BOULDER, Colo, March 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — BDSA, the leader in data, market intelligence and advisory services to the cannabis industry, announced today the expansion of its cannabis retail sales tracking coverage to include Canada through a new strategic licensing agreement with Hifyre, Inc. (“Hifyre”) a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fire & Flower Holdings Corp. (“Fire & Flower”) (TSX: FAF OTCQX: FFLWF), a leading cannabis retailer with a proprietary digital retail and analytics platform. Canada is the world’s largest nationally legal market for cannabis.

“As a result of this agreement, BDSA now provides clients a comprehensive suite of market and consumer analytics and insights covering the Canadian market. Understanding product innovation, consumer preferences and shopping behaviors in Canada will enable companies participating in the Canadian cannabis economy to make product, retail and investment decisions based on the most current, accurate information,” said Micah Tapman, CEO of BDSA. “The Canadian market offers many significant opportunities based on a passionate and engaged consumer base.”

Legal cannabis sales in Canada totaled an estimated $2.6 billion in 2020 and is forecast to grow to $3.9 billion in 2021. Growth is expected to continue to $6.4 billion in 2026. Canada began legal adult-use sales in late 2018 and dramatically expanded product offerings in both the medical and adult-use sales in 2020 with availability of new Cannabis 2.0 product categories.

The agreement gives both U.S. and Canadian cannabis industry participants access to an extensive data set with which to make product development, distribution and investment decisions. It will make available granular data down to the product and attribute level, historic, trending data; detailed cannabis licensed producer sales information by parent company; and coverage of both large and small retail chains. Core elements of the agreement include:

• BDSA U.S. cannabis industry data will now be available to Hifyre IQ™ Canadian cannabis data platform subscribers through an addition to existing data subscriptions;
• The Hifyre IQ platform will be available to BDSA retail sales data subscribers through an addition to existing data subscriptions;
• BDSA and Hifyre will collaborate to develop new market intelligence products and services using the combined U.S. and Canadian data sets.

“We look forward to working with BDSA to take advantage of this excellent opportunity to accelerate our growth by expanding into the enormous and rapidly growing U.S. market,” said Trevor Fencott, CEO of Fire & Flower. “The Hifyre IQ analytics platform is recognized by Canadian licensed producers and the financial community as the most comprehensive and innovative platform available and we anticipate the U.S. market will benefit from the ability to generate more accurate, meaningful insights.”