Success Story:

Overview

KushCo Holdings is the premier provider of ancillary products and services to the legal cannabis and CBD industries. KushCo subsidiaries provide exceptional customer service and product quality.

Najim Mostamand, Director of Investor Relations, joined the KushCo team in September of 2019 with the responsibility of managing and enhancing their investor relations program. Prior to his appointment, KushCo Holdings relied on several outside IR agencies to manage their IR program and decided the time was right to take IR in-house.

So when Najim started at KushCo, he understood the need for a solution like Irwin to help support the development of the IR department and improve the organization of his IR activity.

Challenge

As Director of Investor Relations at an emerging cannabis company, Najim was tasked with building out an entire investor relations function in an industry that is faced with complex regulatory and legal challenges. Najim needed a software solution that would help him tackle these challenges.

Developing an IR Program

"When I first started at KushCo, we really didn't have a system or process in place for managing our relationships with investors, tracking who owns what, or targeting new investors. We basically had a spreadsheet containing everything, which I knew wasn't the best way to do things."

Finding Active Cannabis Investors

Cannabis is a relatively new industry and with not a lot of investors in the space, it can be difficult to find the right investors for KushCo. Paired with the complex regulatory challenges affecting our industry, and by extension, the ability for many institutional investors to get involved in this sector, our pool of qualified investors is pretty limited.

Choosing the Right Investor Relations Software

With experience using other IR software platforms in his previous role, Najim had to evaluate whether Irwin was the right solution for KushCo.

Najim On Implementing Irwin at KushCo

"It was pretty easy. The Irwin team did a great job of educating me on what the product could do, so when the decision was made to move forward with Irwin I was already familiar with the platform. Implementing all of our data was straight forward, the Irwin customer support team was able to quickly migrate our data into the database which gave us a complete picture of all of our past interactions. I would say that overall it was a pretty seamless process."

The Importance of Having an In-House Investor Relations Program

Before joining KushCo, Najim spent several years at anIR firm. Here is what he has to say on the difference between working with third-party teams and having IR in-house:

"Coming from that role, I know that there is a world of difference when you have one person dedicated 24/7 to your investor relations vs. working with an agency that commits a couple hours a day to your company."

How Irwin Helps KushCo Navigate the Complexity of Investor Relations in the Cannabis Industry

"Irwin's focus on cannabis investors was one of the biggest selling points for us, especially when compared to the data of other IR software platforms. One of the compelling things that Irwin offers is the ability to categorize investors by the percentage of cannabis companies that they are invested with."

Najim continues, "For example, if I want to target some new investors, it's very easy for me to input my criteria and filter whether or not they hold a position in my peers. This is useful because there are not many investors in the cannabis industry and given that cannabis is federally illegal, many institutional investors won't touch the industry, including us, so having the ability to identify where the demand lies for our company is really beneficial."

How Irwin Helps Najim Plan Investor Roadshows

"When planning a roadshow, the first thing I want to know is which of KushC o's current investors or contacts are located in our destination. To pull this, I can easily reference all of our data in Irwin's IRM."

"Next, I like to use Irwin's Investor Targeting function to pull a very targeted list of qualified investors who would be a good fit to invest in KushCo. From there, I can organize which ones I want to try and schedule meetings with."

Benefits of Irwin

"Irwin lets us know what does and doesn't work. It indicates to us which investors are interested in KushCo and which are not, allowing us to narrow our efforts more effectively. It makes tracking meetings and interactions easy, while also allowing me to report on our IR activity."

With Irwin, Najim has been able to better manage & monitor KushCo's relationships with existing shareholders, while also having the ability to target new investors.

Investor Targeting

"Irwin's investor targeting is very easy to use. It's definitely made my job a lot easier. I simply type in the criteria that I'm looking for, and then I instantly have access to a list of qualified investors that I can try to schedule an investor meeting with."

Custom Holdings

"Anyone can pull 13F's, but that doesn't give a full scope of what our shareholder base looks like. With Irwin, I have the functionality to manually track and report shareholder purchasing activity which allows me to more accurately report on KushCo's shareholder base."

Easy-to-Use

"Having experience using other IR software platforms, I can safely say that Irwin is the most intuitive of the three. That's not to say that it's overly simplistic, it's just laid out in a way that is efficient and effective."

Results

Streamlined Investor Relationship Management

"Before Irwin, if I wanted to see who participated in a particular deal, I'd have to reference a dedicated spreadsheet just for that specific deal. Sometimes, investors would be spread across multiple deals which required opening multiple spreadsheets. With Irwin, that is no longer the case. Rather than opening several different documents, I can access all the information I need in one window and easily see who participates in each deal and how much they contributed."

Increased Efficiency of Investor Relations Marketing Budget

"Unlike sales or marketing, where there is a clearway to manage ROI, investor relations is different. It can be difficult to really see the results or measure a successful program. Irwin empowers me to demonstrate where our efforts have been most impactful. As far as reporting clear ROI, Irwin helps me get there."

Irwin is a powerful and easy-to-use tool that helps us manage our relationships & conversations, target the right investors and measure the true ROI of investor relations