Why are there so many CBD vendors?

At Healthy Hemp Outlet have been helping families, friends, and our customers find high quality CBD products for over a year and a half. A lot of times we are asked - “why are there so many CBD companies”? The simple answer is that it is very easy to bring any product to market due to what is known as “white labeling”. 

 

White labeling is a modern-day benefit to small businesses where a very large Vendor that already owns the entire production and packaging of a product offers to make their products & services available to smaller businesses that want to buy their RAW Un-labeled products in large volumes and market under their own brand. And by leaving the package label off/blank, the items are now called “White Labeled”, so that now any company can add their own label and brand. 

 

 

Although it seems very easy,  the typical small businesses may not be able to do this because the purchase volumes required to buy these products at a low enough price is often very high. But it is getting easier.

 

A good example of this is when you go to your grocery store and you see a branded product like orange juice from a vendor you know (Tropicana), and then you also see the grocery store you are shopping at also offers orange juice (Publix OJ). Although Publix is not in the orange juice business directly - they do not own the farm land and/or processing plant, they are able to buy from Tropicana a large enough volume of OJ that is NOT labeled. And in most cases the manufacturer will actually put the (Publix) label on the bottle for the Re-selling vendor for a small fee.

 

There is both good and bad in this and in the OJ example it’s hard to find any bad  because usually the grocery store is not as successful at selling just the 1 item as the company that has only invested in 1 item -orange juice sales, and as such the grocery store product has to be offered at a lower price to attract buyers - but it is probably exactly the same product. A win for the shopper.

 

Now in the very fast growing CBD market, we are seeing at least 10 new CBD vendors a month call Healthy Hemp Outlet to offer their products  and it is mostly due to the white labeling option. This isn’t a bad thing because more than likely the new CBD vendor has purchased their products from a high quality white label vendor and has invested a large amount of funds into their new business and they want to succeed so it is important they offer high quality products and “do the right thing”. In fact, if the CBD Vendor has a mission statement that you believe in and support, and they are marketing in areas where they truly want to reach and help people - it might be better that they source their products from a professional processing company  that specializes in high-quality production and let’s the new CBD Company focus on building their brand. 

 

The bad side can come out when a new CBD startup is not “cannabis industry educated” and does not know how to source high quality CBD. Or, do to the higher cost for certified high quality products, and a limited budget - they do NOT want to spend the extra money on high-quality CBD and they buy a mid-grade product from a poor CBD BULK source with low quality products or even fake products.

 

Or, if the CBD vendor is a startup company with little or no history in healthcare or CBD and wants to resell CBD because of the growing market and does not care about the product source  and they do not have a clear mission statement that you agree with than this may also give you a “gut feeling” to pass.

 

Again, sourcing white label product is not a bad thing as long as this source is high-quality. At Healthy Hemp Outlet most people have told us they do like to connect with the mission statement from the vendor they are buying CBD from, so it is important that the company has a purpose for being in business that is more than profit driven.

 

So what can you do to help make sure that the vendor you are interested in purchasing your CBD from has a high-quality product, and is truly passionate about helping the people who they serve, and is very concerned about the quality of the products they offer? 

 

To start - Read the CBD vendors page “About Us” might be a good way to determine their authenticity. At least 50% or more of any company started because the owners and founders had something happened in their life and decided to make an improvement in their experience and they believe that what they want to offer can also help many more people. When the company you are interested in has a founders story such as “witnessing firsthand the benefit of CBD to their own family”, then it’s easier to relate to their mission statement and trust their products. If the vendor you are researching does not have an about us page or it seems like they are not providing details about who they are and what their purpose is, then it may be worth trying to contact that vendor, or move on.

 

What else can you do do to determine if the CBD vendor has a good quality product? Ask for their COA report!

 

When CBD products are processed at the manufacturing plant the RAW product can be analyzed and given a grade just like a report card and this grade is called a “certificate of analysis” (COA). Today, most products have a QR code that you can scan to go directly to the certificate of analysis report. If a vendor doesn’t have a good founding story and they do not share their COA report - that would be a obvious red flag.

 

On more thing - REVIEWS!!!!  A long time ago online shopping provided a feature so that new shoppers could read feedback from a previous shoppers experience. In today’s day and age more than half of the purchasing decisions online are made after somebody reads the products reviews.  Please check not only the vendors page for product review, also search for other feedback from sources like Google and read testimonials- these are other shoppers feedback so that you know it is a genuine feedback. 

 

 

Don’t get the wrong idea about white labeling and worry! More than half of the CBD products out there aren’t grown and processed by the Vendor you are buying from.  Think of a high-quality steakhouse that you know offers the best beef - but they may not own the farm and feed the cows, they just by the highest quality beef from their supplier. But if that vendor doesn’t care about the beef, and if people do not provide good feedback then word will get out.

 

At Healthy Hemp Outlet  we check every new vendor against several metrics to ensure that they have a high-quality product either from seed-to-sale in their own company, or they are buying from a high-quality processor.  We also test new CBD products with our staff and a small close group of client testers to get firsthand feedback.  You can rest assured that if there is a product for sale on our webstore (www.hhoutlet.com) and is for sale in our store it has passed several quality control test and most importantly has received positive feedback.