For so long, members of ‘traditional business’ scoffed at the marijuana industry. Investors from other areas of business wouldn’t touch the marijuana industry with a ten foot poll. That all changed after the 2012 Election when Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana. Slowly but surely, more and more investors have jumped into the marijuana arena. It sounds like even Warren Buffett might be trying to get in on the action. Per Bloomberg:
Ice cream, candy and soft drinks helped make Warren Buffett a billionaire. Now a subsidiary of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is seeking to profit from pot.
Cubic Designs Inc., a unit of Berkshire’s MiTek business that makes platforms for maximizing usable floor space in warehouses, sent about 1,000 fliers to weed dispensaries in recent weeks, offering to help growers expand the number of plants they cultivate.
“Double your growing space,” the flier reads in capital letters, above an image of an indoor facility with rows of plants. Another page says, “Grow your profits.”
This isn’t quite Warren Buffett himself distributing fliers to the marijuana industry, but it is his company, and I don’t think that the company did it without his knowledge. Most investors right now don’t ‘want to touch the plant,’ as they tell me all the time. But scenarios like this one, where a company is serving in an ancillary capacity, is becoming more and more common. I’m not sure how many growers, if any, took Cubic Designs Inc. up on their offer, but it’s a situation worth monitoring.
