Tinleytotally fumbled any pre-emtive advantage we had since the switch to thc products after our semi-success with Hemplify.
The Hemplify made from hemp stalk oil got some traction despite the bad packaging and branding and to walk away from it in favour of the much more difficult to market thc infused Tinley might have seemed like a good idea at the time but cbd skus are still easier to market and profit from as an alternative healthy choice option than the thc style.
Hind sight tells me that we needed to run with the cbd product with a total revamp of how it was presented to consumers with more emphasis on the healthy option and retweaked the hemp stalk oil description with something that didn't make it sound like you were going to be drinking motor oil.
Somehow Tinley got us over all the hurdles to be able to offer Tinley's to consumers in California and, I think, Canada but management felt the need to constantly change co-bottlers and distributors when they found out that the friends and family style of awarding contracts was a failure.
Getting the samples to the regulatory agencies seemed to be a total failure in Canada and marginal at best for California.
Our supersales option of Rick Gillis didn't come off as advertised as sales and signing up new vendors was a wash with him applying his efforts to getting our new bottling facility up and running.
Of course I guess you don't push for sales unless you can deliver.
Tinley's awards and first strike advantage were squandered due to our own inability and a stream of associations and deals that ended in disaster or at very least, bad choices of who we rub up on. I'm thinking of the choices for distribution, that seemed to require change regularly and that Chrisley connection, which we all know how it ended.
Out of all of this we did manage to garner some awards for Tinley's that didn't get the legs it deserved and then we formulated or had formulated some Beckett's which detracted from the Tinley's effort and prescious resources needed to nurture the growth of our Tinley's line.
Through all of this, we should have been able to show some black ink from co-bottling, if we had all the co-bottlers they told us we had and if the profit margins for co-bottling were as advertised.
We put together our own state of the art facility which was the talk of the town according to our people while one of our anchor co-bottlers Pabst built what we had only larger and in a couple of years. It took Tinley that long to get an electrical part to make our's run. Should have been a lawsuit there which didn't happen which raises the question of who's fault the onerous delay was!
As an early investor and long time shareholder, I daresay, that we are at the corner of do or die and I welcome the new blood and hope of fresh ideas from the Blaze personel that have assignments on our board.
They bring the promise of success from past positive experience and expediting getting Tinley's on shelves and into consumer hands to the degree that we could call it a successful brand, might be able to recoup some of our first strike advantage that Tinley's couldn't deliver on to support shareprice.
I posted about XBRA launching fresh product lines on shelves in Canada in the same class as Tinley's and the same environment which suggests that others are able to navigate the pitfalls to test the market and capitalize on their efforts.
Sadly, most of the other bottling hopefuls in this class don't seem to be doing well in Canada while California's success is difficult to calculate, although I do believe there are lots of skus in the race.
There are still a couple of things intact from the Tinley experience that, hopefully, in the right hands, can be built upon. Go Blaze and don't forget the commonshareholders who financed us to this stage.
glta and dyodd