sa国际传媒官网网页入口

Two sa国际传媒官网网页入口 business owners who launched the tech companies Lavu and Hospitality Ai are now taking aim at the cannabis industry with a new product. 

Corey Fiala and Lee Caperton say their new company and product, Leafnet POS, will expedite checkout processes and improve efficiencies for cannabis businesses. 

Leafnet POS, which went live about a year and a half ago, helps cannabis companies with inventory tracking and sales, as well as website hosting, according to its website. 

The launch comes at a time when New Mexico鈥檚 regulated cannabis industry is maturing, with some 3,000 licensed businesses in the state, many of them dispensaries. And it comes as the Trump administration at a national level is looking to reschedule cannabis from a Schedule I drug to Schedule III, which could kickstart legalization efforts in more states across the U.S.

With Caperton, co-owner of the cannabis retailer Prohibition 37, already involved in the industry and 鈥渕y background in business software, we realized there is a good opportunity for what we could put together,鈥� Fiala said.

Josh Asplen, Leafnet director of operations, said work on the new software began when P37鈥檚 previous system wasn鈥檛 meeting their needs.

鈥淲e spent a month working inside of P37 reviewing every issue (and) problem they had and made sure there were solutions on Leafnet,鈥� Asplen said.  Many businesses see major fragmentation in that there is one company for the point-of-sale, which is basically a cash register.

鈥淭hen you need to get a website and you鈥檙e going to want to have a loyalty program and usually those are all separate companies,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd then, there鈥檚 the payment side of it, working with the local governments, the state governments for reporting. We specialize in full business systems and bring everything into one system. And that鈥檚 just something we haven鈥檛 really seen happen in cannabis.鈥�

On the inventory end, Asplen said, retailers need a system that can not only help them find and locate things faster, but also input large amounts of product at a quicker pace.  

Janet Goodman, owner of Village Cannabis, a dispensary in Corrales, said she is pleased with the Leafnet POS product. 

鈥淚鈥檝e had it for a few months, and you know what? It is an easy system,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 easy to receive the manifest from the manufacturers. It鈥檚 easy to do the inventory. It鈥檚 just a great program right now.鈥� 

Matt Kennicott, executive director and co-founder of the Cannabis Association of New Mexico, an industry advocacy organization, said he hopes the company can help cannabis operators because the technology cannabis companies tend to use 鈥渋s a really different and difficult world in a lot of ways.鈥�

鈥淓arly on, folks tried to adopt systems that were already out there,鈥� he added. 鈥淏ut they needed custom-built solutions just for cannabis because we have track-and-trace requirements, meaning we have to track every piece of cannabis from when it鈥檚 just a seed all the way through the sale to the customer, and if there is a recall, retailers have to be able to call their customers up about that recall.鈥�

Kennicott said what he is seeing now is a 鈥渘ationwide kind of proliferation of these cannabis-specific point-of-sale companies.鈥�

Leafnet POS is not Fiala鈥檚 first rodeo with point-of-sale technology. In 2010, he co-founded Lavu, a tablet-based point-of-sale system that is now used by companies across the globe, mostly in restaurants.

Fiala said setting up the system for the cannabis industry was more difficult than it was for restaurants.

鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot more unknown challenges in the cannabis market, mainly because of the federal laws and state laws, and not all of them matching,鈥� he said. 鈥淓ach time you want to bring aboard customers to a new state, there is always extra work.鈥�

Fiala said about 100 dispensaries are using Leafnet across the country, including 14 in New Mexico. He hopes to expand to 1,000 by the end of 2027.

鈥淲e鈥檙e doing a small amount of marketing and word-of-mouth, and that鈥檚 gone quite well,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e been able to get a lot of customers. Now is kind of the big marketing phase (where we) really push it 鈥� you know, put some money into it and make it big.鈥�

Gregory R.C. Hasman covers the economy and healthcare. He can be reached at ghasman@abqjournal.com.