High-Tech: How MedMen, ‘Apple Store’ of Marijuana, Educates Staff
“Euphoric” isn’t how most consumers would describe a trip to the pharmacy, unless those stores “happen to sell marijuana and marijuana products” indicating such remedies.
Culver City, Calif.-based MedMen just so happens to be the largest financial supporter of progressive marijuana laws at every level of governance while operating within the framework of the legal, state-sanctioned cannabis industry. The cannabis industry isn’t cheap, but investment in talent at both the executive and associate level is something MedMen has been seen doing, with chief financial officer Michael Kramer recently being poached from Forever 21. Kramer also has five years of experience moving financial operations at Apple Retail.
But before being called the “Apple store of marijuana,” MedMen began as a medical marijuana dispensary operator nearly a decade ago by cofounders Adam Bierman and Andrew Modlin. It has since grown to include 19 licensed facilities nationwide concentrated in four key states and more than 1,000 employees.
In maintaining a professional standard of excellence in store as dictated by consumer expectation — the intelligible sales associate in this case will retain a particular set of knowledge — or “cannabis expertise.” To employ this “operational excellence” at the front-line of their operations by way of their professional sales associates, companies such as MedMen, Tiffany & Co., David’s Bridal and Kate Spade are already employing Multimedia Plus — a single app platform for funneling company directives to employees, enriched with content and powered by participation.
“As a customer, you have an experience of service,” Jodi Harouche said in an interview with WWD, one-part of the husband-and-wife duo having founded Multimedia Plus in pursuit of arming retailers with “empowering, strategic and measurable performance” along the chain of command.
This service expectation differs across brands, price points and industries — as seen in the case of MedMen, which views “cannabis as a consumer product” and hopes to destigmatize cannabis by spotlighting it in a polished, medical retail setting.
In the latest application, Multimedia Plus offers two dynamic dashboards within its Incite application, the first showcasing “day-to-day” employee information needs and the second fostering “long-term learning” wherein retail sales associates are empowered to rise the ranks toward managerial positions.
Through providing retailers a branded proprietary platform that operates without bogging down bandwidth, the concept of many thick-booked employee binders is replaced with a singular platform, which can include employee on-boarding videos, training guides, policies and procedures — all packaged for a digital native attention span. Managed in real-time, MultiMedia Plus aims to tackle common challenges faced by retailers including engagement rate, churn and retention of employees by giving each employee a “unique ID” with “untethered mobility.”
As demonstrated with its partnership with MedMen, enhancing industry-specific product knowledge, improving selling skills and fostering communication across leadership chains may allow a better match to in-store consumer expectations — and when those employees succeed, that’s euphoria for brands.
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