Ron Basak-Smith, Co-Founder, CEO of Sana Packaging
Ron Basak-Smith is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sana Packaging, a startup that designs and develops differentiated, sustainable, and compliant packaging solutions for the cannabis industry using 100% plant-based hemp plastic. Sana Packaging is proud to be a “Made in the U.S.A.” company that supports domestic agriculture and domestic manufacturing.
Ron earned a B.A. in Sociology from Ithaca College in 2011 and an M.B.A. in Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, and Finance from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2017. Ron’s goal is to support the sensibility and soft skills of his Sociology degree with the hard skills of his M.B.A. in order to bring positive social and environmental change to his business endeavors.
https://www.sanapackaging.com/
ron@sanapackaging.com
james@sanapackaging.com
info@sanapackaging.com
https://www.instagram.com/sanapackaging/
https://www.facebook.com/sanapackaging/
https://twitter.com/sanapackaging
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Thinking Outside the Bud where we speak with entrepreneurs investors thought leaders researchers advocates and policymakers who are finding new and exciting ways for cannabis to positively impact business society and culture. And now, here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:30] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc. Award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For details on the program visit Eckfeldt.com/thrive. That's E C K F E L D T.com/thrive.
[00:01:06] Welcome, everyone. This is Thinking Outside the Bud, I’m Bruce. I'm your host. And our guest today is Ron Basak-Smith. He is Co-founder and CEO of Sana Packaging. We're gonna talk to him about the cannabis industry. We're gonna talk about what they're doing to innovate in packaging. I'm sure we're gonna talk a lot about sustainable packaging and what packaging means in the cannabis industry right now. We're seeing huge amounts of growth in cannabis, which is really changing the game for a lot of suppliers and folks that are giving cannabis companies what they need to operate and be successful. So I'm fascinated by this kind of the whole supply chain and all the things that go into actually bringing cannabis to market and packaging is a big part of that. So we're going to talk about the details that we're going to learn more about Ron's story and the background of sonna and his entrepreneurial experience with that. Ron, welcome to the program. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So before we get into the ins and outs of packaging and sustainable packaging, tell us a story. How did like what's your professional background, how to cannabis come up? How did you start this business? Tell us about the journey you've been on.
[00:02:05] Yeah, totally. The of packaging has been quite a journey for me. Very much a personal problem that I'm trying to solve with our company. Cannabis has played a major role in my life since high school. And, you know, moving forward, I. The brain where this all started moved out to Colorado in 2011 was working in the liquor industry for about four years. In that time, saw the development of the cannabis industry, but also saw the role that single use materials were playing in our environment. And, you know, from a consumer standpoint, how know as consumers had to interact with those products.
[00:02:41] And so, you know, me going into dispensaries throughout Colorado as legalization was happening, really just kind of saying, you know, here's this new industry. Look at all this packaging. What's the game plan here? How do we not have this same problem we created with a whole new industry? You know, very much I think sustainability is implemented from the from the beginning. It's harder to go back then to start the right foot. And so that's really a big thing with the cannabis industry. It's you know, we all know that packaging is a problem. Let's see what we can do to make it less of a problem.
[00:03:12] And what was curious here, I guess, that your kind of knowledge experience with packaging before getting into this was as you saw the problem and then then went about educating yourself on really hold this stuff works to do. Did you have some experience that you're bringing to the table? What was that process like?
[00:03:27] Yeah, you know, I think my I say we're not packaging folks. Both myself, my co-founder, James, we have no background in packaging. We approach it. You know, my education was in sociology amount of education very much.
[00:03:40] You know, environmental sociology is my main, main area of focus. So, you know, that's really where my expertise comes from, is what is actually going on in the environment. What role is packaging playing in that? Both James and myself, co-founder, we met in graduate school of MBA program at Seiyu Boulder.
[00:03:56] So we were studying entrepreneurship and sustainability as our main areas of focus.
[00:04:01] But yeah, once again, not really packaging. And so I think that's really I always think our biggest advantage is that we're not a packaging company that makes it easy for us to know now that we are a packaging company, obviously we have to sell packaging and stuff from the very beginning. We can kind of just say this is what we want to do. And if our biz doesn't do that, well, then, you know, we need to change something about our business model.
[00:04:23] You know, there's always an advantage of, you know, coming into a market fresh, you know, call it beginner mind or novice eyes. You know, it's like you're not tainted. You're not bringing in preconceived ideas or assumptions about how things should or shouldn't work. And so you can ask him questions. I'm curious what what kind of fresh eyes did you feel like you have or things that you saw in the industry that you said, hey, look, does it really need to be this way?
[00:04:43] What were some of the things you noticed?
[00:04:45] Yeah, I mean, I think from right from the start, you know, putting sustainability as our main point of our business, basically.
[00:04:50] I think traditionally in the packaging model, you see two main things. When someone's you know, someone's going to manufacture packaging, one low cost and two, how can we decrease the risk of product failure? Basically, we look at that and say, you know, for things to be sustainable, we need to switch that model first and foremost. You know, obviously, cost is a concern, but let's not make that our number one concern when going into product development. Let's kind of put that as a secondary thought. Let's see if we can produce and then figure out how we can, you know, get the price down. But knowing that there's people out there who are looking for these products, let's first try to make make that product. And then. The risk is, is the other thing. You know that a large corporation, most packaging company, oftentimes, you know, they have salaries and payroll and all those things that keep keep going, keep the lights on basically as a startup. Obviously our number one goal, but we don't have the same realities as a functioning, fully functioning business of our staff is small and we all grow our staff beyond where it needs to until, you know, we can afford to do that without changing our business model. That makes sense. You know, the big thing is really being able to build it from the ground up so that we can accomplish what we need to. So kind of just shift in the paradigm a little bit with how traditional packaging company might approach their product development. And then obviously we say, you know, it's the cannabis industry, the rules of the game habit get established, yet still the concrete is still setting again.
[00:06:17] Exactly.
[00:06:18] So let's talk about sustainability. I mean, what do we mean by this? Let me break this down for us and give us a little bit, you know, a more advanced kind of education here on, you know, what goes into this question of sustainability when it comes to packaging.
[00:06:31] What are the kind of dynamics and ins and outs of the things you think about, the things that the market thinks about and how this is all playing out from a packaging point of view?
[00:06:39] A said this is the basically what I spend my time every day racking my head against it all, saying what? When customers reach out, folks reach out. You know, we want we want sustainable packaging. We want to do better with our products. And then I kind of like buzzwords will be thrown around, possibility, biodegrade, ability, recyclability and then more for me.
[00:07:00] And I think everyone in the world of sustainability is really trying to define for ourselves and that customer what they're really asking when when they want some sustainable. Right. Because I think all of our environmental issues have been kind of removed under put under one roof basically where we're not looking at individually. Right. Like we can't tackle the water issue. Wall tech and carbon at the center.
[00:07:25] Yeah, there can. Everything's connected. But things need to be attacked at different separately basically. And then there's this whole idea of, you know, everything, you know, originality of sustainability. Right. Like the concerns for folks in the East Coast are probably not the concerns, the same concerns for folks on the West Coast. And a lot of instances, you know what, water usage being one of them, we can dive down into air quality, soil, all the different factors that really we need to take into consideration.
[00:07:52] And so that's really where we want to make it a starting point for consumers, because no one we don't really know. It's all all these need to be attacked from many different angles. If we if we just attack carbon and, you know, ignore everything else, well, we'll have issues. They all they're all coming to a head. And so, you know, for a customer purchasing a product, it's like, what do you want out of this?
[00:08:12] Are you someone who is trying to move away from products that support the fossil fuel industry? OK. If that's so, let's look at this a little differently. If you're someone who strictly is trying to support recycling and wanting to encourage that industry. OK, let's look at it this way. If you're someone who wants to be disruptive in their speckling industry and say, you know, this industry isn't working as it should. How do we fix it? All right. Another angle to look at. And so that's really what we are trying to do is, you know, helping customers and companies define what sustainability means to them and then put options in front of them that help them reach those goals.
[00:08:51] And, you know, packaging that really comes down to their consumers interaction with their product. You know, at the end of the day, I think there's a lot of a lot of considerations that need to be taken, you know, for example, for packaging a perishable good. Right. But the consumers asking for sustainable packaging, but in reality, providing them, you know, so-called sustainable packaging is decreasing the amount of time that the product they're buying is edible. Well, then, you know, we're putting on a lot of energy to produce that product in the first place to get it to you. We sure should consider how long it's going to last on the shelf.
[00:09:23] It seems like there's a bunch of tradeoffs. I mean, the kind of the shelf life, I mean, there's probably obviously a cost component.
[00:09:30] You know, there's levels of sort of levels of sustainability. What do you feel are the kind of levers or the the variables that you end up playing with when you're thinking about like what packages should we develop or packages do we want to bring to market? How do I get the right mix of this stuff to customers? What are the factors that are kind of going through your mind when you're thinking about your your packages on product development?
[00:09:54] Yeah. I think you nailed it on the head there at the word tradeoff. Right. That is. And then, you know, this is where we are right now as a society, no matter where we look at packaging, there's no silver bullet that's going to solve every issue. It's already on a path forward, moving in the right direction to to get to a point where we can buy and sell goods responsibly. Right. And so there's going to be all these tradeoffs along the way. But while making those tradeoffs, you know, really consider, is this getting to the. Root of the problem, right? I think a lot of those trade offs that we talk about with customers, for example, are, you know, costs versus transportation distance. Right.
[00:10:37] So I think one of the big things that we can consider in packaging is the idea of a global global supply chain.
[00:10:44] Is that really what we need for packaging? Right.
[00:10:47] So there's this idea that, you know, by using all the resources that the whole globe has to offer, we can create efficiencies and produce those products at the lowest cost possible. Right.
[00:10:58] And that's kind of been the traditional, traditional model with a lot of our products and especially packaging. And at the end of the day, you know, we have to look at both the upstream and downstream impacts of that product. So what's going in to producing it? How far are those products traveling? I think, you know, when we when someone says sustainable products to us and then they want me to go overseas to make it for cheaper. Like, you know, now I'm just pulling a cloak over your eyes. You know, you said this is sustainable. But like once again, what from what angle are you looking at? Sustainability. So is it just the downstream? Just the end of the end of life of it?
[00:11:32] You know, that's really for me, it's difficult because all the conversations we have about the downstream, you know, the end of life or it's like, is this recyclable? Is this biodegradable? It's compostable.
[00:11:43] But really, that's only scratching the surface of the real issue at hand. Right. So the amount of upstream waste versus downstream waste.
[00:11:51] So it's considered non hazardous industrial waste.
[00:11:55] So the stuff it's not you're not going to landfill from from consumers, but going being put somewhere on the earth by industry, basically. Right. And so this is this is this this is a couple of couple of years old, but it just kind of gives an idea of what we're working with. The amount of material that's not hazardous industrial waste is about seven billion tons of waste.
[00:12:19] But we're talking about downstream and what everyone is concerned about is. Two hundred million tons.
[00:12:26] Oh, interesting. So there's far more of those 20, 20, almost 30 times the impact upstream. Then there's downstream.
[00:12:33] Exactly.
[00:12:34] And that is really where we as consumers and manufacturers and producers of these products have to start thinking about this stuff. Right. We can put as much responsibility on the consumer and put, you know, put it all on them. But really, to cut these changes are going to happen is from from the from the manufacturers. And so, you know, the consumer is the best they can do is reduce, reuse all recycle all that stuff. But then once they've done all of that, what's happening? Right. Are the manufacturers purchasing recycled content to make their products? Are they themselves reducing, reusing, figuring out ways to become more efficient versus the bottom line? Right.
[00:13:11] So it it means bringing packaging local, you know, for example, for our company. We've had many folks in South America looking for our products.
[00:13:22] And many folks have asked. I think it's a good idea for us to manufacture our products in South America and then ship those ones up to North America. Like that's that's a thing that we see a lot as oil. It's at least on the same continent type of thing. But really like what we would do and what we're trying to do and what we are. Our goal is to say to our North American products will be manufactured in North America or our American products specifically are manufactured for American companies. And our Canadian products are in Canada, manufactured there. You know, for a Canadian company is an invite and vice versa for manufacturing in South America. That's for South American companies, because those who beat those are the areas in the localities that are being affected by the products and goods that they're creating. Right. And so we can't just put all of our production of our of our goods and services or all of our waste on other countries or other or other states. You know, like, for example, you know, New York City, all their waste and all that is being transported to Pennsylvania or Pennsylvanians really stoked about that. Probably not.
[00:14:23] But there's tech communities in Pennsylvania that also benefit from the money that New York City is paying him to do to bring that trash to them. But I think at the end of the day, you know, the recycling issue is what it is, is because we've been sending all of our material to distant lands where some of it gets repurposed. But globally, you know, we're less than 9 percent. So that's the reality. And, you know, it's just getting put somewhere. I mean, things, you know, biodegrades even it's composting. It's not a lot of the compostable plastics are not breaking down the time period needed. And those are going to landfill, too. So these are these are the realities. And if they are the realities, whose responsibility is it to fix those realities? Is it the consumers or is it the companies that are perpetuating this and that benefiting the most off of it? And that's really, I think, the transition that that needs to happen. And you know that back to those tradeoffs. Those charities need to be made by the manufacturers, the producers, and say, you know, is it what is most important for us as a business right now?
[00:15:23] It's interesting. So if I'm from an edible company and I'm figuring out, OK, what am I? And solutions. If I if I just look at sort of end of life meeting, you know, if I say, look, I want a package that's going to be recyclable or biodegrade versus one that, you know, is just gonna go into a landfill.
[00:15:40] Well, well, I be I made have a package that has a low end of life impact if I look at the full life impact. You know, if I have a biodegradable package, but it's it's made in China and the processes used to make it have all sorts of byproducts. And I'm now shipping it across the world versus another package that may not be biodegradable. But if it's source locally with reused materials and a low impact way, I'd be house. I may have less environmental impact using a non recyclable product than I would having a recyclable product, just cause of the of the full lifecycle impact that has on how it's manufactured.
[00:16:16] Exactly.
[00:16:17] You know, the fact that there's a lot of people that are making the case that because if we're gonna send our recycled materials overseas to be sorted and then they end up in the ocean, like we'd be much better off sending that to landfill. Right. Like better just area research and bury it. But then, you know, the reversal of that is then we are making no progress.
[00:16:37] You know, every year we're just doing of our resources to delay until forever. And then then the conversation becomes, OK, we want biodegradable packaging or compostable. I don't like to use the word biodegradable just because it hasn't really been defined properly. So we want we want let's let's say we want compostable packaging. But yet, like you said, we go and produce it. You know, we have it made overseas somewhere, wherever it could be being made here in the United States like that. Don't that do not have good manufacturing processes. Right. Or the company in and of itself. I mean that let's look and look back in time and see who is lobbying governments to move away from better waste waste systems and stuff. You know how we've gotten ourselves into this system sounds like. Yeah, really? What is it that we're supporting? What are we really trying to get to? At the end of the day, if we believe that, you know, the regulators here in the United States and our manufacturing processes are more stringent than some other countries, and that's probably one of the reasons why the cost is increased.
[00:17:36] Well, then, you know, that's that's part of that whole consideration of the upstream downstream thing. And I think that's where a lot of us were. If if we can start thinking about it more holistically, we will make a lot better decisions around about it. And I think, you know, that's exactly what those who don't want to change the system want us to think. Right. Yeah. This you know, the answer is within just continuing to do this single option that is presented in front of us, but minimal change. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
[00:18:04] How much do you feel like I'm curious your you know, in terms of the work you've done and the sort of the clients we worked with and kind of the markets that you've interacted with, you know how much of this is people want, you know, truly low impact products and how much do people want products that have a perceived allure. But like it was always like I I want something that looks like it's biodegradable or has a low impact.
[00:18:26] You know what I wanted you know, wanted to paper.
[00:18:28] I wanted to, you know, seem like something that's post-consumer content, you know, versus something that, you know, they really, truly want, you know, measurable, you know, and and, you know, sustainability, even if the package doesn't necessarily look sustainable and, you know, it doesn't maybe have visual qualities of citizensand ability. I'm curious what how much you run into that. You know, is it really sustainable or is it just look sustainable?
[00:18:50] Great. Great question there re. This is another one of those things that, you know, continually banging my head against what's what's the right thing, right path forward. But that's because I think there's two two ways to look at it. One is if someone is coming to me and saying I want sustainable packaging because it's going to help my product, help us sell more product. You know, at the end of the day, I can say, great. Does it matter why they want to sell their product or is it more important that they're putting it in the right package? And that's kind of you know, and they say, you know, consumer consumers can drive, you know, the market, basically. I think that's what we're seeing there. And I think that's really great. But there's the flip side of it, too, where you get the customer right the door, you're kind of bringing up things where I want something that appears to be sustainable but isn't. Right. You know, I've just had a trade show. And so I came up to me and they we have our products and we try to encourage using white materials because that has a higher likelihood to be recycled and a higher value on the market. Things like that. And they wanted very specifically plastic piece that looked like wood, you know.
[00:19:56] Can you cook? Can you get the can you get a wood appearance on this? And there's companies that do that. I'm like, yes, I can do that. But we as a company will not do that. I am working on creating one that is truly made out of wood, reclaimed sawdust. You know, those types of things that can be done. It's gonna cost a lot more. But I think we do get ourselves in a danger if we go back to that consumer's willingness to pay. And if the consumer thinks or believes that they're buying a more crafter, more sustainable product and are paying more for that. And the. He is just using this packaging to increase their margin versus solve the issue. Then I think that really that company needs to re-evaluate why they're doing what they're doing. And it's hard for us like I can't nit pick on, you know, I don't ask a gecko and ask all of our customers, hey, are you doing this because this is really what you want to do or is this because you're trying to sell product? Because at the end of the day, we need more sustainable materials in the marketplace.
[00:20:52] So that goes back to let's make sure that we're choosing products and material types that are moving us in the right direction and not just appeasing to this, you know, facade, basically that we're moving in the right direction. So I think that's very much an internal question everyone can ask themselves. And, you know, we we always just encourage and try to put out, hey, this is why this is being done this way. And then Yabby will be you won't see any products coming from us that appear to be something so so, so soon.
[00:21:23] Interesting. And how mean you mentioned price here. I mean, you know, the industry is, you know, I think has gone through, you know, shifts the last couple of quarters. Right. Where I think in the beginning, you know, there was there was a lot of money floating around. The prices were high, or at least the perceived prices were high. People were spending a lot of money to just develop great product and get on the shelves. And the consumers, I think, you know, there's that the squeeze has developed a little bit around. You'll really be able to run these businesses effectively. You know, there's they really need to look at cost controls and pricing and stuff. Well, I guess what have you noticed around your component to the, you know, kind of the cost structure of these products? What's been happening to prices or price points changing? What are people willing to invest in? Not invest in? Have you seen the kind of market play out in terms of the economics?
[00:22:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah. We as a packaging company and packaging traditionally falls in the this is this they come up to sell our product. If you look at other things in the business world, there doesn't seem to be such a sensitivity to price.
[00:22:23] Right. I see companies going out all the time, extravagant parties, nice hotels, expensive rental cars, things like that that I I don't know if there's such a value add to the product or anything other than it looks nice and we're going to be big.
[00:22:39] Right. And there seems to be very little sensitivity that no one's thinking about cost cutting and those in those areas. But when it comes to packaging, surely we can if we can save it, it's very easy, right?
[00:22:50] It's packaging. It's like you're buying 10000 caps. They cost 10 cents a unit. These ones cost eleven since the unit. OK, let's go at the 10 cents. That's a smart business decision. I am throwing a party for a group of people that I want to impress.
[00:23:05] Much harder to value. You do not go at the $10 per person cocktail or the $8 per person cocktail. I don't know. Right.
[00:23:12] And so that's where I think once again, it kind of comes down to what's your goal as a business? Do you put sustainability and, you know, the environment as a one of the most important things for your business to to continue to operate? If so, start to examine some of those those costs out there. I think the industry is built with a lot of interest to increased costs like, you know, Colorado, if you want to and other states, this is true. You can't use a credit card in a store. There's a three anywhere from two to five dollar credit card charge on every purchase, whether you spend five dollars. Five hundred. So that's one, you know, very little value add. But, you know, people are paying that. Right.
[00:23:49] So then companies should look at that and say, you know, there's there's other ways I could integrate the cost of sustainability into my products right off the bat. And I think there's examples all over the cabin. You know, look at the tax rate.
[00:24:02] There's a huge thing there that if we could encourage sustainable businesses, practices, things like that, there's just there's a lot of ways that sustainability doesn't have to be this huge left their huge price increase.
[00:24:15] But with that being said, to truly make something sustainable or an improvement from, you know, excessive resource extraction or human capital exploitation, we might have to increase the cost of things a little bit. Right now, that's just that's just the nature of things. But also, there might be some efficiencies to like if we do have hyper localized packaging with various material types, we might be reducing shipping costs. That would be that'd be the end goal, right. Like it can. And shipping costs will actually mean a reduction in our carbon footprint. Right. Like those two things coincide. And so those are those are the things where, you know, for example, just know trajectory as a company. Right. Like a startup packaging company. Not not a traditional play. Everything for us. We have to go out and build molds to produce our products. Obviously, you know, the money that we had starting off limits us in the size mold that we're able to build. Right. And the size more that we build, the larger the larger mold grow. But to build, the more parts we're going to produce at a given time, decrease cost. Right.
[00:25:20] And so, you know, getting more folks on board with this this message is key, right? Like I tell people all the time, you know. You've asked us, you they see other sustainable packaging companies and in the cannabis space and stuff and, you know, are you concerned about that? Is that a problem for you? And I am 100 percent onboard with anyone else who wants to start making cannabis packaging and truly work toward sustainability with it, because that's what's going to drive down costs. Right. Like that once the supply chain is built out, normalize, you know, like with our have base materials. Right. Like we just had just when just when federal legal. Now look at any any supply chain like these things take time to develop. Right.
[00:26:00] Like we are still dealing with massive price fluctuations that make it really difficult for us to make any profit on that product. And that's just the nature of it. We knew that was gonna be the case. But we're willing to make that commitment to the product itself. You know, we'll frights our ocean products the same as our hemp products. Our ocean products have a better margin than our have products. We know that we want to transition towards a plant based future with our single use materials. How are we gonna get there? Well, if our hemp based products are a two to three times the cost of the ocean products, we probably won't sell many of those hemp products. Right. And so we feel like the best thing that we can do is continue to sell these different materials to develop the supply chain so that other people can come in and do the exact same thing and normalize this so that we can make progress.
[00:26:50] It seems like there's a kind of a total cost calculation to I mean, you mentioned earlier this whole world, your package has to keep your products fresh and that has to, you know, stock well. And it has to be, you know, if you're paying a lot and shipping or you have to pay for all this space to store, you know, the empty pieces because they you know, they don't they don't nest well. And like, it takes up a lot of space or, you know, it just it feels like some of this if you just look at it as what's my unit cost for the package and not really think through what is the total cost of biz package solution for this versus another package solution, maybe, you know, they're easier to fill or there's more manual labor in one package versus another. It just it feels like there's a whole host of questions or considerations where you look at the different packaged solutions.
[00:27:32] And if you just look at the unit economics, you may be in a situation where you're you may be saving a penny of a penny on a unit, but you may be adding three, four or five cents per unit with other complexities that this that that solution happens to cause in your overall system.
[00:27:48] Yeah. And we try to get that across the folks.
[00:27:51] And now that's really where we as a business are trying to. Yes, we're going to charge more for the material type.
[00:27:57] But how can we set it up so that your overall costs and your headaches and just your ability to run your business are made a lot easier? Right. Like the specialty cannabis packaging ITC it all the time with folks. And this is one of the things from the regular regulators is I wish they could just kind of make a rule.
[00:28:15] Good luck. And there's just stick with it for a little bit of time. Right. A month later, the labeling requirements and stuff, it's like someone goes out, they order.
[00:28:25] Yeah. Fifty thousand labels. They come up, they come in from overseas or something, you know, because it's a six week lead time and whatever it is.
[00:28:31] And. Oh and then they applied them to the tubes too.
[00:28:34] So now we've lost both the tube and the label and we can't get work with that. Right. What do we do with that product? How do we if there's just those types of things all over the place? I think yeah. With us with our products we we dropship directly to our customers. We don't you know, our lead times are shipped in 48 hours.
[00:28:53] So they don't have to warehouse material. They can basically, you know, they don't have to hold up a ton of capital. Those sorts of things. So we hope that that's, you know, kind of once again, you know, just go and trying to position a packaging company to kind of fit the needs of this new industry, basically super important.
[00:29:08] What do you see? I'm just going to. You mentioned the regulatory side, and I'm sure that's a very long conversation. But I guess what do you see coming coming down the pike in terms of regulatory issues are going to affect packaging? And what what do you think? You know, people that are consuming packaging, purchasing, packaging or you know, or dealing with packaging in their business, what do they need to kind of anticipate or realize or understand in terms of what's likely going to change or how this market is going to be dynamic in the next 12, 24 months?
[00:29:34] Yeah, I mean, this is a big question.
[00:29:38] You know, with packaging, I have, you know, my my opinions on certain things around, you know, what regulations are really making it hard for sustainable packaging. I think we really need to have a conversation around child resistant. What products need to be child resistant? Which ones don't need to be child resistant?
[00:29:56] I think those things are like opacity, you know, coloring, things like that, where it just makes it hard for the consumer, the company packaging it, the packaging company, the waste company, everyone involved in a system. There's things in there that are that are difficult. And then, you know, I think there's the a lot of conversations around cannabis packaging or, you know, how do we with regulation, can we encourage certain types of packaging or behavior types? And I think that one. Again, is also a really becomes a dangerous conversation because when our read up back to that. Are you just looking at the the the upstream or does, you know, just looking at downstream? Because it always seems when regulations come into play narrowly looking at downstream and where that how that affects, because that's what the consumer is talking about. And that's where we feel the issue lies. So I think the biggest thing moving forward with with Canada's packaging is really trying to hone in on which products and packaging type, what matches up like what makes sense for which product right now from a starting point and then going from there. Is are the regulations actually accomplishing what they set out to accomplish?
[00:31:11] I think always the challenge with regulations.
[00:31:14] Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I mean, I think the biggest thing is that there's we're living in real time. Everything is happening very quickly. And you know, what is true today may not be true tomorrow. So those are, you know, just keeping an open mind and ball still being very critical of what what's going on is probably best, best we can do at this point.
[00:31:36] Rhonda Smith, a pleasure. If people want to find out more about you, about sonna, what's the best way to get that information yet?
[00:31:42] So easiest way is to reach out to us via email.
[00:31:46] My emails run at sonna packaging dot com. We also have an info packaging dot com. If neither of those. There's also James. It's out of packet. So you can you can try all of those.
[00:31:59] I promise you will. You'll get to one of us, but not really.
[00:32:03] You know, we have our Web site WW that yet sort of packaging dot com is a great place to see see a lot of stuff from our customers, what they're put out. We'd love to have this conversation. So please never hesitate to reach out.
[00:32:17] Yeah, I'll put up at the links and the handle, the emails and the in the show notes here so people can click through and look at that. Ron, this isn't great.
[00:32:23] I think your packaging is one of these fascinating areas. You know, it's so much kind of technology and innovation that's happening here. It's such a key kind of cost component. You know, it just kind of the economics of it is fascinating.
[00:32:36] And I'm really curious to see how the regulation side plays out. The product innovation science plays out, particularly as as this market just continually grows and just gets bigger and bigger. So I'm curious how companies handle this. I mean, I'm excited to see how you guys do. And I look forward to future conversations as as things of all. But I appreciate your time today.
[00:32:53] Yeah. Really appreciate you having me on and letting me talk about packaging.
[00:32:57] Awesome. Thanks, Ron. Take it easy.
[00:33:00] You've been listening to Thinking Outside the Bud with Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt to find a full list of podcast episodes. Download the tools and worksheets and access other great content. Visit the Web site at thinkingoutsidethebud.com. And don't forget to sign up for the free newsletter at thinkingoutsidethebud.com/newsletter.