Luke Dickson from OGEN shares his industry leading thoughts on cultivation

OGEN marketing coordinator — Luke Dickson

Last week we had the opportunity to tour the OGEN Cultivator and sit down to talk to Luke Dickson, the Marketing Coordinator at OGEN Ltd in Calgary, Alberta.

Luke’s OGEN cannabis journey began two and a half years as a Trimmer, cutting leaves and stems off freshly harvested buds. Luke was one of the first people employed at OGEN, which today has over one hundred employees.

What is there to learn about cannabis?

Something we learned from Luke and the OGEN team was how much they value legacy growers. As OGEN puts it, their style is “old school methods made modern”. These old school methods learned from legacy growers have made a significant influence on how cultivation is done today in the recreational cannabis industry. Luke says, a lot of what we know today comes from the legacy market and has been compounded into today’s growing techniques. The advantage today is, that cultivators have access to many opportunities to experiment, and try different growing techniques and approaches so we can learn more about the plant.

Since legalization, there has been a huge push to learn more about the cannabis plant. As a cultivator, you can apply for government grants that financially support research and development done on the plant. Though the nation has come a long way since cannabis legalization in Canada and understanding the capabilities of the plant, there is still so much to learn. Luke says, one of the biggest learnings of working at OGEN was learning how much is still unknown about the cannabis plant.

What are the biggest marketing challenges you face?

Luke says regulations are the biggest challenge. From a marketing standpoint, cannabis is still seen as a class one drug Federally in the United States and since a lot of the media companies are based in the United States, many of the rules are influenced by their national regulations. This relatable challenge makes marketing and commutation with cannabis consumers very difficult.

What do love most about the cannabis community?

Luke says the cannabis community is a very wholesome, warm, and welcoming community. There’s lots of sharing of knowledge and collaboration between companies and everyone is looking out for each other. This industry has a lot of great people in it which is the reason why Luke thinks the cannabis industry will succeed.

Luke also talked about how has seen the cannabis community come together with the goal in mind to break the stigma around cannabis. Though the stigma around cannabis has come a long way since legalization, there is still a lot of room to grow. Since the community is fighting together to end the cannabis stigma, Luke notices and appreciates the people in the cannabis community being opposed to all stigma, which again is why he believed the cannabis community to be very wholesome, warm, and welcoming community.

OGEN Products in the Wild!

We love seeing how our customers utilize their menus to highlight products and producers.

Douglasdale Cannabis, located in Calgary, same as Ogen, created a custom “Grown Locally” label to showcase Ogen products on their digital menus.

Do you stock Ogen? We’d love to hear how you have them listed on your menus!

Not only did we learn a lot about what it takes to operate a cultivator, the marketing challenges cultivators face, and get reminded why being a part of the cannabis community is so great, but it was also nice to meet the faces of the people producing such great products. We can’t wait to see what happens next for the OGEN team and where they will take their product next.