Apex Trading Reinvents the Wholesale Cannabis Marketplace
PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Apex Trading, a Portland-based tech startup, has taken a different approach to supporting the wholesale cannabis industry. By focusing on the direct relationships between buyers and sellers, rather than creating another open marketplace, Apex Trading is changing the way wholesalers interact and do business in the modern era. With two years of operations, they have found a product fit in several state markets and are now ready to take their model national.
Wholesale marketplace platforms offer buyers online, shoppable listings of products and categories from a variety of brands. New customer acquisition and increased sales coupled with perceived higher brand visibility can be quite alluring.
However, Apex Trading recognized several downsides to open marketplaces. Most noticeable are increased competition favoring established brands, loss of brand equity, as well as a host of logistic challenges. Marketplace sales often go to players with the largest budgets and brand recognition. The marketplace itself is often viewed as the source and the brand becomes secondary. Plus, marketplace orders demand that producers have complex fulfillment and customer service processes in place to manage any increase in order volume. What's more, marketplace orders are often smaller and require a lot of hand-holding while the relationship between buyer and seller evolves.
Apex Trading's innovative, direct approach in conjunction with a full suite of supply chain features lets cannabis producers, large and small, foster and improve current relationships.
"Having previously run both an online cannabis marketplace and a wholesale distribution company, I recognized that no matter which state a wholesale business operates in, marketplaces tend to commoditize products and make it hard for craft producers to maintain their price points and withstand the onslaught of lower quality, higher potency competitors," says John Manlove, Apex Trading's CEO and founder. "In mature markets like Colorado or Oregon, wholesale producers and processors who made it through the last few years of oversupply and significant price depreciation have established their brand and relationships with buyers to a point where a marketplace model is less attractive, and might be looking for an alternative platform. Apex Trading provides just that - our direct sales model prioritizes the wholesale brand and their buyer relationships, while also providing that business with all the back-end tools needed to streamline processes and increase efficiency. We also recognize that purchasing managers like marketplaces because they provide somewhat of a one-stop shop, and we've built unparalleled tools that allow the same experience, but have taken a unique approach compared to an open product-centric marketplace."
With relationship being so important in the cannabis industry, Manlove and his team may be onto something. In a direct selling experience the brand is in control. Personalization starts from the moment a buyer clicks into a brand's storefront. Buyers interact with products, content and pricing from only the brand. All of these touches would appear to create a stronger bond between buyer and seller, ultimately leading to increased, long-term sales.
About Apex Trading
Apex Trading is an online wholesale platform featuring order, inventory and client management tools, custom storefronts and data-rich dashboards to help buyers and sellers operate more efficiently. The platform provides state-licensed cannabis cultivators, product manufacturers, distributors and retailers with easy-to-use tools and services and is disrupting conventional wholesale channels.
For more information, visit www.apextrading.com. Follow @ApexTrading_CO on Twitter or @apex_tradingco on Instagram.
Contact: Rob Fess
Phone: 619-750-6492
Email: rob@apextrading.com
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SOURCE Apex Trading
