The momentum of the marijuana legalization movement has created huge opportunities for entrepreneurs such as George Jage, president and publisher of Marijuana Business Media, who is using his background in trade publishing as the founder and president of World Tea News and the World Tea Expo—bridging the gap between buyers (readers) and industry suppliers—to gain leverage in the booming new industry of legal cannabis.
“When the business started in 2011 it was launched as an online news and information website—originally called the Dispensary Business Insider and then quickly renamed MMJ Business Daily. MMJ is used as an acronym for medical marijuana and at that time it was just medicinal marijuana,” Jage says. “We launched our first national conference and published the first Marijuana Business Factbook in 2012. In 2014, as the recreational markets were opening, we rebranded as Marijuana Business Daily.”
Besides Marijuana Business Daily magazine, a website (http://mjbizdaily.com) and various directories, Pawtucket, R.I.-based Marijuana Business Media produces two Marijuana Business Conference & Expo shows (https://mjbizconference.com), one in spring and one in fall. Its most recent fall outing, held Nov. 11-13 at Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, attracted some 5,500 delegates—“bar none the biggest show in North America for the legal cannabis market” —and offered an exhibit hall, a Ralph Nader keynote, panel discussions and breakouts.
Jage expects his next spring show, held May 9-11 at The Gaylord Palms in Orlando, to draw north of 3,000 delegates, and just like any other attendance-craving tradeshow, he is considering anchoring the fall conference in Las Vegas due to the big numbers it attracts.
Anybody worth their MBA could probably identify the upward arc of this nascent industry, which according to Jage is beginning a steep climb and winnowing down to its key players, with less room to jump in and produce competing tradeshows.
“The fascinating part of this industry is that there are comparisons to the dot-com boom and ‘Green Rush,’ but this is different because you have an existing black market that’s converting to a white market, so it’s not like the dot-com market, which was a new market,” Jage says. “And now that it is coming out of the closet, people that didn’t before are buying it because it’s legal now.”
And that means business is booming.
“Our Marijuana Business Factbook for 2015 estimated that the total marijuana market was $3 billion in sales in the U.S., and we estimate the multiplier [total market value, including ancillary products] is over $10 billion in sales,” Jage says. “Cannabis is a $60 [billion] to $100 billion industry down the road.”
