🖥️ Leaf Trade x Sweed merge to create a fully integrated solution for cannabis operators
🖥️ Leaf Trade x Sweed merge to create a fully integrated solution for cannabis operators
The combined platform will enable businesses to manage their entire retail operations in a single place.
Leaf Trade x Sweed merge to create a fully integrated solution for cannabis operators. Leaf Trade, a wholesale cannabis marketplace with ~$3 billion in annualized orders, agreed to merge with Sweed, a retail operating platform. The merger will enable businesses to manage their entire retail operations in a single place. Sweed allows Cannabis businesses to own their consumers through a private-label eCommerce experience, in-store kiosks, and native apps, without sharing their customer’s data.
Notes:
Sweed has 70+ employees that are mostly distributed
Co-Founder, Rocco Del Priore, was most recently VP Technology at DYME Brands from April 2019–January 2020. Prio to that, he was CTO & Co-Founder at Cultivate Software, which allowed dispensaries to create their own app/menu
Far Ventures (no longer active) sold a stake in the company to an undisclosed buyer. Far Ventures only invested in three other comapnies: Agnetix (horticulture lighting developer), Roshi (cannabis inventory management platform), and Confia (smart contracting and analytics platform)
Previously, the company raised $500,000 from Windsong Global (April 2022), a PE firm that seeks to invest in the lifestyle, beauty and wellness, fitness, and health sectors
Leaf Trade has raised~$25M to date, with the latest round being a $14.8M Series B from Measure 8 Venture Partners, Vitamin Capital and Artemis Growth Partners (July 2022). The company raised $5.5M through a combination of Series AA and Series AA-1 led by Artemis Growth Partners (March 2021)
The company raised a $4.5M Seed in a deal co-led by Hyde Park Angels and Duke Software Investments (November 2019)
I had President & CRO, Michael Piermont, on a podcast in December 2022 (see below)
LEAF TRADE AND SWEED ANNOUNCE TRANSFORMATIVE MERGER CREATING A FULLY INTEGRATED SOLUTION FOR CANNABIS OPERATORS
Leaf Trade, the leading wholesale cannabis marketplace in the U.S. with nearly $3 billion in annualized orders, announces its merger with Sweed, the cannabis industry’s leading all-in-one retail operating platform. The merger provides groundbreaking technological solutions transforming wholesale and retail operations for multi-state cannabis operators (MSOs) and dispensary groups with multiple locations solving industry-wide operations challenges. The combined platform will enable businesses to manage their entire retail operations in a single place.
With Sweed, Cannabis businesses own their consumers through a private-label eCommerce experience, in-store kiosks, and native apps. They do not have to share their customer’s data with other conglomerates.
Sweed is built on a proprietary data engine that allows cannabis operators to transform their cross-channel eCommerce, marketing, and loyalty programs into truly data-driven solutions increasing efficiency and monetization. Sweed streamlines retail operations and saves cannabis companies a significant amount of time and money.
Technology like this was previously only available to businesses focused on software development at scale but with the Leaf Trade and Sweed partnership it will be available for all cannabis businesses within retail and wholesale at a fraction of the cost.
“We’ve always sought out like-minded partners looking to empower the cannabis space by easing the main friction points within the customer experience. Merging with Sweed delivers reliable and easy-to-use POS solutions that create a complete, vertically integrated, model for cannabis operators. The consolidated Leaf Trade, Sweed platform realizes the much-needed ability to streamline the flow of catalog, inventory, and order transaction data across wholesale and retail segments, setting the stage for data-driven product order procurement and fulfillment automation.”
— James Yi, CEO of the combined companies
The combined Leaf Trade and Sweed platform provides a comprehensive technology suite for its largely MSO clients. This game-changing solution for fully integrated cannabis companies enables the scaling of wholesale and retail operations while creating a better customer experience. “The cannabis tech landscape is extremely fragmented. Sweed solves this with a true all-in-one retail platform, and this merger with Leaf Trade brings the industry’s only B2B2C offering to the market. Together our offering is uniquely positioned to provide retailers with intelligent forecasting that leverages wholesale and retail insights,” said Rocco Del Priore, Co-Founder of Sweed.
“The industry spends 40% of its time working to integrate systems and improve how to get our technology platforms to connect. Leaf Trade’s wholesale operations technology has improved our efficiency, and we’re looking forward to learning more about how this merger can streamline and fully integrate our tech stack as one resource, significantly optimizing our operations.”
— John Brown, Chief Information and Technology Officer, Holistic Industries
About Leaf Trade
Leaf Trade is a technology company driving the future of business operations in the cannabis sector as a trusted partner to the largest cultivators and brands across over 25 markets, including the majority of the enterprise multi-state operators. Leaf Trade leverages technology to streamline business operations throughout the entire ordering, payment, advertising, and post-sale reporting process, giving business partners the powerful tools they need to grow, excel, and scale in the highly regulated and increasingly competitive cannabis industry. leaftrade.com
About Sweed
Sweed is a technology company whose private label platform provides point of sale (POS), inventory management, eCommerce, in-store kiosks, last-mile delivery, analytics, loyalty, marketing, and payments. The platform specializes in serving dispensaries with multiple locations and vertically integrated cannabis companies. Sweed engages customers in feature development partnering with their internal technology teams to quickly solve their key operational challenges. sweedpos.com
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