Hey guys,
As some of you may know in Germany the Cannabis Clubs are about to open their gates and those clubs will be starting out and be out of funds. Now each club will have to settle on a gear financing scheme and the law prohibits sponsoring nor any way to gather money outside of normal club regulations.
That means the only viable way to gather money is either by donations from your members, financing it or monthly fee from your members.
This leads to a bit of a chicken/egg problem. Financing in Germany via banks is not really feasible and the equipment isn't on the light side of things.
In total a club can have 500 members and if you want to have good growing equipment for maximum consumption of all of them you would need about 200m² of grow space with equipment costs of about 75.000€ - 120.000€ just in equipment.
So with financing out the equation and even a permit hanging somewhat in the balance a smooth start would require the funds to be there even before the law passes, but how to get people to pay the equipment cost.
So all clubs I have seen are currently engaging in a mode where they charge very little monthly cost (0€ to 10€) per member and then set a high price for Cannabis per G once they have produced it (5-10€). As that won't be enough to gather the equipment cost for them either they try to go for donations by members.
Setting it to donations still means that you might end up unable to aquire the gear in time so I wanted something different for my concept.
I went with 99€ monthly fee with no additional cost for cannabis dispensary. Which means they will be able to get their 50g per month at no additional cost. While that price of course kills it in terms of efficiency once we produce in the meantime it is a big ask for people to pay that amount monthly without anything in return.
It is also impossible to tell them exactly when the first production will be ready as that is something that is out of our hands. To ease the hurdle from my side I scaled the equipment purchases down into chambers that are enough to provide for 60 people at a time, but it would still require 60 people to pay for 4 months before they pay for their own equipment.
I have personally financed the first grow chamber and all the periphals, but I can't finance the entire thing either.
Do you have any ideas how to cross the hurdle with potential members?
Using credit lines aggressively for growth. I was careful about it, but it helped me the most. Unfortunately though I say credit lines. Banks wouldn't touch what I did though.