In this special format bonus episode I meet Isaac Watson, Vice President, Retail, Fire and Flower a leading, technology-powered, adult-use cannabis retailer. A retail veteran since joining F&F in April of 2018, he has built and led teams to open and acquire 85+ locations across Canada. Isaac is a speaker at the RCC Retail Cannabis Forum coming up May 13 and I ask him for two starts, and one stop, based on what he has learned and experienced over the past year of the COVID era and beyond.
Welcome to the The Voice of Retail , I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
In this special format bonus episode I meet Isaac Watson, Vice President, Retail, Fire and Flower a leading, technology-powered, adult-use cannabis retailer. A retail veteran since joining F&F in April of 2018, he has built and led teams to open and acquire 85+ locations across Canada. Isaac is a speaker at the RCC Retail Cannabis Forum coming up May 13 and I ask him for two starts, and one stop, based on what he has learned and experienced over the past year of the COVID era and beyond.
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Thanks for tuning into today’s episode of The Voice of Retail. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss out on the latest episodes, industry news, and insights. If you enjoyed this episode please consider leaving a rating and review, as it really helps us grow so that we can continue getting amazing guests on the show.
If you are a retail cannabis retailer or industry professional you don’t want to miss the RCC Retail Cannabis Forum that I have the pleasure of hosting on May 13th. Learn more and register at www.RetailCouncil.org/events.
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co!
Until next time, stay safe and have a great week!
Michael LeBlanc
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
In this special format bonus episode I meet Isaac Watson, Vice President of Retail, Fire & Flower a leading, technology-powered, adult-use cannabis retailer. A retail veteran since joining Fire & Flower in April of 2018, he has built and led teams to open and acquire 85+ locations across Canada. Isaac is a speaker at the RCC Retail Cannabis Forum coming up May 13 and I asked him for two starts and one stop, based on what he has learned and experienced over the past year of the COVID era and beyond.
Isaac, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this afternoon?
Isaac Watson
I'm doing excellent. Thanks for having me, Michael.
Michael LeBlanc
Well fantastic. Thanks for joining me. I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say in person at Retail Council of Canada's upcoming Retail Cannabis Forum, which I have the pleasure of hosting, and we have the pleasure of hosting you. So, thanks again for joining me on The Voice of Retail podcast.
Give listeners both, a bit of an insight into who you are, and a bit about Fire & Flower though we've had Nadia and we've got some other guests on, so, you know, my listeners are well acquainted in some ways but you know, you can always learn more about such a dynamic business. Let's jump right in. Tell us, let's start at the beginning, tell us about yourself, who you are, what you do, and the overview of Fire & Flower.
Isaac Watson
So, for us at Fire & Flower we really started coming at cannabis from the world of education. So, how do we get everyone used to this new legalized world and get them acquainted with the products? As well as bringing them onto our digital platforms to ensure that we were best able to understand what were the demands of our customers and guests and how we would best service them over time.
I'm the Vice President of Retail Operations and Warehousing at Fire & Flower. So, we see ourselves as a leading retailer, powered by technology in the adult-use cannabis market. I joined Fire & Flower back in April of 2018. So, I was part of the business before legalization even occurred, and helped to both come up with the original concepts in how our stores would look, feel, as well as getting the teams in place to operate, which would is almost 85 locations across Canada.
Prior to joining Fire & Flower, I've probably worked in retail since I was about 13 years old. I've worked at Best Buy, Staples. I have consulted for a variety of independent retailers. And I spent the better part of nine years at Lululemon helping take them public and then building out their international operations and spent a lot of time working in their product team.
Michael LeBlanc
Right on, so you saw a lot of growth there. So, you're familiar with growth trajectories, I guess. Is that what attracted you to, to Fire & Flower into the cannabis retail industry, the growth that was about to go through? It's probably pretty exciting for someone with your background.
Isaac Watson
Yeah, I think for my, myself, you know, as I weighed to kind of joining the business at the time, I was running several companies and so there was a team, you know, that I was responsible for, and I absolutely loved those, that team and everything that they were doing. But for me, I you know, I've, I've been a fan of cannabis for a long time. And I kind of knew innately that, you know, as legalization came around that it would probably be a good fit both in terms of understanding the wide variety of you know, what needs to occur across functionally within a growing retailer, what's necessary, but also just a lot of fun on, you know, let's, let's make an industry together. It is not very often that that opportunity arises. And so, when it, when all the pieces fit together, I hopped on board, and it's really been a rocket ride ever since.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, no kidding. I often say that, you know, during these COVID times when there's, you know, one day your open, one day your closed, one day you're restricted, one day your illegal, one day you're essential, no better group of individuals than cannabis retailers. Because you're used to that anyway. You're used to that kind of dynamic back and forth. It must be, must have been a, an interesting, an interesting ride. When you thought about, as you said, you joined back in, in April 2018, so when you thought about this store design, when you, when you had a blank sheet in front of you and your colleagues, how did you approach that? What were your first thoughts around you know, where to go? I mean, it's not like you had customers to begin with, as you said, is very unique opportunity. You knew that, you know, lots of customers, but not in the retail context. How, what was your first thoughts on that blank page?
Isaac Watson
Well, I mean, I think what we knew at the beginning was that, let's say the cannabis community or in those that were using, both in the illicit and kind of gray markets, was really a mosaic of customers coming from every walk of life. We didn't, it was hard to really pinpoint who they were. I mean, there's obviously the stereotypes that exist out there. But I think you've been kind of looking around, let's say that the boardroom table at that time, those you know, it was pretty hard to accept those stereotypes just given who was in that room.
Michael LeBlanc
Sure.
Isaac Watson
And we knew that there, we were going to have to show up in, like in a strong way early on, in that no one really knew what this looked like. Keep in mind in April 2018, we didn't even know what the packaging of cannabis would look like. So, I mean, you're trying to design stores, figuring out fixtures and what you're going to place where, when you don't even know what that product is. And the clarification from the various provinces on even something like smell jars or something.
So, for us, it was really about taking a broad view, knowing that there was going to be some of the past ways of thinking about cannabis that would enter the game, you know, for example, sativa indica, you know, what would that be? But also, for a new user that maybe had never tried it before, and that were really, in their minds had decided that they weren't going to use an illicit substance, that we were going to have to be able to talk to them in a different way.
So, coming at it from what was the problem that cannabis was going to solve? As an example. So, we came at that from a lens of determining kind of the highest or like, what would, what would be the effects that customers would be asking for, and then curated both our visual merchandising and assortments against those affect categories as well as layered in the, all the other elements that we would need to think about, but that was how we approached it early on.
And you know, as I remember back to kind of those early, very, you know, ideation days, I mean, we went through the cycle many times before we landed on something that we were very excited about in our, in our concept store that we developed it on Jasper Avenue in Edmonton. I mean, it was featured in New York Times, there was a lot of hoopla about it. We had a chance to invite many regulators from across the country, so they could start to even really sense you know, what could a cannabis store look like, as they worked through the summer to finalize the regulations. And thought those conversations through the open houses we had with the public, we, we started to refine and hone in on what would ultimately be the concept that we rolled out, initially primarily in Alberta and Saskatchewan and later on, Manitoba, Ontario, the Yukon and soon, and soon will be in British Columbia as well.
Michael LeBlanc
Did you, did you go down south to the US to look at any of the legalized dispensaries or cannabis retailers out there? There's some pretty wild concepts you know, when you find yourself in Vegas, there's some pretty, pretty enormous kind of concepts as everything is in Vegas. Did any, any thoughts came out of that, when you, when you tour ed, did some touring?
Isaac Watson
Absolutely, yeah. We, I've spent time in you know, I've spent time in Washington State. So, going through Seattle, down to Portland into, throughout California, even New Orleans, I've spent a lot of time there. But I have to say, even moving the US market aside, even in like Vancouver Island is an example, you know, there was a lot of medical dispensaries, and kind of gray market dispensaries that really had beautiful concepts and beautiful stores.
I mean, all of that kind of came together to act as a bit of, you know, give us a bit of a chance to sense on, you know, these ideas that we have, are they really innovative, is someone else is doing them? Or can we learn something that others are doing and that we see replicated in lots of places maybe a best practice that we should be thinking about? I mean, keep in mind in the US, the, you know, it's not all essentially packaged goods there. Many of it is bulk products that they're then just begging in store. So different, a little bit different than what we do here in Canada. But absolutely, it was informative in our design process.
Michael LeBlanc
Now with your background with Best Buy and Lululemon, there would probably be like A, B and C format stores. It, when I talked to cannabis retailers, the real estate you wound up with can be so varied that it must have been hard to kind of create a single template. Do you have kind of one or two or three different templates of the same theme that you execute across the country?
Isaac Watson
Well, I would say we're probably honed, well, I mean, there's a variety and no, low there. It's not like there's a consistent box that exists.
Michael LeBlanc
Right.
Isaac Watson
In the real estate world.
Michael LeBlanc
Right.
Isaac Watson
Early on, we'd really formalized our concept around an 1800 square foot location. So, essentially, almost boutique in a way. Something that was small, manageable, you know, relatively fair lease costs that, you know, we thought given the volume projections we had, that we'd be able to be profitable against. But as time went on, we started to figure efficiencies, and we started to be able to diminish the space requirements necessary. And so now we've really honed into, you know, closer to that 1400, 1500 square foot location becomes more of our standard. And we have different finishing types based on both, you know, what we see as volume and we can talk about it later. But also, the banner, we now have our operating multi banners.
Michael LeBlanc
Right
Isaac Watson
And then we have our, we, our small concept model that we launched with Alimentation Couche-Tard beside two of their Circle K locations last summer. And those stores are about 400 and about 60, 470 square feet.
Michael LeBlanc
Interesting.
Isaac Watson
So again, like you know, there's so there's this kind of, let's say, 1500 square foot site, and then this let's say 500 square foot site and, and we're now optimizing both of those models to ensure that we're able to be as productive and profitable as possible while at the same time ensuring an amazing customer experience because at the end of the day, it's the guests and the customer that you know, this is all about right. That's why we're all here and our hope is to do the best we can to conveniently, and with education in mind, get the get the right products into the hands of customers consistently. So, it's been interesting to play on the, on the concept models. Now, I think over time that could evolve further. But, right now that's where we stand. And it's, it's been a lot of hard work to kind of to get to that level. And I think we're very happy with where we are today.
Michael LeBlanc
So, let's, let's tap into a bit of that experience. In this short format bonus episode, we want to just give people a sense of what's yet to come on the, on the virtual stage. Based on your experience, mostly in 2020, 20, early 2021 wonder if you could share two starts, things retailers should start doing from your experience. And one thing they might want to stop doing. Something maybe you didn't no longer do, or you see them doing. What would those be?
Isaac Watson
You know, and there may be other guests that you're having on this podcast that will reiterate this, but I think we're in, we're in a world of digital, you know, we aren't, we're not confined to the four walls of a store to interact with our customers. I mean, we're interacting with them on their desktop computers, and everywhere they go on their mobile devices. And so if you're not thinking about how you best interact with them, and show up where they are, and offer a service model, that makes it easy for them to place an order quickly and efficiently and get the products they're looking for. I think there's, it would be worthwhile spending some time there.
I think that, you know, one of the other things is that product formats have been changing dramatically. There's, you know both there's kind of net new categories that began at the beginning of last year, that has evolved, there's ever more products coming out all the time. Some of the original brands have diminished, others have really brought themselves to the forefront. So, I think really understanding what is your, your mix of, kind of let's say, value based versus premium products is really important, because it's very easy to get your, your cash all tied up into inventory. And, regardless of how you know, what any of us, or anyone says, you know, cannabis doesn't get better over, you know, lengthy periods of time.
Michael LeBlanc
Right
Isaac Watson
And it's not that you can't bring it back to life with a little bit of moisture, but most customers aren't going to do that. So,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Isaac Watson
I think it's, it's really important to focus on how you're turning your product through the door.
Michael LeBlanc
All right, and one thing, one thing, maybe you don't do anymore, or you see retailers doing that maybe, maybe they shouldn't be?
Isaac Watson
I'm still scratching my head a little bit on these very large square foot locations. So, and I think it's, you know, given what the amount of competition that exists in the Canadian market now, I think, I think retailers really need to think hard about how much space they're gonna take on and does that make sense when you look at the bottom line? And what is your risk profile? So, I think that that's a really important, you know, thinking process to go through at the, at the beginning of getting into a lease.
Michael LeBlanc
You know, that's, that's a great one. All right, so you're on the virtual stage joining us, May 13th, what are you gonna be talking about?
Isaac Watson
So, Neal Claassen from SevenPoint Interiors, is going to be, we're going to be in a discussion about the balancing act of growth in retail, and we're going to be talking about all kinds of things. Everything from in store experience, to fixturing, to product assortments, to some of the, and ikely also some of the things that you do at various stages after you open to kind of be building up your customer base. So, I hope that the retailers out there, find some benefit in the, and maybe some lessons or maybe some places where we disagree, and nonetheless, I think that'll be a good point of kind of introspection and hopefully some advancement for the retailers that are participating.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, listen Isaac, thanks again for joining me. This has been, as I said, a short preview bonus introduction. And, I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say. It's, it's close to my heart in terms of understanding the retail execution and operations and retail wouldn't be the same without it. So, thanks again for joining me on The Voice of Retail podcast, and I wish you a great rest of your week.
Isaac Watson
Great, thanks so much.
Michael LeBlanc
Thanks for tuning into today's episode of The Voice of Retail. Be sure and follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you enjoy podcasts so you don't miss out on the latest episodes, industry news, and insights. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review, as it really helps us grow so that we continue to get amazing guests onto the show.
If you're a retail cannabis retailer or industry professional, you don't want to miss the RCC Retail Cannabis Forum that I have the pleasure of hosting on May 13th. Learn more and register at www.retailcouncil.org/events.
I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. Leblanc & Company Inc., and if you're looking for more content, or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website at meleblanc.co. Until next time, stay safe and have a great week.