servicing that the the medical marijuana space originally when you got into that? I mean, certainly in the early stages of financial modeling, like we developed it to be defensible in a medical only scenario. And and, you know, I talked to a lot of mentors and I myself had sort of probably believed in the eventuality and the social impetus of legalization of, you know, adult use cannabis since I was a teenager. Uh, but I always sort of thought it might be a bit altruistic, like, you know, the governments are it's tough to wrap their head around why legalization is necessary and and the social problems that legalization could address. And I guess my position was if if the government was aware of this and they were incentivized to do it, they probably would have done it in the 70s. Um, so I I will say that, you know, when we first caught wind that Justin Trudeau was campaigning uh on a platform that included legalization. everyone got really excited because even if the liberals were to lose, at least it would still become a mainstream political issue. Uh and yes, Tantalus Labs was founded before Washington and Colorado legalized cannabis, so this is kind of been uh we've been pushed into it. We're very excited about it all use recreational legalization, but it certainly broadened our scope and demanded that we broaden our scope uh really exponentially. So it's it's super exciting, uh if not a bit intimidating because, you know, Tantalus Labs, for instance, is is one of the foremost firms in British Columbia. And we're we're a very small company, we only have, you know, 12 or 15 employees depending on how you count it today and and we've really got a huge responsibility on our shoulders to lead the charge into this legalization uh ambitious platform. Yeah. opportunity is where the risk is in a lot of ways, right? Absolutely. So you've got a a large facility, a fairly large facility, I guess, in in the the phrase of Valley, uh in Maple Ridge, correct? That is correct. And I mean, it's really large in the context of a purpose-built cannabis greenhouse, we spent about two and a half years designing systems that were very specific to the cannabis plant. Of course, there are far larger greenhouses out there, but those greenhouses uh are all conversions, they were used for, you know, sometimes a period of multiple decades. to cultivate things like pointsettas or tomatoes or other bedding plants. And so our facility at 75,000 square feet is certainly one of the largest cannabis tailored uh industrial greenhouses on earth. Were you very purposeful about it being greenhouse-based from the beginning or was that something that was vetted out through the opportunity as you as you came about it developing the company? So that is a great question and I will answer this question candidly for for the first time, it's actually the first time anyone has asked me that in an interview. I knew very little, I I actually still know very little about cannabis agriculture relative to my peers, relative to my co-workers. I've learned a lot over the last five years, over the last six years. But uh at the outset, I knew very little about it and only knew really that it was sort of grown in these uh indoor controlled environments with artificial lighting. And so that was the premise probably for the first three months that I brought to my agricultural advisory board and brought to my collaborators. And I said, uh, you know, what do you guys think of this? We could build these grow sheds and we could have big grow sheds on agricultural land. And and luckily my early advisory board that did include uh my uncle, Dr. Ben Sutton, who's a 40-year veteran of the silver culture business, which is forest seedlings, said, this is crazy. Why would you grow this stuff inside? And I said, well, I can't really answer that. I just know that that's how we it's always been done. Uh and then we started running some metrics on environmental cost reduction and then we started running some metrics on financial cost reduction and uh it was actually a pretty quick transition for me to say, okay, the greenhouses are going to be harder to secure, the greenhouses are going to be harder to control environmentally, but ultimately that's where the opportunity is. If we can broach both of those gaps, our cost of production is so much lower and the potential quality of our output is so much higher. Because we're getting higher intensities of full spectrum sunlight to the plants leaves and as a result, the upside on quality is uh substantially better in greenhouses. So yes, in my naivete, I did think that perhaps growing indoors was going to be the best path forward and and many people acted on that assumption without really breaking it down to first principles. But I was lucky to have some awesome agricultural mentors that helped advise me. And uh as a result, the greenhouse was the go-to philosophy, I think probably, you know, after month three of our exploratory phase. Okay. Interesting. Um, I I watched uh the TEDx uh talk that you gave about the environmental and social impacts and especially the energy use is something I had I hadn't even really considered. Um, but it's absolutely massive, I think what um I remember quoting from you in that. is you suggested uh of the total power production in California, 3% goes towards the agricultural production of specifically marijuana, was that was that what that number was? That's absolutely correct and that's a number that comes from uh Dr. Evan Mills, who's an environmental researcher that did spend some time focused on the cannabis industry. It's, you know, thoroughly peer-reviewed and vetted and and that's a very scary statistic. I mean, when you think of California, that's a massive energy consuming state. Uh and it is it is true today that today even the 90% of the cannabis in North America is cultivated indoors. And there's no rational reason agriculturally, environmentally or economically to do that, except for stealth. And so that's really the opportunity that legalization presents is, you know, literally and figuratively to get this stuff out of the shadows and into the light. So it's interesting because um as you said, a lot of it comes from uh stealth and and security of the grower, that traditionally being the case. Um, can you walk me through how that runs kind of counter to what people are talking about um innovation in agricultural uh uh space in general. about, you know, creating uh containers and uh uh vertical growth and and uh small footprints and with usually hydroponic operations and how the the economies of scale kind of fit between those. Yeah, that's a really excellent question. And and, you know, full disclosure, this is kind of broaching the edge of my knowledge and subject matter expertise because I I really do focus on greenhouse cannabis. And that's where, you know, I think the greatest opportunity for agricultural innovation in the cannabis context is. Uh simply because it's been so under explored. But my understanding of vertical farming is it's really ideal for crops that are first of all not very high, they don't grow, you know, more than a few inches tall. Crops that are optimized early in their life cycle, so things like, you know, uh sprouts or cabbages that they they grow really, really fast. in the first few weeks of their grow cycle and then they're that growth, you know, the returns the the returns to scale are diminishing over time. So, um, that lends itself really well to a vertical production system that requires not a lot of light and quite a lot of water. Uh whereas the cannabis plant, you know, when it's vegetating, it's growing faster than bamboo, it's probably, you know, up to an inch a day in in the apex sun grown environment. And and so vertical farming and kind of pod farming that would be really good and and not as energy intensive. uh for a smaller crop or a crop that, you know, is only going to be grown to kind of a week or two of its life cycle. Uh it it those are a lot more advantageous in my understanding. Uh whereas as cannabis, I think the real problem with growing cannabis indoors is not just that you're using artificial light, I mean, the artificial light is inferior quality and it's very energy intensive, but it also kicks off a lot of heat and then you have to use AC. So now we're having a a kind of doubling up of the power necessary to keep the environment in a homeostasis relative to the amount of light and the amount of heat. And then that AC, it affects humidity and sometimes in the plant's life cycle, it actually reduces the humidity too low, sometimes in the plant's life cycle, the humidity is too high. And so now we're bringing dehumidifiers and it's sort of this this continually kicking the can down the road, like if I got a prescription for opioids and they, you know, fucked up my sleep patterns, so then I needed a sleeping pills and then that fucked up my digestive tract. Am I allowed to swear on this by the way? Yeah, absolutely. We're all adults. We're all adults. I I have a habit of cussing a blue streak, I I was a rugby player for 15 years, so when I'm really excited about something, you'll notice the swear start to come out. Uh, but anyway, yeah, you know, like you're you're borrowing from Peter to pay Paul on this whole energy sink. Uh and as a result, it's not just the lighting that's drawing so much power from the grid, it's all of these other systems that you're using to counteract the negative effects that the lights are having in the grow environment. Yeah, interesting. I mean, if it's meant to grow in nature, so grow it in nature. Otherwise, you're trying to build a complex system in inside, right? It does make sense. We talk a lot about technology and we've explored, you know, so many potential productivity augmentation or cost reduction strategies that, you know, have really interesting technological uh thinking that builds around them. But, you know, the more we think it through, the more it comes back to the reality that we are trying to get these plants an optimal configuration of light, water and nutrients. And the best light comes from the sun and the best water comes from the rain. And the best nutrients are the simplest and most natural nutrients you use. And that's the funny thing is that nature evolved this way, like it figured itself out over arguably three and a half billion years, I guess we're looking at the history of plant life. algae even you could consider and and yeah, this is the closer we can get to emulating the world around us. especially in Southwestern British Columbia, which is a great place to grow plants, while using the technology to kind of nudge it in the right direction, that is the cultivation philosophy that will inevitably dominate cannabis production, you know, over the course of the next 10 years. Right, so the tagline for Tantalus Labs is sun-grown, something you guys talk a lot about. So that is not something that is uh is marketing terminology, it actually has a lot to do with sustainability, that's something you talk a lot about, but it actually feeds into the economics and the the quality of the product that you're trying to produce. So it's it's sort of a full loop system as to why you you really stand by sun-grown then. Absolutely. I mean, it really is this super compelling and at the time that we, you know, first came out with the greenhouse design, super contrarian philosophy. that aligns both economic self-interest of the operator in wanting to create the best cost efficiency that they can to to deliver a competitive price product to to its end users. With environmental sustainability, in fact, we even go beyond that to this concept of a regenerative production where we are actually sequestering carbon, we are ensuring that any water that goes into our plants comes out of our facility cleaner than it went in. Uh and it's it's I mean, it's important to us because we care about it, I think it's important to us to our end users, uh because they care about it. But ultimately, if we can deliver a superior quality of product at a price that is competitive with indoor production, we're giving everybody a self-interested reason to believe in this in this sun-grown future, in this sun-grown philosophy. And so the economics and the sustainability angles were what we were talking about for years and years and now we've had a few crops come through the facility and we've realized that the quality ceiling on sun-grown production is higher than what we will get out of an indoor environment. There's just inherently a limit that you can get to with synthetic light that is not giving the plant the full spectrum of light. And so, you know, it'll take us, I think, justifiably a few years of research and development to get to a place where we're really smashing through that upper limit of what you can get out of an indoor environment. Uh but that's a hunt that we're all excited to be on and when the first sun-grown, you know, what you would call AAA or quads cannabis comes out, uh and really shatters those stigmas about somehow sun-grown cannabis being of inferior quality. which is uh I shouldn't even pay it any mind, I shouldn't even be giving it voice time, but there are indoor growers that perpetuate that mythology and it's uh it's absolutely untrue. I can't wait to to shatter that that mythology and and ensure that users realize that sun-grown is synonymous with the best cannabis on earth. Well, you mentioned stigmas, it's definitely something that I wanted to talk about and and sure you would appreciate this more than most that there's probably a lot of stigmas around the marijuana industry. Uh we can just talk about the social stigma, but also um what did you feel some stigma in wanting to launch a uh a full operation dedicated towards marijuana, do people give you sideways glances at this. and how did you deal with both the professional as well as the social stigmas associated with it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I first started talking about it, I think I was probably in the green closet, like I was building a cannabis company that nobody knew about for about nine months. And when I first started talking about it, uh, I kind of got the like, dude, are you sure? Really? Do you think this is a good idea? Like for your career, like for your family's name, like there were people that were uh, you know, morally I people I was surprised were morally opposed to this. Oh God, I was it was it was okay, I'm going to have to battle this as I'm going. But then then you also kind of get reinforced by that, like I've always thought that if everybody thinks it's a good idea, then clearly the opportunity is going to be, you know, overbought, there's going to be too many people trying to trying to be a part of it. So that kind of social stigma has actually kept a lot of would be entrepreneurs out of a relatively contentious space, so perhaps that's an advantage. Um, but then we sort of saw the ascent of some of the publicly traded companies, you know, we saw the government getting behind messaging around medical cannabis and and the industry started to, you know, really ramp up. And I think there are still a few people that think that what we're trying to do is impossible, but there are far less people that think that it's morally reprehensible or something that is going to negatively affect my future or my career plans. Uh and, you know, that's that's part of being an entrepreneur is you have to hear what other people say and then figure out what to what to take on and what to say, well, you know, they just don't really understand it. Uh which I've done a lot of in the last six years. Yeah, now that we're kind of getting to the space leading up towards uh legalization and the success of the markets in the states. Uh now that there's marijuana companies that are getting, you know, close to billion dollar valuations, then the market starts to look very differently at these businesses, I think. Sure, and that can also kind of cloud judgment because then you're saying people, okay, well, it's good because you can make a lot of money on it. Like, I believe passionately in the legalization of cannabis, I I have, you know, since I was old enough to know what it meant. And this is a really important social shift, it's a story about let's use evidence-based policy instead of uh moralistic direction. Or I mean, the origins of the illegality of cannabis are only relatively recent. And only in the sort of 1920s and 30s was it really demonized as a devil's weed, actually my new favorite nickname for cannabis is jazz cabbage. The evil jazz cabbage. Uh and it was used to marginalize minorities, especially, you know, Mexicans in California, it it it's been used to, you know, as a mechanism to incarcerate persons of color across the United States for 100 years now. Uh so legalization is more than just kind of individual sovereignty and I should be able to choose what I want to do with my body and cannabis has, you know, relatively low risk profile compared to pharmaceuticals or or alcohol. I think those are all justifiable reasons to let people make their own decisions about cannabis. But the legality of cannabis and the eventual globalization of that legality will have massively positive social impacts far beyond the value creation that can happen in in cannabis firms. So, I mean, it makes it easy to get up out of the out of bed every morning and say, shit, we got to go do this thing because if we don't do it, uh, you know, it's very, very likely that sustainability will not be a part of that conversation. And the ability to reform that production system, uh, will be will be left behind by the the fast moving, slow thinking capitalist who might not have the same uh social propensities as we do. Right. Yeah, it's an important part to to weigh that social conscience as well with the capitalistic approach. Um, I want to get your thoughts on some of the pros and cons of what you've seen in the Canadian approach to legalization. They've had uh a bit of a leg up in being able to watch what's gone on in California, Colorado, Washington and other states and hopefully tried to lend from the successes and maybe avoid some of the pitfalls that they've seen in that. What's your input on what you've seen in uh the Canadian political approach towards legalization? Right, and and fair to, you know, include a qualifier that my lens is likely biased by, you know, my position as an industry insider. I I don't quite have the same belief in political morality or like the necessity for a paternalistic state or obligations from our federal government. Uh and I think it's also really important to underscore that there have been very few negative impacts of legalization in areas like Washington, Colorado, they've substantially cannibalized their black markets. Uh, you know, intoxicated driving is down, teenage use is down, uh a variety of these really interesting social metrics that I think would be political incentives beyond just tax revenue. I think the Canadian government has done a great job of avoiding uh the economic benefits argument because it might be seen that they would be seduced by those economic benefits, uh which are also a very important part of of the the value opportunity in legalization. Uh but if you set those aside for a moment, there have been a lot of positive social impacts, you know, first and foremost, the the taxation and regulation of these sales. that have uh, you know, increased purity uh outputs and and decreased use by I guess marginalized communities, mentally ill children, these kind of things. So, I mean, I suppose I should probably pay respect to the to the notion that start slow and start low and go slow has been a successful part of Canadian legalization, they definitely are uh taking a very risk averse approach. You can see it in packaging restrictions, you can see it in kind of the the tiered roll out of first flower products and and simple concentrates and then diversification into edible cannabis and and other styles of concentrates in 2019. Um, and yeah, it's it's going to take a few years for us to really hit our stride in a very risk averse approach before we can then say, hey, look, you know, in this really risk averse approach, we've stifled a bit of industry growth, maybe justifiably, but we've proven there isn't a huge amount of negative social impacts happening from legalization. And so perhaps we can start to take down uh some of the more oppressive industry barriers slowly and steadily. And uh, you know, despite the fact that I believe we should be leaning into fostering the Canadian cannabis industry, you know, to make sure that it's kind of got as big of a motor around it as it can. in the turn in terms of international competition, uh, I do appreciate that my priorities are industry growth and and the Canadian government's priorities are minimizing social harm. And I think in the context of minimizing potential social harm, they are, you know, certainly taking a very risk averse approach. Yeah, so that probably meets well in the middle, meeting the uh the commercial uh interests and the uh government interests and kind of finding that happy balance somewhere in between meeting in the middle, right? That is to say, as long as C45 is maintained in its current state. It's right now as we speak. Uh C45 is being debated in Senate committees and there are members of those committees that would like to see key components of that bill gutted and edited. Uh specifically two main areas of concern for me are A1, uh they want to remove home growing, which I think would be, you know, substantially detrimental. especially to British Colombians, there are probably 40 or 50,000 British Colombian households which grow their own cannabis today. And and those people don't always have the household income to be purchasing cannabis from licensed producers, uh I believe very strongly they should be able to maintain that right uh to grow at home and they should be able to do it in a legal regulated system. Uh and then also there are provisions in Bill C45 that are really exciting to me that enable outdoor growing. And there's very weird and inaccurate perceptions of security risk that somehow you could not secure an outdoor grow to an ACMPR standard. Uh I absolutely believe that you can and I'm pretty well versed on the matter because I've built the security system for a greenhouse, which is in itself a pretty weird paradigm. Um, so yeah, I I this bill is at risk. If you if you, you know, shameless plug, if you are worried about those two aspects of Bill C45, get out your pen and your paper, get out your Microsoft Word, write letters to senators, now is the time that they're going to be listening. And by the time this podcast comes out, it's unlikely that we'll have, you know, more than a few weeks to influence these uh appointed individuals who believe they have the justification to gut important aspects of Bill C45. Mhm. Yeah, it's interesting because public support is so different than it was even five years ago. I mean, it's probably 36% support of public opinion for legalization, uh, you know, five, seven years ago. And nowadays it's 63, 70% uh support, so the the the shift in public perception that has happened over the last few years is is dramatic. I don't think we've seen such a change in public opinion so dramatically on an issue in a long, long time. No, I totally agree. And, you know, at some level, perhaps the government can't necessarily push forward policy that entirely represents, you know, explicitly what people want. They they want to be able to, you know, justify that they're moving slowly and that they're protecting voters, maybe even protecting voters from themselves. But I truly believe that like ultimately it is the government's responsibility to represent the will of the people, that's what they represent, that's what they're elected to do. And when, yeah, when it swings so overwhelmingly like it is so difficult to find an issue where 70% of Canadian voters or any demographic of voters align. I mean, this like most of the hottest button issues are are sort of like, you know, you might get 55 if you're absolutely not going to out of the park. So, yeah, this is a this is an issue that all Canadians want to see pushed forward and it is being pushed forward. Uh but I think the nuance of how it's being pushed forward is where there's room for flexibility and where some of that flexibility is being maligned by misinformation and social conservatism, uh where we really should be steering it towards evidence-based policy. What about uh Tantalus's approach to the market? So, uh as I understand, you guys are still pending uh medical license, is that correct? Uh, we are a licensed producer and our sales approval is uh is in process as we speak. Okay. So you're licensed for production but not for sale. That is correct. Uh so where does that leave you as a business? Uh you guys have been in invested for a few years now, you've built the facility, built the system, you're doing production runs uh and you're just sort of waiting for the doors to open or where does that that situate you currently in your business operation? Yeah, I mean, we're pre-revenue. We've been we've been pre-revenue for six years and that really for us was the cost of being a first mover into, you know, designing and implementing our own facility. Into being one of the first companies to apply for a license to produce, uh and yeah, there were a lot of protracted timelines around transitions in government. when, you know, the conservatives initially launched the MMPR, I don't think they anticipated how many firms would want to be a part of it. And as a result, there was sort of a glut, there was a backlog, there were bottlenecks and and we suffered under that. It took us uh a lot of time and a lot more resources than we thought it would to get into sales, but here we are and that's the entrepreneurial journey is it isn't it isn't ever smooth and sometimes it's a lot less smooth than you than you think it is. Um, but yeah, we're we're pre-revenue and we've been building the business uh with the help of some awesome investors and supporters who, you know, believed in the vision from day one, they've backed us, they've brought their networks into helping us. Uh and it's a privately held company. So they don't have any liquidity either, we decided to abstain from public market listing, uh because I I worked in public finance for for about a decade before I got into to Tantalus Labs. And it takes a lot of time, like if you're going to be a public market CEO, you're going to be spending 60 or 70% of your time dealing with bankers, dealing with investors. Uh and I mean, I love to talk to my investors now, any opportunity, it's great to be able to chat with them on the phone, but I get maybe two emails a month from my investors, not like multiple, multiple calls per day and and having to go manage that public market flow. So I think there will be a time for Tantalus Labs to, you know, generate some liquidity or or be able to provide return to its shareholders or bring on new shareholders. And that'll be an interesting, you know, bridge to cross, but ultimately, I've always wanted to go to a liquidity event of that nature, whether it be an IPO or or private equity investment. or perhaps a a merger with a larger firm, with a strong track record, you know, if you have backwards looking revenue growth, that's the ultimate brand traction mechanism, we believe we've got an awesome brand, we've got an awesome story, we have a deep commitment to product, we have a deep commitment to community. and that's all well and good pre-revenue, but until those revenue numbers actually back that up, we need Tantalus Labs to be a successful business in order for its social message to succeed. For sun-grown to win, it needs to be the only and dominant strategy for cultivation to happen ongoing. And so trying to create liquidity before that target has been passed or, you know, that milestone has been passed, to me is a bit putting the cart before the horse. And does the business have a preference for the mode of sale, whether it be medical or recreational or how you're going to split your approaches to those markets? Yeah, absolutely. The way we see it, um, the ACMPR and our medical patients, they will always be our VIPs. These are people who, you know, in their interest, they, you know, likely have a consistent need for cannabis, there are many of them that have a consistent need for cannabis. There are many of them that will have a specific strain or mix of strains, I should say cultivar, uh that will, you know, help them provide therapeutic benefit to themselves. And so we really want to make sure that those people are are treated with a priority that they deserve, you know, to be confident in their ability to access products from Tantalus Labs that they'll come to rely on. Now, we also have a self-interested motive there because I love dealing direct with the end user. The ACMPR allows us to use an e-commerce platform at Tantaluslabs.com to sign up users, we sell directly to them, we use Canada Post or Pure later or whoever to deliver the products to their doors. And then we can actually incentivize them to give us feedback. Say, hey, what did you think about our Skunk Haze? What could we do better? What would you, you know, did you have any problems in shipping? Did you like the packaging? Could we change the packaging? All of these opportunities are opportunities that uh ultimately are lost when you deal with an intermediary of any kind, whether it be a an end supplier or a distribution intermediary. Uh but nonetheless, we also acknowledge that the medical, the medical use population or at least individuals in Canada that contextualize their use as medical. are likely, you know, I guess a little less easily distracted than a recreational use population. If if I think the average recreational use case is probably, I'm hanging out with some friends, uh this fast forward two years in the future. I decide I want some cannabis, I'm not going to go online and order some cannabis that's going to come a few days later, I'm going to walk down to my store, buy, you know, the first thing I see that I like or that looks cool and then uh and then head home and and consume it. And so we will need to broach that market as well and that is uh the kind of exciting opportunity to enter a more like premium economy category. The stuff that we do in the ACMPR is always going to be our most specialized strains, our most interesting new product drops, you know, our best customer care and likely, you know, there could be some price efficiency that we can pass on to end users in the ACMPR as well. So that's kind of the opportunity, if you're listening to this and you want to be a Tantalus Labs VIP, please sign up for the ACMPR, that's our best way to get you our ideal use case of customer service. Uh but then we also want to touch a broader user base, we want to make sure the sun-grown message can get to people who aren't signed up with us through the ACMPR. uh or maybe who are hearing about Tantalus Labs for the first time when they walk into a point of sale and uh, you know, that could be Alberta, that could be Manitoba, that could be Ontario, it could be none of it. Uh so we want to make sure that we have a strong and growing supply chain. uh of either our own greenhouses or other greenhouses in British Columbia that we can partner with to be able to uh to get those products into an ever diversifying user base. In interest of your time, wanted to look towards wrapping up and uh if you could uh tell people where they can follow you on social, where they can reach out to you if they want to learn more about yourself or Tantalus Labs. Awesome. Yeah, well, you mentioned the TEDx talk earlier, like that was one of the proudest moments of my life. Uh to be able to be invited to to share that presentation with uh an audience in my hometown of Vancouver. And so, you know, please Google TEDx Dan Sutton, it's I think an eight-minute overview of the things that we really care about at Tantalus Labs and a really good kind of magnum opus of of what it is that motivates us to to build this business. Uh you can also follow me on Instagram and Twitter, Twitter's where all the highlight reel stuff goes down and Instagram is more just me goofing around with selfies. Uh that's D Sutton 1986, D Sutton 1986, yes, that is the year I was born and yes, I look shockingly old, although luckily this is audio only. Uh and then Tantaluslabs.com and the handles for Instagram and Twitter, Tantalus Labs. Uh there you'll find interesting information on what we're doing, what we're up to, what's next, uh, you know, potentially limited release product drops, stuff like that. And yeah, we've got an awesome brand team that I'm staring at right now in my office and these guys are working morning, noon and night. to make sure that uh we're doing this, you know, not only is our product rock solid and continuing to always get better in the cultivation environment, but we're actually telling the story in a way that's digestible and uh easy to share with your friends. Awesome. Great stuff, I'll appreciate you hanging out with us and informing us on the cannabis industry and how things are evolving there and wish you all the best in the future, Dan. Thanks so much. Let's do it again.