Skip to main content

Highlighted Members

Member Spotlight – September 14, 2017

It’s time for: The Cannabis Alliance Members Appreciation Moment!

Each month we highlight one of our long term Alliance members and welcome
one of our new members. We hope this helps you to learn a little more about
each other’s businesses, and that this will help you network more effectively and
build your businesses and friendships together too!

AND we have a big new announcement and another way to promote you and
your business during our member appreciation time. We have the opportunity to
do a short video clip recording of our monthly members right after our meeting
right here in this awesome new building. We will have 2 – 3 brief questions for
you and we will video them. Then we will put them up on our FaceBook page and
we are also looking at possibly putting them on our website in the future. This will
be a great way for members to learn more about each other’s businesses and an
opportunity for additional promotion for your business.

Again I do want to remind you that as members you have an opportunity to have
a business profile on our website, including logo and copy. So please if you
haven’t already sent us this information, put it at the top of your to do list so we
can put it up on our website and help promote your business. Thanks!

1. Long-term member: Vito Perillo owner of Facts & Figures

http://www.vitoperillo.com/

Point out Vito to crowd:

Three years ago, Vito Perillo came out of the fog at Hempfest with a handful of
business cards and quite a few questions. The first one being, why are dope dealers
and pot farmers handing out business cards? To complete strangers? With no facial
hair and wearing a suit and tie?

 

Fortunately, one of the business cards bore the name Shawn DeNae and she, upon
ascertaining his genuine interest (and perhaps the fact he didn’t sound baked),
suggested he attend a meeting and introduce himself. As luck would have it, the
meeting – CCSE at the time – was a block away from his home on Queen Anne.

  

Vito started his business career at the end of the last Ice Age when he took over a
failing paper route in a small Rhode Island town. Many years later, and now
relocated to Seattle, Vito found himself at the helm of the largest independent book
distributor on the West Coast. That business started with the distribution of the
iconic book, How to Grow Marijuana Indoors Under Lights. From that little seedling,
helped along by numerous other self-published books, and then by major national
publishers and the passage of time, Vito built a closely-knit team of 200 employees
running a 100,000 sf. warehouse with 80,000 various strains and hybrids – more
commonly known as hardcovers and paperbacks, best-sellers, children’s books,
cookbooks, mysteries, thrillers, and celebrity weight-loss diet guides. Customers
included Barnes & Noble, Costco, Amazon, and hundreds of independent bookstores
across the western states and Canada.

 

In his 3 years as a member of our organization, Vito has “worked the booth” at
various industry events, done pro-bono consulting for members, and participated in
organizing and participating in two financial seminars. At our Holiday Party last year,
Vito was awarded a trophy commemorating his commitment to financial education.
His latest project, now nearing completion, has been to compile financial
benchmarks for the retail cannabis industry including average mark-ups, profit
margins, inventory performance, and return on investment.

2. New Member: Gorge Gold

http://www.gorgegold.com/

Today we have Clayton Perry from Gorge Gold joining us. Gorge Gold was
formed by Jason Poll and Tony Rosso and is in its 2nd year of operation in
Quincy, WA near The Gorge Ampitheatre. We currently are cultivating top
shelf cannabis both indoors and outdoors, with a large outdoor crop
harvesting in October. We love the Ancient Lakes region in Central
Washington for its bright sun, long growing season and beautiful scenery.
Gorge Gold will also be opening an extraction lab in Spokane this fall. We will
be creating distillate for use in vape cartridges, edibles and other cannabis infused
products.

As long time Cannabis enthusiasts we got involved in this industry because
we have a passion for quality cannabis. Devoting our work to something we
have always loved and being able to help people medicinally made a lot of
sense to us. Once we became part of the 502 world joining the Cannabis
Alliance was an obvious decision for two reasons: First, as Ben Franklin
said… “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all
hang separately”. Secondly, the leadership of the Cannabis Alliance has
proven to be influential and persistent when fighting for cannabis company’s
rights and working with legislature in Olympia and the LCB.

Leave a Reply

Become a Member