Rama Mayo is a busy man. The Co-Founder of Hall of Flowers is running around the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, trying to squeeze in time for an interview in between putting out fires and making sure everything is going as it should. 

The Evolution of Hall of Flowers 

We are at Hall of Flowers, one of the preeminent cannabis trade shows that has been running since 2018. This year, for the first time ever, the Hall of Flowers team opened up the trade show and pivoted, offering a ‘Cannabis Market & Festival' event to the public on day two with DTC sales opportunities and consumption. The second day of the festival offered live music, entertainment, food, interactive installations, art, games, rides, glassblowing demos, and speakers.

What prompted the decision to open up day two to the public this year? I ask.

“The show has to evolve as the industry evolves. Every year, we talk to all our exhibitors after the show to get their feedback. They said we really have the B2B side dialed in and have been asking us what else we can do to support their customer sales and help them connect to their consumers. Day two now provides them with the opportunity to talk and sell directly to their customers, face to face. You don’t get to do that in dispensaries and via your distributor.”

This event model pivot makes perfect sense when considering the needs and challenges of California cannabis brands. In practice, however, it presented the team with many challenges. 

“Doing this event was so difficult this year, to open it up to the public and have legally compliant sales and consumption, everything is more complicated. We had to have two different websites, instead of one, two Instagrams, it’s basically two different, separate shows! Not to mention explaining the changes to the brands and what they needed to do to be prepared.”

This year, the Santa Rosa show had 320 brands showcasing. The show normally has 3,000 on the B2B day, but this year the new model brought in 7,000 attendees on the second day.

The Evolution of Cannabis in California 

Everyone in California cannabis knows things are hard right now. Things are equally hard in the live event space, with many long-running and beloved festivals canceling due to low ticket sales and a decrease in brands sponsoring events. The Hall of Flowers team has navigated the challenges of both by paying attention, said Mayo.

Mayo was raised in the punk rock and skateboarding scene. “I did a punk rock record label before this,” he tells me, “I booked thousands of shows and hundreds of tours..things are hard right now, but we’re used to it. We are evolving with the brands and consumers. We know people don’t buy tickets until the day before now. Events are changing. Coachella didn’t sell out this year for the first time. We take that stuff seriously, and we are talking and listening to brands to provide as much value as we can.”

When I ask Mayo what his goals were for the show this year and what he’s most proud of, he doesn’t hesitate. “I want people to come and want to do it again. I’m proud when people come and tell me ‘Oh my god, I had an amazing day’ So, would you come back? People coming back is the goal.”

There is a lot to be proud of for their first public festival day. Mayo lists off what he feels are the accomplishments of the show this year, “The art piece we did, The Plant is Present, inspired by one of my favorite artists, Marina Abramović. We were inspired by the piece she did, The Artist is Present. We created our version of it with a cannabis plant. We built an art installation in one-half of an entire building. Most companies would say ‘How many brands can you fit in there’, you know? 

We built a movie theater, we made a really cool, unique film that we are playing in there. The Sonoma Hills Farm experience. That was a hunch we had six months ago, and wow! For sure we were right about that. People want to have more than a food truck experience. We thought that people coming to the show might want to sit down for a proper meal and go deeper into it. They sold out, so it looks like we were right. 

We also had a hunch about games. I have this buddy who is a big game guy. We have been talking for years about what is the Venn diagram for tabletop games and cannabis. We thought they would be right on top of each other. So we are proving that right now. We built an entire game area in one hall. We worked with Exploding Kittens, who sold 50,000,000 copies of their game, and Joking Hazard, who has 12 million subscribers on YouTube. So to get the number one and two gaming companies to believe in us and loan us their brands for this, they are not even here, but they trust us. So that’s been really really cool, to prove these theories. It’s all an experiment, and it looks like we were right.”

Mayo is already planning Hall of Flowers Ventura in March, the Santa Rosa show in the Fall of next year, as well as a show in a new third location outside of California. He’s also looking at brand feedback and ways to make the show better and improve the experience, but for now, he’s happy. “For the first one? For this experiment? Damn, we landed it,” he said.