The Chief Executive Officer of online e-commerce company Shopify (TSX: SHOP) says it is difficult to forecast the coming demand for marijuana once the recreational drug becomes legal in Canada on October 17.
Speaking to CBC news, Shopify CEO Tobias Lutke said that he has no idea what demand for marijuana will be even though his company will be helping to run online marijuana sales for the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia, two of the most populous regions of Canada.
"There is an entire building in Ottawa — Stats Can — that is oriented around trying to collect as much data around this as possible, because no country has done this experiment yet," he said.
"All everyone can do is say, 'Let's be as prepared as we can be, and be as flexible as we can be, and let's help figure out a way to deliver these products in the way the government wants us to.'"
This past February, the Ontario government signed a deal with Shopify to use the company's e-commerce platform for online cannabis sales. The Ottawa-based company’s technology was set to be used in government-run brick-and-mortar stores, but the new provincial government cancelled those plans. Ontario residents initially will be able to buy marijuana only online, although the province is aiming to have private retail stores running by April 2019.
British Columbia is also using Shopify to provide an e-commerce platform for its recreational marijuana sales. The company will create two online sales portals: one for consumers and one for use by private retail stores. Lutke said his company is doing its best to make the technology work as intended.
"Technology clearly is going to play a role to make it all work. Let's try our best to figure it out and, if certain aspects of it fail, we all learn something and adjust really quickly and make it happen."
