The High Buds Club: Winning the Last Five Feet

June Cotte

Product #:W51193

Supplier:Ivey

Discipline:Entrepreneurship, Marketing

Setting:Canada, 2026

Details:Case (PDF) • 17 pages • 2026-07-15

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In the spring of 2026, the founder and CEO of High Buds Club (HBC) faced a defining strategic choice. HBC had built what it described as “Cannabis’ Most Influential Community”—a private, gated digital network of approximately 9,000 Canadian budtenders and cannabis retailers, representing roughly half of the national market. Canada’s Cannabis Act prohibited virtually all conventional marketing—no television, no radio, no billboards, no social media, no lifestyle imagery—which meant that the retail shelf, and the budtender standing beside it, constituted the entire marketing battlefield. The founder was considering three strategic paths, each with distinct implications for HBC's positioning, growth, and relationship with the budtenders. Each path carried risks, and the wrong choice could cost HBC the trust it had spent years earning.

Learning Objectives

This case is suitable for master of business administration (MBA), executive MBA, and senior undergraduate courses in marketing strategy. The case could also work well in entrepreneurship and strategy courses, as well as courses on consumer behaviour and retail and channel management.

By the end of this case discussion, students should be able to do the following:

Analyze the strategic value of point-of-sale influence in categories where conventional marketing channels are unavailable, restricted, or ineffective.
Evaluate the trade-offs between trust-based and transaction-based business models.
Apply signalling theory and third-party credibility frameworks to assess how credibility badges function.
Assess strategic options against multiple criteria.
Understand the founder’s dilemma of stakeholder alignment.
Develop strategic recommendations under resource constraints.