The CBD industry is gaining more awareness among consumers globally as hemp-derived cannabidiol is becoming a popular ingredient in many products today. The CBD market is estimated to reach $23.7 billion in the future. With so many people onboard, you would think that the journey to selling CBD products online would be a smooth and relatively easy one. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.
Here are some of the challenges you might run into when starting your own business in the CBD industry.
1. Getting an E-commerce Payment Processing Service
This is one of the biggest challenges you may come across when you want to start selling CBD products online is finding a quality payment processing service. Popular e-commerce payment processing services such as PayPal do not allow CBD sellers to register on their platform. In order to find a way to sell CBD items online, you would have to do extensive research on the CBD friendly e-commerce platforms that are available. You may also have to pay extra in transaction charges though.
2. Challenges with Marketing
New online CBD businesses are launched every day, saturating the industry and making it more difficult than ever to stand out from the competition. Most consumers of CBD are still trying out different CBD brands so they might not have become loyal customers–which can work to your advantage. To make yourself stand out, try to draw customers by organizing giveaways, social media campaigns, using email marketing, and launching a targeted SEO web content strategy.
3. Interstate Sales
How your products are going to be delivered to clients is another consideration when starting your business. The laws guiding the sale of CBD differs across different states in the country. You have to acquaint yourself with your state laws before you can begin shipping your CBD products, since each state has its own rules. It is also important to know the shipping companies you can use to deliver your CBD products. FedEx for example, does not ship CBD products but other shipping companies do offer this as a service provided your products contain THC levels of less than 0.3%.
4. Mode of payment
With an online CBD Business, cash won’t be an option when it comes to payments. Getting paid is a hurdle that can be quite frustrating, and it can be more difficult to hold clients to it. You might also have to pay higher transaction charges to get an e-commerce payment processor willing to take the risk with credit card payments for CBD products.
5. Bank account challenges
Banks are averse to opening accounts for CBD retailers because of the legal ambiguities attached to the sales of CBD products. For instance, in Colorado, where cannabis was legalized years back, retailers of CBD products could not keep their funds in banks because they did not allow them open accounts. This is from a state where laws are more lax than others. This might change in the future, as banks can now do business with legal CBD producers’ courtesy of the SAFE Banking Act passed by the US legislature.
Conclusion
Even with the mentioned obstacles, there is a noticeable increase in the number of people willing to get involved in the selling of CBD products. Legal ambiguities aside, it is expected that as with any new business, more people would become used to the idea of CBD products.
