The Christmas shopping season is now underway, and Santa Claus has touched down in many cities across the country. But what share of holiday spending will you be getting?

If your workshop needs last-minute help, branding and social-media expert Kim Garst is making a list just for you. The CEO of Tampa-based Boom! Social just published an article compiling “50 Marketing Tips to Rock Your Holiday Sales.”

Many of Garst’s 50 proposals are industry-specific, and others seem a bit too complex to begin in mid-November. But here, in honour of Santa’s faithful reindeer, are the nine I think are most likely to fly.

The legalization of marijuana is not only taking the cannabis industry out of the shadows; it’s also moving it outdoors and into the sunshine.

As a growing number of states and municipalities legalize cannabis on some level, more professional marijuana growers are able to access agricultural technologies that previously might have brought some unwelcome attention from law enforcement.

One of the largest examples of the changes in the cannabis business sector is the current buzz about greenhouse usage. Many cannabis companies are seeing greenhouses as an energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly and financially sound alternatives to indoor warehouse grows.

As more states legalize marijuana in the US, pot cultivation is sucking up an ever-growing amount of energy from the grid.

Since most of the legal weed is grown indoors, the pot industry burns through large quantities of electricity used to power lamps, ventilation systems, and air conditioning. A square foot of planting requires some 200 watts of electricity (pdf, p. 20), about the same as a data center, according to a report this year in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law.

The paper notes that marijuana plantations soak up at least 1% of the country’s electricity at a cost of $6 billion a year.

An Australian company called RxMM Health, based in Perth, is making a play for the fast-growing, American marijuana industry. The company has applied for a license to grow and sell medical marijuana in southern California.

With more and more states legalizing Marijuana it’s about time the business world catches up and starts preparing for a whole new industry. The company that is taking this on…Leaflink. With the easy to order B2B wholesale platform, they are setting themselves up in a surging market to only grow and grow over time.

Founder Ryan Smith talks with AlleyWatch about how his business among controversy and how they raised capital nonetheless.

Ryan Smith

BCGEU and BC Private Liquor Store Association announce partnership for distribution and sale of non-medical marijuana

The B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union (BCGEU) and the B.C. Private Liquor Store Association (BCPLSA) today announced a partnership to advocate for the sale of non-medical marijuana through the existing liquor distribution and retail system, including both public B.C. Liquor Stores and private Liquor Retail Stores (LRS).

The BCGEU and BCPLSA believe this partnership will help enable a safe, responsible and effective system for recreational marijuana in British Columbia. The partnership envisions enabling British Columbians to buy non-medical marijuana throughout age-controlled liquor stores by Christmas of 2016.  

As rural youth have known for more than a generation, growing pot, even in the Canadian climate, is not so difficult. A sunny patch between young pines, a bit of fertilizer and seed and then go away till autumn.

The constraint on pot production has never been agricultural.  

Marijuana laws have been in place for so long that there will be political pressure to make sure any changes put health and safety first asCanada leads the way on pot regulation. But as governments across the country consider how to liberalize the rules on the distribution and use of cannabis, they are also laying the ground rules for a multibillion-dollar industry.

Editors note: Pot stocks take caution, all bubbles eventually burst.  But tech money may also be looking for a new home in the near future, so get your ducks in a row if you want to attract capital and brain power. A tech correction is coming. The only remaining question marks are when it will happen and how bad it will be. Let’s take a look at the evidence.

The NASDAQ index is now up around 5,000 points, the culmination of a terrific seven-year run in which it has tripled in value. The only other time it reached this level was just before the dot.com crash in 2000. In comparison, the Dow Jones has only risen by half as much over the same time period.

Viridian Capital Advisors, a financial and strategic advisory firm dedicated to the cannabis marketplace, is pleased to announce the launch of a series of investor events. Entitled Investing in the Emerging Cannabis Industry While Managing Risk, these invite-only events will explore the opportunities and risks in this growing multi-billion-dollar industry as well as provide perspective and guidance on the pertinent questions that investors should ask when considering investing in this emerging market. For more information on these events, go to https://viridianca.com/upcomingevents/

EUGENE, Ore. -- Some potentially bad news for Oregon newspapers that accepts ads from local marijuana dispensaries.

A memo from the US Postal Service to state newspapers warned that if the publications run ads for the marijuana industry they might be violating federal law. 

Officials at a local dispensary said they don't understand why they aren't getting any recognition.

"I think it is ridiculous. Alcohol can advertise all day long, there is tobacco products being advertised and they kill people. No one has ever died from smoking marijuana," said Richard Walling, People's Wellness Center. 

We reached out to one local newspaper Eugene weekly and they said they plan to continue publishing marijuana advertisements.