Lilach Mazor Power recently returned from a medical marijuana conference in Colombia where she taught other dispensary owners how to turn a commodity into a brand.
That expertise, she said, came in the wake of making every mistake she possibly could. Since starting Giving Tree Dispensary in 2013, Power concedes she has done plenty of things wrong — but has learned from those mistakes, generating $4 million in annual revenue in 2018 and employing 41 people.
“I tell them all: I have made every mistake in the book, so I can make sure you don’t,” she said.
Celebrating her six-year anniversary this year, Power expects to generate $4.8 million in revenue in 2019.
Down the road, she’s counting on nearly tripling revenue to $15 million by 2021, should voters approve recreational marijuana on the 2020 ballot.
The initiative to legalize recreational marijuana in Arizona has failed in the past, but Power is counting on 2020 to be the year voters approve the measure.
For now, her current target audience is medical marijuana cardholders who are approved by the Arizona Department of Health Services, which oversees the state’s medical marijuana program that has 203,683 patients.
Today, she operates one retail store in north Phoenix, but has her brands in 39 stores across Arizona, along with four retail stores in Puerto Rico, a partnership with a company in Israel and another partnership with a dispensary in Arkansas to open their first store this summer.
When the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act was passed in 2010, Power and her partner, Gina Berman, were among the first to apply for a medical marijuana dispensary license. They applied for four licenses, but were only approved for one in Phoenix and one in Mesa.
To get those facilities started, they scraped together $1.2 million, selling their stocks, mutual funds, taking out second mortgages on their homes and emptying their retirement accounts.
“We sold everything,” she said. “It was scary back then. Now it’s so much easier looking for investors. Back then, nobody even wanted to touch us.”
They operated both facilities together until a year ago when they ended their partnership, with Powers getting the Phoenix store and Berman getting the Mesa store.
“We just wanted completely different things,” Powers said. “I wanted to grow and get into different markets and really put all my attention on the brand, and she was like, ‘We just made it, let’s just breathe.’”
Berman subsequently merged with Arizona Natural Selection and together they have three stores in the Valley.
“It’s been a process,” Power said. “It wasn’t easy. Gina is phenomenal. I think she’s very happy.”
