David Thomas, BudSense

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT When cannabis started being legalized in US states like Colorado, and more recently across Canada, it struck me that it was a very interesting new vertical for digital signage companies to chase - because it was a greenfields industry that had retail environments offering up products wholly unfamiliar to a lot of the people walking in the door. It's grown pretty clear, though, that while there may indeed be big long-term opportunity, cannabis retailing is also a very complicated industry - with rules and regulations changing by jurisdiction, a whole bunch of vendors and SKUs, and widely variable supply chains. While there might be a common perception that getting the OK to sell cannabis is a license to print money, a lot of operators are struggling financially, and both retailers and the tech ecosystem underpinning cannabis are coming in and dropping out all the time. A Canadian company called BudSense has a particularly interesting story to tell. The company, based in Regina, Saskatchewan, started out as a retailer, but found its way into technology to fill the gaps in what they needed to effectively manage stores and communicate to customers. Now, software is the main business, and BudSense has a SaaS software product that is all about managing menus and other screens around dispensaries, and is very specifically tuned to cannabis retailing - as opposed to general digital signage software that could also drive cannabis store menus. Canada has been the main focus to date, but co-founder David Thomas says BudSense has business in the US, and plans to grow that. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT David, thank you for joining me. Can you tell me a little bit about BudSense? David Thomas: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Dave. BudSense is a menu merchandising company in the cannabis industry. It solves the problem for our retailers of menu management. And are you focused just on menus or are you doing in-store promotion, all kinds of other things within these dispensaries?  David Thomas: Yeah, we do some in-store promotion tool sets as well, pretty much anything that involves merchandising is the solution that we want to solve.  Your company's in Saskatchewan, right? David Thomas: Yes, we're based out of Regina, Saskatchewan, where we got our start in dispensary operation.  So when you say dispensary operations, you mean you're actually running a dispensary?  David Thomas: We were, and we still are. I partnered with my brother, John, around legalization in Canada. We started by running four stores in Saskatchewan. We've since sold those stores and moved on to other retail footprints but that's when we started developing the software that is now BudSense.  What set you down that path? Because being a retailer is very different from being a software company? David Thomas: Absolutely. So I have a background in engineering. My brother has a background in pharmacy. We actually started our business partnership before cannabis in real estate and we have an entrepreneurial spirit. We were always looking for opportunities and when cannabis was announced for legalization, we saw it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we wanted to participate so that was the catalyst that pushed us into the cannabis space. We went into retail because of our real estate and pharmacy background. I have a lot of experience running teams and building systems. So we just put our skill set to use in a brand new industry.  So did you write your own software to run your store and that's what got you down the path or was it the absence of good software to do what you needed?  David Thomas: It was both. We solved whatever problem was directly in front of us. So it wasn't like we wanted to solve digital menus. It was more of a necessity and then we had the skillset to do it in that way. So when we started, we had four stores to run and that's very atypical from a