This week we are going to talk about cannabis, more specifically about one of the “legal” derivatives of cannabis: the CBD or cannabidiol. It is a trending sector, which moves in a legal environment in full development. In Canada, the United States and its use as a food supplement is very advanced, in Europe it is accepted for cosmetic purposes.
let’s talk to Borja Iribarnefounder and CEO of producer and seller of products with cannabidiol to tell us what CBD is, how the project was born, how it manages to manage all the legal limitations, and even at the marketing level and how, even so, it is already placing the project in the market environment. million euros of annual turnover.
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Interview Borja Iribarne (CBD teacher)
5:45 How much is 2020 Professor CBD turning over annually?
In 2019 we had a very small billing, we billed €48 thousand, with a positive rate because our spending on advertising is ridiculous. In 2020 we billed more than half a million and in 2021 we will reach one million. It is being a cemented growth.
6:47 What team do you have?
I started alone, progressively at 4-5 months I signed a CTO as a partner, he helped me in the basic part of eCommerce. I hired an intern and now he is our ecommerce manager, he handles all the usability, design and web part. We have hired 3 interns over these 3 years and all 3 have stayed and have positions of responsibility in the company.
Being a niche, I can’t hire someone with experience in the world of cannabidiol, I do not allow the people I train to leave, I give them a good salary, conditions and responsibility. Today we have a team of 7 people and there are 13 of us on the project. A former editor-in-chief of the magazine del País has been with us since she arrived the contents have taken a brutal turn, with empathy and connection with customers. Now the soul of the company connects more with users.
We also have a marketing director and one dedicated to customer service and logistics. An operations technician who is dedicated to purchases and B2B and B2C relationshipwe work Amazon where we sell in 5 markets and to more than 100 companies today in Europe, I need the operations profile to be dumped there, with the entry and exit of the product. We are growers, distributors and we do white label, we manufacture and sell. The complete value chain.
I want a team that gives me peace of mind, knowing that if I’m not here, everything will be under control.
13:41 What is cannabidiol? Is it legit?
There is a family of plants that is cannabis, within this there are subspecies, one of them is marijuana that has many cannabinoids, one of them is THC, when people smoke or ingest this, they get high. It has benefits, as it has been approved in Canada and the US, which is why they include it in medications, but its main function is to psychoactivate.
On the other hand, there are other species such as industrial hemp and ruderalis. Industrial hemp has cannabinoid molecules and its main one is CBD or cannabidiol, which has the opposite effect to THC, is not psychoactive and has anxiolytic and anti-inflammatory properties. In the Olympics doping is not considered.
With cannabidiol you sleep better, it relieves stress, it helps with joint pain problems, chronic pain such as osteoarthritis...it has a powerful range, in the US and Canada they sell it in medicines, in addition to other countries where they are legalizing it. In Europe the legalization process is slower, its consumption is not allowed.
Our main format is oil, we sell it as a cosmetic product. Some are cosmetics for the oral flora, users can put them in the mouth and not swallow them, so it works. We are legal.
18:10 There were more markets selling this, what makes you different from the rest?
I detected that the brands that were selling CBD in Spain were not Spanish. When you sell a product as important as cannabis, which has a very bad reputation, You have to look for a purchase and recommendation environment that is as close as possible and gives you the greatest possible security. Also, most of the stores were not CBD but marijuana paraphernalia like seeds or merch.
My target audience was people like my mother, who had overcome cancer, I looked for a shopping environment similar to an Apple or Amazon store. The moment you find an environment that trusts, they launch to try a product that has been fashionable for 3 years. There is a lot of talk about it and people are curious, if you can offer good prices and good customer service with proper logistics, anyone can try it in 24-48 hours.
This was my added value, apart from the fact that there was no CBD ecommerce, only brand verticals. I offer an ecommerce in an underdeveloped niche sector in various products and formats. You have to be careful because it is still a niche and if you give the user too many options, they lose, but you have to give them several formats.
27:40 Is your website focused on Spain? Are you going to internationalize it?
Today we sell B2C in Spain and Portugal. Now let’s start at . At the B2C level, we sell in 5 markets: the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany and Spain through Amazon and other e-commerce.
today more 99% of sales are own product, We have not wanted to promote third-party products, which does not mean that in a strategic future we may open to brands outside Europe. In the US they have a 6-year lead in product development, the moment we see that the Spanish public is mature enough to add another cannabinoid and appreciates it, we will open up to international suppliers. Repeating what we always do: if a product works, we will do it.
We have the website in WordPress, with WooCommerce, and before the end of the year we will have it in Portuguese, French and English. Right now we have 125 products with variations and we will continue to expand our catalogbuying products and developing.
44:35 What traffic do you have on the web?
Mainly the number of users we are exceeding 40,000 unique users per month. We had a 2.6 and as of June we have managed to upgrade to 3.1. Coinciding with the web change with a team of developers plus adock that take away clicks and look at usability, that’s how we manage to grow.
We have a recurrence greater than 62% at the time The more people we have, the more people come back to buy, which makes the conversion rate increase. We work for creative and fun content. The basket is more than €35 in the Peninsula, more than €70 in the Balearic Islands and the average basket is €85. Many people tell us that we are number 1 for quality and price, Forbes took us out in February as the number 1 CBD project in Spain.
55:45 How do you work marketing?
The cannabis sector cannot advertise on Google, nor Google Shopping and ads, nor can it do Facebook Ads in any of its aspectss, which does not mean that we do not do it, I am not going to say how, but we do adwords, advertising on IG and remarketing, it has taken us time but we have achieved it.
We have an impact on radio, posters and remarketing, we are seeing in pages of sexual content in which we are going to put advertising with funny tones. The marketing team wants to have fun and work with humor, the more aggressive and graceful, the more they will have my approval. We are lucky to sell a product that allows us to have this tone.
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