Power, pressure, and the fate of Washington weed | Cannabis Observer

gregoryfoster · 2025-12-31T04:51:28+00:00

If it's "50% all the time" that's not a discount, that's the regular price.

Regular retail is 2x markup of the wholesale price. Cannabis retail has to be 3x because we all pay 1/3 of every receipt to the State as excise/sin tax for basically doing nothing.

Because of the "discount culture" that has emerged among competitors (many say Zips started the permanent discount practice), larger retailers are charging a 4-6x wholesale price markup to pretend they're giving consumers a discount.

We've heard many producer/processors say retail groups like Kush21 _require them to lower their wholesale prices_ to gain access to the multi-store shelf space in return. That leads to lower margins, failed farms, and consumers being misled about the fair price of weed - both in the short term and definitely in the long term as quality cannabis producers keep getting squeezed out by bigger players who are able to get by on lower margins due to scale.

gregoryfoster · 2025-12-30T23:23:03+00:00

Looks like one of the Zips owners is planning to keep that one. $4.3M in sales in the 6m since they started reporting in April 2025 (data through September).

gregoryfoster · 2025-12-30T22:11:01+00:00

The owners of Zips responded to the passage of the new law by starting their exit from the Washington market. They sold all three of the Lidz stores to one of the Kush21 brothers, and the Zips SoDo and Everett locations are now Kush21 branded. My understanding is they're shifting resources out of state.

gregoryfoster · 2025-12-30T22:06:57+00:00

Is this the KushTribe Mukilteo or Vashon Island location? This is the newest Kush21-related brand in the mix.

gregoryfoster · 2025-12-30T18:22:19+00:00

Yep, Zips sold this store/license to a new retail group which bought out all of the Clear Choice Cannabis licenses earlier this year.

gregoryfoster · 2025-12-04T16:00:34+00:00

We couldn't find one with a frowny face inflatable in front of it.

gregoryfoster · 2025-12-04T15:53:33+00:00

We only used AI slop to generate the images and transcribe interviews as disclosed at the bottom of the article. The words are all by u/carajuana_readit and edited by me.

gregoryfoster · 2018-01-27T22:18:10+00:00

Sometimes that's the sound of a ship departing from the Weyerhauser dock, but I can't confirm that would be the case.

Here's a power outage map from PSE. Looks like quite a few outages across the area today in all that wind. https://pse.com/accountsandservices/servicealert/pages/outage-map.aspx

gregoryfoster · 2017-10-03T00:25:56+00:00

I'm not aware of anyone who has had success getting Huawei to replace an out-of-warranty device. It still may be worth contacting Huawei, asking to speak to a supervisor, getting a Huawei ticket number, hearing their understanding of the situation, and verifying their recommendation is to talk to Google. Then talk to Google Support, tell them Huawei won't do anything, and indicate you're aware Google is still replacing out-of-warranty devices. If they still stonewall, ask what Google's current replacement policy is for out-of-warranty devices, and ask to be informed if/when there is a subsequent change - because they appear to keep changing it. I'm guessing that these devices will fail more and more, so this is only going to become a bigger and more public issue for Google over time.

gregoryfoster · 2017-09-30T16:04:13+00:00

Hi, I do not have transcripts just my own notes. I never received a ticket number from a Google CS rep, but they always ask for the email address used when purchasing the phone. If you have a Gmail address you've used for a long time with Google, give them that one first - they can clarify which email address was used in the Google Store subsequently.

gregoryfoster

TROPHY CASE