After 10 months of investment, industry leadership contribution and effort, CBC Group LLC, of  which CBE Press LLC is a partner, has decided to cancel  CBEC 2018 which was scheduled to take place at the Washington D.C. Convention Center January 10-12, 2018.

In a letter sent to the conference’s steering committee and program vetting committees, yours truly wrote the following:

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All,

I wanted to share the following news with you before we go public with the following announcement:

We are less than 60 days out from the Cannabis Business Executive Conference, scheduled to be held at the DC Convention Center January 10-12, 2018. After nearly a year of our collective work developing “By and For” industry related, peer targeted content to attract registrants, exhibitors and sponsors, the metrics do not support going ahead with the event and will require the CBC Group LLC to shut down the event, effective immediately.

To date, we have less than 125 registrants (the majority of whom are speakers) and less than 20 sponsors or exhibitors committed to the event.  In addition, we are not capitalized to take on the losses that moving forward would create, but more importantly, we just don’t have the attendance numbers to deliver on the value proposition for the business community that have invested in sponsor or exhibitor packages.

We can offer a variety of reasons as to why the cannabis business community has not embraced our attempt to deliver premium content designed to help the industry run their cannabis related businesses effectively and profitably and to keep them abreast of what’s happening on the regulatory side, statewide and federally. But my partners and I believe that our timing, location and the maturity of an industry of operators who rightfully are working 24/7 to build their businesses all play a role in the lack of support.

My partners and I also believe that the proximity of CBEC 2018 to the MJBiz Conference, whose timing was impeccable when they moved the event to Vegas in November of 2014, is a distraction (albeit and important one to their businesses) to the target communities that CBEC was designed for.

We believe, in the end, the right business decision is for us is to pull the plug.

I saw many of you this week at MJBiz Con in Vegas and the CBEC sales, marketing and management team continued their efforts to build excitement, generate leads and close registrants, sponsors and exhibitors.  However, it was clear after we downloaded our experiences there that we are well short of the ingredients that would make CBEC 2018 a successful venture for all parties.

At your convenience, I am available to jump on a call to answer any and all questions, and to share how we plan on taking care of the companies that have invested their time to create great content or have invested their dollars in CBEC to build their customer base and revenues. Let me know a good time for a call and as always feel free to call me or e-mail me at any of the contact points below.

Thank you again for all of your efforts and support.

Best regards,

Rob

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That was my letter.

So as Kenny Rodgers once said, “Know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.” But CBE Press will continue to serve the cannabis industry with original, contributed and aggregated insightful content via newsletters, www.cannabisbusinessexecutive.com and with new channels in 2018 to our 31,500 loyal subscribers as we head into the new year.

Oh and by the way, I prefer the glass half-full approach because CBE Press LLC will continue to live and fight for many, many more days! Have a happy Thanksgiving!