I'd like to toss my 2 cents in here regarding "consignment". The true nature of this beast is the lack of overhead associated with an inventory. Consider the risk a store owner takes when he orders a case of XXXX or whatever. He owns it and has to wait to sell it to make his profit. His profit actually comes from the back end, the last few he sells. If things are slow and it takes him a long time to sell everything, his profit has dropped considerably because of all the other expenses (overhead) he's endured. Home Depot and Wall Mart operate this way. HD will buy several boxcar loads of, let's use Kohler toilets, all the same model & color. They'll get terms like 120 days to pay the bill. They then run a sale on this item and sell it out way before the due date and make their profit without ever outlaying a single dollar for the stuff. They also force a buy-back clause so that whatever doesn't sell, the manufacturer has to take back, no questions, no re-stocking dollar per dollar what was charged originally.
I get that, and it's true. The problem here is that we aren't talking about toilets. We are talking about buds. More comparable to a grocery store buying fruit. They don't get to take it back if they can't sell it.
The real problem here is there are quite a few people who have no business buying buds running dispensaries. They are bad at their job, so they put the risk on the growers to cover up their own incompetence. If a dispensaries buyer can't sell a pound of buds, he shouldn't buy them. It's pretty easy to figure out if a pound will move or not just by looking at it. If more buyers were also successful growers, they'd be able to more accurately asses a pound. But most of them aren't. Most are just random middle men who only know "buy for a dollar, sell for two". They know profit margins, not quality. If a pound of bud is a good price, they buy it. What they should do instead is pay cash up front, but buy less of it if it's bud they can't move quickly.
The dispensaries that pay cash up front or have a very quick turn around on payments (1-2 weeks) almost always have better bud and more customers compared to dispensaries with long consignment periods. These things are directly related. Just like dispensaries who are willing to pay a little more for a pound almost always have better bud and more customers than a dispensary that just hunts for the highest profit margins.
It's funny, but retail prices are almost irrelevant to dispensary success. It doesn't matter if they are charging $45 an eighth or $65. The clubs with the best bud are more successful, it's that simple. The way a dispensary gets better bud is buy paying up front and/or paying a little more. Sure, they make a lower profit margin in a lot of cases, but they get significantly more sales volume. It doesn't matter if you make less money per pound if you're selling twice as many of them.
If dispensaries buy fire bud, it's going to sell. It's that simple. They don't need to worry about it sitting on the shelf too long. There is very little risk involved when buying a pound of premium bud. If dispensaries try to low ball or offer long consignment periods to people with premium buds, that's just a sign that they do not belong at their jobs.
There are a ton of obstacles for all involved I suppose. I think threads like this help a lot. When the bad ones are known, people can avoid them.
