SANTA CRUZ — Santa Cruz-based Jane Technologies is allowing cannabis consumers to choose which kinds of shops they want to support through their launch of “ownership tags.”
Ownership tags were a concept the Jane team always had in mind, co-founder and CEO Socrates Rosenfeld told the Sentinel. But with the social justice movement shining a spotlight on the societal inequities present in this country, Rosenfeld felt it was time to go back to the roots of what makes the marijuana marketplace so unique — inclusivity.
“Santa Cruz has a really rich history in cannabis, a proud history, and I wanted to be close to that and not lose the soul of this industry,” said Rosenfeld, a CEO who brought his business to the area in 2016. “What really drew me to Santa Cruz is this ability to be whoever it is that you are, without worry or concern of ‘fitting in.’ That’s really now bled over into the digital world.”
Now, the retail software company’s online cannabis marketplace lets users filter shops by underrepresented groups. At this time, women-owned, LGBTQ-owned, BIPOC-owned and veteran-owned businesses are featured. In Santa Cruz County, two shops fall into those categories. Herbal Cruz in Santa Cruz is women-owned and BIPOC-owned, while Santa Cruz Veterans Alliance in Soquel is veteran-owned.
Rosenfeld, a veteran himself, regularly supports Santa Cruz Veterans Alliance.
“Not only do they have great product but I feel very good when I shop at this store because I know they’re advancing veteran initiatives in the cannabis industry,” he said the week of Veterans Day.
Ownership tags give both sellers and buyers purchasing power, Rosenfeld said. Spending money based on supporting certain groups makes buyers feel powerful, similar to how filtering through price, ratings, proximity and delivery times gives those users power. It’s just another variable. This awareness and personalization around purchases is the future, Rosenfeld said. Beyond ownership tags being a moral move, it’s also business-oriented.
“Twenty to thirty years ago no one cared about fair trade, how you took care of the chickens to produce the best eggs,” he said. “Now people care about what they’re willing to spend their dollars on, with places that align with their ethos, their perspective on the world.”
Rosenfeld said that this is just the first step to creating an inclusive platform. He wants to use Jane’s growth, with 1 in 3 dispensaries in the region now listing products on the site, to expand upon representation. For example, the Jane team is currently working on creating ownership tags for brands sold at different shops.
“We are going along building a community in a trusted way,” he said. “We’ve introduced verified customer reviews so you can hear from consumers in the Santa Cruz community about what products are working for them… people are shopping and developing trust not online in Jane, but with their local retailer and with cannabis… which is something we take very seriously.”
In total, the ownership tags are live for more than 1,600 stores in 33 cities. As it works to keep bringing all parties to the table through its e-commerce platform, Jane Technologies will operate with the consumers of cannabis in mind — consumers that come from all backgrounds themselves.
“One of the most wonderful things I was exposed to was how many different kinds of people consume cannabis,” Rosenfeld said. “Military veterans, people who’ve never served in the military, Republicans, Democrats, old, young, Black, white, Southern, Northern, big city, rural. Let’s not lose that, let’s not homogenize this industry… let’s not forget what the industry was built on in the past and that was inclusivity, community and diversity.”
To learn about Jane, visit iheartjane.com.
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