How do we curtail stuff? How can we optimize shelf space? How can we reduce SKU counts?, these were just some of the questions John Yang and Shareef El-Sissi asked themselves before founding Treez, one of the cannabis industry’s leading technology and retail analytics providers.

“We were already finding solutions for workflow volume growth,” explained John Yang, Co-founder and CEO of Treez in an exclusive interview with Benzinga. “In 2016, Shareef’s store was doing about 400 tickets a day, later on, at its peak, the store was doing about 1200 tickets a day. The only difference was the software.”

Treez is a leading enterprise cloud commerce platform that streamlines retail and supply chain operations within the cannabis market. “It's coined as a point-of-sale software system, but Treez is also about inventory management, compliance, and bringing up sales,” John added.

Shareef, co-founder, and CSO of Treez explained that while some of the latest iterations of cannabis software have been focused purely on e-commerce and marketplace, Treez focuses on integrating information for the retailer.

“I think integration, data, analytics, and payments, are what it takes to support a very robust retailer,” Shareef said.

Empowering Retail Cannabis Businesses

Several years ago, when retailers wanted to optimize their product assortment, that is, knowing what product they were carrying and how much of it they could carry to ensure that the demand was met without losing sales, they compiled all this data manually, sometimes for multi-locations.

At every single store, they had to export the data, clean it out, put it into some reporting tool, and so forth. Now, retailers can count on software tools that tell them ‘avoid these knockouts,’ ‘ these items you should be reordering,’ and ‘this is how much we should order so that your consumers can buy it consistently.’ And that saves a lot of money.

“Big and small businesses need these tools. You need to understand what's happening in your local jurisdiction, beyond your store. You need to know what's working to optimize your product offering. We provide customers optimization across shelf planning, inventory scheduling, and tools to inform managers,” John said.

Starting A Retail Cannabis Business In NY?

“As a retailer, you want to choose a vendor that helps to set the right foundation to operational foundations, because the general hype cycle of a new market is not going to continue forever. You have to care about the top line, the bottom line, and efficiency and you want to go with the vendor that has your best interest in mind. For us, we just cater to that retailer,” Shareef continued.

“The point of sale is that center of the value chain, that node that connects the supply chain down to each other, down to consumers, there's a lot to do there. We build on the different nuances, workflows, and efficiencies needed to tackle the peak of the volume. Ultimately we learned what those foundational needs are to enable a retailer out of the gates on the right foot,” Shareef said.

Is this the 'Treez’s Survival Guide' for the five boroughs?

“This is where we're at. The industry is fighting over the consumer. The brands want to have loyalty. The retailer wants to have loyalty and has to pick how they want to run its business. We can empower brands with data, but we don't forget who our customers are and our customers are the retailers,” John concluded.

Photo by David Gavi on Unsplash.