Smart Cannabis Buying: Store Data vs. Industry Trends

For retail cannabis buyers, data is the compass that helps you navigate to the right decision when purchasing inventory. 

Many dispensaries rely on industry-wide analytics platforms to understand market trends, but these tools often fall short when it comes to day-to-day inventory management. They also don’t tell these businesses what their specific customers are doing in their stores.

How relevant is what’s selling in New England to a Portland dispensary?

While broader market data can offer useful context, store-specific data is what truly helps dispensaries optimize inventory, avoid overstocking, and improve cash flow. 

The difference between these two approaches can mean tens of thousands of dollars in wasted stock or a perfectly balanced inventory that meets customer demand.

Let’s take a closer look at the differences between these two data sources.

The Limits of Industry-Wide Data in Inventory Management

Market intelligence platforms like Headset and BDSA are invaluable in providing dispensaries with statewide sales trends, pricing benchmarks, and brand performance data. 

While this information is helpful for understanding general consumer preferences, it presents several challenges when used for inventory decisions:

• Wide trends don’t reflect individual store performance. Just because a product sells well across the state doesn’t mean it’s moving in your store.
• Stockouts skew sales data. If a product sells out regularly, its demand may be underestimated in market reports, leading buyers to under-order their faster movers or highest-margin products.
• Broad market data lacks SKU-level context. A generalized report might indicate that “infused prerolls” are trending, but that doesn’t mean every infused preroll SKU is a good investment for your store.
• Data can be outdated. Many market reports draw from historical data, making it difficult for retailers to react to real-time sales trends and make immediate purchasing decisions when consumer preferences shift.

Why Store-Specific Data Leads to Better Buying Decisions

For dispensaries, real-time, store-level insights are essential for making accurate inventory decisions. Unlike market-wide trends, store-specific data:

• Tracks demand as it happens – instead of relying on past trends, retailers can make real-time purchasing decisions based on current stock levels and sales velocity.
• Prevents chronic overstocking – without visibility into how much of each product is actually selling, retailers often buy more than they need, tying up cash flow in unsellable inventory.
• Identifies demand ceilings – knowing how many units of a specific SKU or product category sell daily helps prevent both under-ordering and over-ordering.
• Eliminates stockout blind spots – by tracking how often products run out of stock, store-level data helps buyers adjust order quantities to prevent missed sales.

A real-world example of this problem came up in a recent inventory discussion Happy Cabbage had with an MSO retailer. We were able to use Happy Buyers and the retailer’s store-specific data to identify a year’s worth of stock on hand for a single brand’s 1g disposable vapes that only sold 26 units in the last 30 days. A year’s worth of stock on hand! And that’s at just one of their locations.

Had the retailer been tracking store-specific demand ceilings, they could have caught this inventory issue earlier and prevented the overstock problem. Now, they’re likely going to have to sell those vapes at a deep discount to offload the product in a reasonable amount of time.

How to Leverage Store-Specific Data for Better Inventory Management

Dispensaries that shift their focus from market-wide insights to store-specific metrics can dramatically improve inventory efficiency. Here’s how:

Use Real-Time Sales Data

Track daily and hourly sales velocity for each product, rather than relying on historical reports. This means you’re ordering based on actual demand, not basing decisions on assumptions.

Group Products by Buying Behavior

Instead of organizing inventory solely by brand or SKU, structure products based on consumer purchasing patterns. For example:

• Vape buyers may purchase 510 carts separately from all-in-ones, so treating them as one category skews the sales data.
• Preroll buyers may prefer dogwalkers over infused 1g options, making it critical to differentiate between them.

Identify Demand Ceilings

Determine the maximum realistic demand for a category or SKU based on daily sell-through rates. This prevents buying excess inventory while ensuring stock levels remain balanced.

Automate Restocking Alerts

Use inventory tracking systems that monitor stockouts and reorder thresholds, so buyers aren’t manually checking spreadsheets or relying on gut instincts and staff aren’t leaving shelfspace empty when sellable inventory exists in the vault or other storage room.

Market data is great, store-level insights are greater

Industry-wide data has its place in helping retailers understand broad trends and competitive pricing, but it’s not the best tool for day-to-day purchasing decisions. That data alone isn’t enough to give dispensaries the full picture they need to keep inventory in-line with demand to maximize profitability.

Adding store-specific data into the mix ensures inventory levels align with real consumer demand, reducing unnecessary spending and improving stock availability.

Retailers that adopt store-level tracking and demand-based ordering will cut down on costly overstock, reduce stockouts, and free up cash flow—without needing to guess at what their customers actually want.

Are you only using market data to get half of the inventory picture? 

It may be time to rethink your approach by incorporating data specific to your store. Book a free demo of Happy Buyers and let’s start the conversation.

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