5 Questions With David Farris, VP Sales & Marketing: Planet 13 Holdings Las Vegas

Cannabis hasn’t been legal in the USA for very long, so it makes perfect sense that places like Las Vegas would be at the forefront of the new wave of “legalized” sales. Las Vegas attracts all sorts of people looking to make history from music to art, fashion, entertainment, those ubiquitous casinos and now cannabis. Although you cannot find cannabis directly on the strip- even through the haze of cigarette smoke, drifters and neon lights, it’s still advertised as family friendly. But step just off the fray and find high-end shopping mall sized stores filled with vast selections of cannabis products which absolutely defy the imagination. The best part is that you won’t get arrested for buying cannabis in a dispensary. Sure you can get into trouble smoking weed in Vegas, but they probably won’t arrest you. It’s just too hot! Just be discrete and do what I do. Enjoy your fancy cannabis woven into a tasty little beverage. See? No skunk scented smoke to give up your position to the man. Just a can of frosty, cannabis infused refreshment really does the trick. Now you can buy canna-beverages in Vegas. They don’t shout like smoking cannabis sometimes does. And they are wonderfully cooling against the hot desert breezes that make life in the Las Vegas summertime generally uncomfortable.

Warren Bobrow=WB: Please tell me about yourself. Where are you from originally? Why the Las Vegas area? Why cannabis? 

David Farris=DF: My name is David Farris and I am the Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Planet 13 Holdings. I was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration – Marketing from University of Nevada. While attending college in Northern Nevada, I quickly gravitated towards branding businesses and creating effective marketing plans. I began teaching myself graphic design and helped many local businesses in my area with various marketing efforts. My interest in business has always been there since a young age because of my father’s entrepreneur spirit and seeing him as a business owner. From about twelve years old, I was able to learn what it took to manage employees and build a business for success. To be honest, working in cannabis was not my focus all along. I felt that my business acumen and my young age gave me a competitive age to build a brand from scratch. The challenge of doing this still resonates with me today almost 5 years later with Planet 13. I did not have to latch on to someone else’s brand or vision, we created this.

 I joined Planet 13 Holdings, Inc. in May of 2016 holding 4 various roles within the company while working my way up to my current role as VP of Sales & Marketing. Within my role, I’ve been able to establish branding and advertising initiatives in the cannabis marketplace focused on creating an unparalleled experience. With oversight of creative direction, I serve as a multidisciplinary graphic designer working on projects ranging from product packaging to web development/design. In addition to creative efforts, I direct media relations and administers strategic sponsorships and events. I first came in as the 8^th employee in the company as a Marketing Coordinator, taking control of social media and various marketing strategies. Being a small operation, I was able to build experience to learn all aspects of the business from retail to production and cultivation. I helped achieve aggressive wholesale goals and eventually became the General Manager of our dispensary. I loved working with customers and producing a world-class dispensary experience, but I knew marketing is where my passion was. We were the first dispensary license transfer to a new location in Las Vegas, graduating to a superstore location that is now reference as an entertainment complex. The dream has always been to take the company to new heights and create a shopping center where customers could spend hours at. With all the doubters left in the dust, we have achieved unprecedented revenue and success never before seen in the industry.

WB: What are your thoughts on producing a THC infused beverage? How did you develop your formula? Why seltzer?  

 DF: I believe it is important to firstly note that Planet 13 is in a unique position as a dispensary in Las Vegas, achieving approximately ~10% of Nevada’s cannabis sales in only one location. This gives us a huge competitive edge in the market when understanding consumer habits and which products they are avidly searching for. In time, this has allowed us to successfully develop and launch over 5 branded products lines that now achieve ~25% of our in-store revenue. We feel the beverage market will experience massive growth in the near future and felt it was important to create a THC infused edible product such as Elysium. This 10mg zero-calorie water with zero sweeteners is the first of its kind in this Nevada market, even across the entire country. Many customers are requesting a more health conscious alternative to the commonly available chocolates and sweets at dispensaries. We also think it is the perfect market to serve an ice-cold beverage, given Nevada’s notorious heat most of the year. 

Stephen Markle, our Vice President of Production, formulated this infused flavored sparkling water while beating many other companies to market. Once we achieved THC soluble in water successfully, we did research and development on many flavor combinations. Elysium has five unique flavors: Valencia Orange, Persian Lime, Eureka Lemon, Wild Berry, and Ruby Red Grapefruit. Now launching just in time for summer, we are hoping this product will quickly join the other Planet 13 products in over 25 dispensaries statewide.

WB:What markets do you want to enter? What stigmas do you face with

THC? How do you anticipate removing those stigmas? 

DF: Planet 13 continues to be laser-focused on our next venture into Santa Ana, California. We feel there is a strong connection between the Southern California market with the Las Vegas market. When we were looking at building the next Planet 13 style complex, location quickly became the highest priority. In order for us to achieve the traffic and success needed, tourism played a huge factor in our decision. We identified a perfect location three miles from the South Coast Plaza Mall, which hosts 24 million visitors a year and is just a short ten-minute drive from Disneyland, with 18 million visitors per year. I believe California will embrace our shopping experience as we look to breathe life back into brick and mortar retail. Our Santa Ana location will be one of the largest cannabis dispensary complexes in the world, behind the Planet 13 Las Vegas Superstore. Planet 13 is all about creating a differentiated cannabis experience, blending high-end products with unique experiences and entertainment. I like to explain Planet 13 as a very tech forward experiential facility that is more than just a dispensary. We often don’t even compare or look at other local dispensaries as competition, we are that different. 

Within Nevada, TRENDI is the top-selling concentrate product, while also ranking 5 out of the top 10 products overall. Also, HaHa Gummies is 3 out of the top 10 selling edible products in Nevada while Elysium is a top 4 selling beverage product in Nevada. We continue to make steady progress on scaling our production and rolling out our brands across Nevada. The strong demand for our products has been everything we have hoped for, TRENDI, HaHa gummies and Elysium having multiple SKUs in the top ten best-selling products statewide. Alongside the strength of our newly introduced product lines, our original flower brand Medizin continues to sell out days after each new harvest hits the shelves. The difficult stigma sometimes received with our products being “in-house” as a vertically integrated company, is that many companies assume we cannot meet the quality expectation when operating all aspects of the industry. This has not been a challenge for us and have shown that we take the as much care and effort in our product line as we do in our Superstores. This has been a monumental month for us recently hitting our 25^th retail store for our Planet 13 wholesaled products. I remain more excited than ever to continue to surpass expectations and continue to deliver an unapparelled retail and product experience. 

WB:Have you ever been to the Golden Tiki? What is your favorite food memory from the Vegas area? What is your favorite kind of food?  

DF: Being born and raised in Las Vegas, you eventually lose the awe and motivation to frequently visit the Las Vegas Strip. Working so close to the Strip being at Planet 13, I do enjoy trying new places for lunch and dinner meetings. The Cosmopolitan has recently been a location with a lot of great options to choose from, notably Catch, Beauty & Essex, and Ghost Donkey. I also enjoy The Cleaver on occasion for what I think has the happy hour in Las Vegas with great steaks and cocktails. I unfortunately have not been to Golden Tiki!

 WB: What is your passion? 

DF: My passion since a young child has always been to visually create things. I have a strong passion for bring a high-quality product to market matched with great packaging and branding. My competitive nature has allowed me to overcome the many changes we experience in the cannabis industry and continue to accept the many challenges. This start-up mindset has helped me create purposeful brands that fill gaps within the market where the normal often becomes the boring. When I first came into the cannabis industry n 2016, I saw “premium” on every package and knew there was going to be an awakening period for the industry as competition rose. But what many brands fail to see is the value of creating a brand without spending all of your cash on hand. You cannot build a brand long-term that spends all of their money on marketing and branding. I feel I have found the balance between a brand looking good and creating a reputation, but also staying conservative in the current climate. I have notably designed and developed all the packaging for our several brands and products, most recently winning a prestigious Clio Award for our Dreamland Chocolates in late 2019. Early on in my career I realized there was a gap in the skillset of many of the marketing executives I looked up to, especially when it came to creativity and implementation. They often relied on a designer or someone else to carry out their vision to really understand the process and create a level of expectation. Through being a self-taught designer, I feel that am able to pivot with the ever-changing cannabis industry and implement strategies quicker and more efficiently than others. While Planet 13 has experienced tremendous growth as a company the past few years, I have taken more of a step back channeling that understanding of design and working my creative counterparts to take our brands to another level.