I hate to be positive, but...

For anyone not familiar with the headline pic, it's a take on one of my favorite memes from the early 2010's called "scumbag Steve". It's relevant to me because (1) the kid in the original meme was from my home state of Massachusetts, and (2) I really do have some good news: 2022 has been proof positive that cannabis industry live events are back in a huge way, and can provide great ROI for almost any business type.

Preface: Coming out of Covid I was surprised to see the number of advertised "Cannabis Conventions" for 2022 (over 50!) was much greater than the number of actual conventions held in 2019 (around 35). I had thought that the shut down of live events for close 2 years would have caused a reduction, but it actually led to many new players entering the space.

So... Going into the year I felt it was reasonable to think the increase in the number of shows would have an adverse effect on the number of exhibitors & attendees at each individual event, but that wasn't the exactly the case. In the end, many of the newly promoted shows (and a number of established shows) either drew an insignificant number of exhibitors and attendees, or did not end up happening at all, and so had little to no effect on most established conventions, including NECANN's.

Gratuitous Bragging Section (feel free to skip completely)

From a personal standpoint, I'm happy to report that 2022 was a record year for NECANN on many levels. The highlights included:

For the 1st time ever, we had over 1,000 exhibitors at our conventions in a single year. As far as I know, this is a number that only NECANN and MJBiz have ever reached (please feel free to drop me a note if you know of anyone else).

We also had over 20,000 attendees and over 400 expert speakers in 2022, both all-time highs for us as well and again, levels only MJBiz has reached prior to us.

On an individual event level, The New England Cannabis Convention solidified its place as the the 2nd largest B2B cannabis Industry convention in the US (MJBizcon being #1) in terms of number of exhibitors, attendees, and speaker sessions. Safe to say that this show (being held March 10-12 in Boston in 2023 ) is the single most important event for anyone doing business in the rapidly expanding east coast cannabis market.

While none of our other conventions are on the scale of our Boston event (which has the huge advantage of legalized rec in Mass. since 2016), we still had the largest B2B event in every state we were in during 2022, including New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont.

Looking forward to 2023 the number of advertised conventions is showing a significant contraction from what was promoted for 2022 (it's currently about 30), bringing it slightly below 2019 levels (but most likely still too many for all to be sustainable). For our part, NECANN will be hosting our highest number of conventions ever (7) in 2023, and will once again be the largest, most-established B2B convention in every market we are in (Massachusetts , Illinois , New York , New Jersey , Connecticut , Maine, and Vermont ), and will be the ONLY major B2B convention in most of them, including Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

We're so grateful to all of our sponsors, exhibitors, speakers, and attendees, for sticking with us through the last couple of years, though I'm sorry to say that 2022 should enjoy being on top while it can because NECANN 2023 is already on pace to knock it off!

PS: Remember, come see us at Booth #500 at MJBizcon for a couple of crazy "show only" discounts on booths: