CBD products seem to be flooding the market. This is a result of the massive demand for CBD and the subsequent adoption of CBD by diverse consumer industries.
You may have done your research and figured out that CBD oil is one of the products that you can sell and make a good profit.
But before you start a CBD business, it’s critical to recognize what the challenges are like. CBD business owners typically experience several problems.
Recognizing the challenges can aid your preparation, and may help you reach a firm decision as to whether a CBD business is one for you.
Common CBD Businesses
When we talk of starting a CBD business, for some reason, people have a one-way idea about it. They mostly think it’s starting a CBD store. But CBD businesses are diverse.
CBD retailer: this is the most common one. It involves stocking up and selling your items through the internet or physical outlets. Whether you have an online or physical store, it’s important to have a sizable marketing budget.
CBD manufacturer: this business typically requires greater resources as you need to purchase extraction tools and also hire salespeople and technicians. Depending on your capital and team, you can manufacture one CBD product or a range of CBD products.
CBD marketer or distributor: you can act as the link between CBD manufacturers and CBD retailers by obtaining a license to distribute CBD products. This type of business is typically ideal for people with vast networks.
Challenges in Starting and Managing a CBD Business
The following are some of the common challenges that CBD business owners usually face:
1. Regulation and Compliance
CBD became legal in 2018 when Congress passed the Farm Bill. But even though CBD is legal at the federal level, several conditions still need to be met, and breaking any of these conditions can spell trouble.
Most people are drawn to CBD oil for its therapeutic contribution [1]. From anecdotal evidence, CBD helps with managing various health disorders. But the FDA prohibits CBD businesses from marketing their product as having any medicinal value.
This condition indirectly limits sales.
The government is also quick to ban hemp manufacturers under flimsy grounds. As a result, CBD businesses that relied on the banned manufacturer end up experiencing supply issues and have to burn more money to set up new business relations.
CBD businesses are also held back by various local laws that more often than not cause the business to spend needlessly. Some of these laws involve rent, zoning, and security.
2. Rejection by Payment Processing Companies
If you have a CBD business, you’ll find many payment processors declining to work with you, and that means your customers will have limited methods through which they might pay you.
PayPal, Stripe, WePay, and numerous other financial institutions typically block any transaction emanating from a CBD business.
And so, this rejection makes it hard for CBD businesses to grow, as it discourages many buyers from accessing CBD products.
But there’s a passionate ongoing rally to get these financial institutions to cooperate with cannabis companies and give everybody an easy time.
I mean, alcohol is a substance that significantly raises the risk of causing an accident while under its influence [2]. But it’s crazy that these companies will accept alcohol-related transactions but decline transactions on a product with therapeutic benefits!
3. Public Judgment
Let’s be frank, cannabis, or marijuana, has for a long time been a taboo subject. Society believes that cannabis and degeneracy go together.
CBD shares a parent with marijuana, and even though it doesn’t cause similar effects as marijuana, people don’t care about that.
And so, if you proudly declare yourself to be a CBD merchant, your friends and family may develop a less-than-glamorous opinion about you.
If you want to be a player in the CBD industry, if you want to reach success with your business, you must stop giving two shits about winning peoples’ approval.
You achieve this by scanning what people around you are saying and cutting off anyone that radiates judgmental energy (instead of debating them).
4. Marketing and Promotion Restrictions
As mentioned earlier, the FDA prohibits businesses from making medical claims about their CBD products. But the thing is CBD does have medical benefits.
Nowadays, social media and search engines make up a huge part of marketing and promotion, but then many of these platforms reject CBD businesses.
Still, CBD businesses devise clever ways of advertising their products on these platforms, but there’s a major risk of their accounts getting shut down.
Even though research is not conclusive, CBD has been shown to remedy various medical problems like cancer [3]. And so, CBD business owners should have the right to advertise their products as such.
5. Oversaturation of Shitty Brands
Starting and running a legitimate CBD brand is no joke. You need a considerable level of capital. Your products need to be made of premium ingredients and undergo lab testing. But then we have all these mediocre brands popping up on the internet to offer their substandard products and services. The thing is, it’s hard to weed them out because they might not have physical locations or real business addresses. For all we know, even a gangster could sell cow urine calling it CBD from his bedroom.
The Takeaway: CBD Business Challenges
CBD may be federally legal, but starting and operating a CBD brand will have you experiencing a couple of challenges. Some of these challenges include unfair regulations, payment processing frustrations, and marketing restrictions. Instead of caving and accepting these circumstances, it’s important to apply effort to seek change and improve the situation.
Sources
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2017). Therapeutic effects of cannabis and cannabinoids. In The health effects of cannabis and cannabinoids: The current state of evidence and recommendations for research. National Academies Press (US).
- Sewell, R. A., Poling, J., & Sofuoglu, M. (2009). The effect of cannabis compared with alcohol on driving. American journal on addictions, 18(3), 185-193.
- Seltzer, E. S., Watters, A. K., MacKenzie, D., Granat, L. M., & Zhang, D. (2020). Cannabidiol (CBD) as a promising anti-cancer drug. Cancers, 12(11), 3203.
