Phivida Holdings Inc. PHVAF

Solid sounding monthly update

[Badazzlars]

 

Phivida Monthly Update
September 2019
 

Dear Shareholders,
 
The month of September has been a busy month with a lot of exciting news to report as it relates to sales and distribution and our brand marketing initiatives.
 
Sales and Distribution
As you are aware from our last newsletter, we have spent most of the month opening up new accounts in the greater Los Angeles area. It was an intense four weeks in the market and was time well spent both in terms of sales, sales leads and gaining a better understanding of what is happening at the ground level in terms of local regulatory issues.
 
As it relates to sales and sales leads in Los Angeles, we managed to secure almost 300 sales leads, and to-date we have called on more than one-third of the leads. In the leads, there is a great balance of traditional retail accounts as well as strong opinion leader accounts that generate a significant amount of volume while building the brand image.
 
Interestingly enough, the biggest resistance we faced was within licensed restaurants. They expressed a high level of interest in carrying CBD beverages; however, it appears the California State Health Department has solely focused on this channel of distribution and asked certain establishments to remove products from their shelves. With that said, it appears many retailers have decided to move forward with beverages waiting on Bill AB 228 to be signed in to law.
 
With more exciting news on sales and distribution as it relates to specialty grocery retail in California, we will be launching with two prominent LA-based grocery retailers that service the greater SoCal area in the month of October. We are excited to get the product on the shelves, supported with an aggressive sampling program as we have proven time and time again when we get the bottle in hand and liquid to lips our conversions are extremely high.
 
Along with California, we anticipate rolling out the Oki brand in the greater NYC area in the month of October. Currently, we are simply waiting to finalize the contract, which once executed, will provide immediate sales and distribution. In our last letter, I also made mention of our expansion into Texas, and I am happy to say we are sold in over 100 accounts with continued plans to grow in the great state of Texas. I also made mention of the sell-through success we have experienced in Colorado with one of our regional retail partners expanding our full range of Oki beverages into the state of Florida. This expanded distribution is still in the works, and we are working closely with our retail partner to establish “desired” distribution partners. Aside from our regional retail partner in Colorado, we have also made significant gains in the up and down the street business with a focus on Boulder and Denver.
 
As a result of these efforts, since the end of August, there has been a 150 percent growth in outlets carrying Oki products and our retail presence has grown from two states to three. Clearly, based on this positive sales and distribution activity, October will be our largest ever month in terms of shipments and sales to-date.
 
Marketing
On the marketing front , we have continued our sampling programme in L.A and Colorado and now have sampled over 3,700 consumers with over 1000 bottles sold in-store during a sampling event .
 
We have also kicked off a micro-influencer programme with a small group of micro-influencers in the L.A area to support our retail expansion, drive increased awareness, and traffic to our website and social media platforms. To date, although early, we see good traction with 120 percent growth in our social media followers on our Oki Instagram page.
 
New Product Development
We would be remiss not to mention that we had our first account presentation as it relates to our new topical product offerings –  the first being a CBD-infused Vitamin C serum and the second being a morning and night pain topical. While the market is extremely cluttered in this category with a lot of dubious products, we feel we have two products that provide us with a strong point of difference to current products in the market place.
 
Our E-Commerce Platform
Over the last month, the Wikala team has continued to work closely with Mike Cornwell and his marketing team to make improvements and upgrades to the Vida+ and Oki websites.  We are investing in design improvement and SEO across all sites, which we believe will result in positive traffic and revenue upside within the next few months. 
 
We will shortly be launching new products and packaging to the Vida+ site so keep an eye out for these in early October.
 
As many of your will know, we made a strategic decision over the summer to create the Bloomgroove.com brand and dedicate this for the cannabis accessory marketplace website we were creating, as we wanted to reserve Wikala.com for our soon to be launched CBD marketplace.  There are very solid reasons for separating out the accessory market from the CBD market – both what we call separate sector niches.
 
In regards to Wikala.com, the Belgrade team has been working steadily on its development, and we are excited to unveil the new Wikala.com in coming months. We have also developed a new website design, branding, logo, and user experience, which we believe that when it launches will position the new site as a leader in the online quality CBD marketplace.
 
With this letter, I hope that you, along with me, are excited about the progress we are making in establishing a solid retail footprint for Oki in key markets. Shareholder value has always been a prime concern of management, and as we are going through this period of share price pressure we have concerted our efforts on what we can control: striving to build a great company. We have clearly established the foundation by creating a great product. Next will be establishing a retail footprint that delivers reliable recurring sales with solid growth potential. That effort is clearly underway.
 
Thanks for your continued support. I look forward to providing another update on our progress at the end of the month.
 
Respectfully,
 
Jim