Cannabis industry celebrates strong 4/20

While social media has been awash with the technical difficulties and loss of sales experienced by many cannabis retailers who used Dutchie’s point-of-sale platform, most of the industry is celebrating a “record” April 20 sales day.

Sales data from Flowhub, Treez, and Jane Technologies indicated that 4/20 and the week leading up to it returned a solid performance for the U.S. marijuana industry.

“We executed a strong 4/20 yesterday and processed 2x the volume than 4/20 last year. Many Flowhub users texted me saying they broke sales records,” Flowhub CEO Kyle Sherman posted on social media on Sunday.

The Colorado-based company shared that its dispensary clients reported a total of $83.6 million in sales on Saturday across 22 states and Canada, with more than 6 million product units sold.

That made it “the biggest cannabis sales day in history,” according to a Flowhub memo shared with Green Market Report, with a 182% increase in sales over the average Saturday. Dispensaries using Flowhub’s software reported, on average, a 7% sales volume increase over 2023, which the memo noted was “impressive considering last year was also a record.”

In addition, discounts, which are common on the high holiday, weren’t as steep as in previous years according to the firm.

“While 76% of all 4/20 transactions included a discount, discounts as a percentage of the total cost per transaction were down 9% over the last 4/20. This means retailers managed to discount more products, while taking less off the total sale price,” the memo reported. 

California-based Treez, which has clients in 11 states, also reported a “smooth” 4/20 sales day.

“While some point-of-sale (POS) providers encountered outages, the Treez system remained operational without any downtime,” the company said in a statement.

Treez added that while 4/20 itself was a major day for dispensaries – with sales up 120% over typical Saturdays – the week leading up to it also saw a surge in sales. On Friday, April 19, there was a 200% sales bump, Treez noted, while the overall week had sales up three times normal sales volume.

“While we anticipated 4/20 to be the pinnacle of sales, it came as a surprise that 4/19 brought in record-breaking sales. This indicated that customers were gearing up for the 4/20 celebrations by stocking up in advance,” Treez reported.

The firm also reported a shift in product demand for the week.

“Interestingly, for the first time, flower didn’t reign as the top-selling product on 4/20. This year, both flower and pre-rolls shared the spotlight, each constituting 25% of total sales, thereby collectively making up 50% of all sales,” Treez added.

Jane Technologies, another California-based cannabis e-commerce company, saw a similar trend.

Jane reported total sales volume on Saturday of $23.8 million in the 39 states where it has dispensary clients, which is actually an 8% year-over-year decrease from 2023. But when the company combined Friday and Saturday sales for a total of $45.7 million, it found that sales were up 14.3% from any previous two-day period the company has recorded.

“We saw record-breaking sales across the country this 4/20. At Jane, it was an extremely successful day with well over over half a million transactions completed on the platform this holiday weekend,” Soc Rosenfeld, CEO and co-founder of Jane Technologies, said in a statement.