Michael Lucchino, Executive Vice President of Sales at Cannatrol – Interview Series

What subjects did you study at the University of Pittsburgh, and how did those studies end up becoming useful throughout your career, as well as your current role with Cannatrol?

I studied Mathematics. Mathematics is a degree in critical thinking, logic and order of operations. Math allowed me early success in banking, which led me to purchasing a greenhouse/garden center. At that time, I knew very little about plants. However, I grew up around the garden, so I immediately found a reason to expand that interest.

What early roles in gardening and nursery retail did you hold? What interested you about working at stores dedicated to gardening and agriculture?

I was a managing partner of the company and had a silent partner. So, I was given autonomy to run the business and improve the sales revenue, the facility itself and the profit of the company. Banking sales taught me a lot about the impact and value of serving customers. The garden industry, especially independent retailers, is built off this principle. The locations I owned and operated were dedicated to it. At one location, we valeted parked cars and had off duty policeman directing traffic during the heavy spring selling season. The gratification enjoyed by the customers and the products we grew and sold was an adrenaline rush almost every day in the spring.

 How did those roles provide you with a better understanding of the equipment needs and conditions of gardeners and, eventually, cannabis cultivators?

I ran seven acres of greenhouses. We failed often, and fast. This gave us the ability to understand what we were good at (and bad at) in terms of production and the market we served. The learning curve on the plant side, for me, was steep. I relied on other operators and took classes to learn the cultivation side. Once we discovered our strengths, we were able to be efficient and effective. On the equipment side, I was operating greenhouses. This taught me a ton about all equipment related to the buildings. Airflow, heat, roof covers, sensors, fans, cooling, benching, irrigation, fertigation, lighting (supplemental), shade curtains for light deprivation, packaging, supply chain, vendors, suppliers, tractors and loaders (we sold bulk materials), equipment for landscaping – too many things to mention.

 As someone who owned a very necessary ancillary business when the adult-use market in Colorado first opened, how did such a big measure change the operations of your horticultural business?

At first, it did not happen. We were not seeking licensing or to grow. Perhaps a miss, however the business was successful. What happened was that the grow community reached out to many of the operators in the market to gain knowledge of growing. Not all licensees had growing experience. Many of the operators in Colorado are very conservative families who took a “not in my greenhouse” approach and denied offering help. Being a consumer, and from a much younger generation, I saw opportunity and welcomed it, which led to helping growers, as well as expanding our hard goods department to include hydroponics and other consumables to support their efforts.

 How did your role with Fluence strengthen your knowledge of LED lighting and the many other specific technologies that cannabis cultivators in particular need in order to grow the best crops? How was that strong knowledge transferable into your role with Cannatrol and the machines they produce?

My big education in lighting was on the indoor side (non-greenhouse) and controlled environmental agriculture (CEA). Many of the basic systems (benching, fertigation, irrigation) were the same or similar, however the lighting intensity, daily light integrals and equipment necessary for a stable environment were a bit different than a greenhouse. The light intensity required different feeding schedules; however, knowing plants for those adjustments was easy. Learning about the equipment for cooling and controlling the environment was what led me to Cannatrol. The industry focused solely on the front end (grow) side of the business and neglected post-harvest processing. To this day, post-harvest processing is the most overlooked, but most important part of the process in cannabis. Using repurposed equipment that was never intended to dry or cure cannabis, continues to be a challenge that results in inconsistent output in quality, consistency, and repeatability, massive (negative) impacts to the business financials, and lack of precision control. Because the equipment was intended for other purposes (comfort cooling), it has limitations (fixed setpoints by the manufacturer) that limit the operator’s ability to have precision control and the outputs they desire consistently.

 What caught your professional interest about joining the Cannatrol team? As someone with ample experience in gardening and horticulture, how did you view their technology as innovative?

I always referred to post-harvest processing as the last bastion of science, and once someone solved it, the industry would have a template from front to back to drive success. I have slide decks from my lighting days that are a decade old that highlight this point. We knew that someone needed to separate temperature and dewpoint, controlling them independently, which had not been done at that point. Mainly driven by the equipment being used, and primarily being sold for other reasons, that requirement was not necessary. When I met (Cannatrol co-founders) Jane and David Sandelman at a trade show and asked them to give me their elevator pitch, I thought, “This is the answer, this is what we have been waiting for.” If what they are saying is true, and I had no doubt they were speaking the truth, the technology would represent a paradigm shift in the industry and how we view post harvest.

This is very similar to what the lighting space experienced when the paradigm shift went from HPS/CMH to LED. While different technology and equipment, it mimics how the repurposed use of HPS – originally intended for highways, parking garages and streetlamps and not horticulture – were being used to grow cannabis. Once the growers realized we were giving them a tool that allowed precision control, and it worked, the industry pivoted and is now mostly LED. What held LED back initially was that the original LEDs were overpriced and underdelivered. They simply did not perform, and growers struggled to believe that it would work. Cannatrol does not have that black eye, as the technology was not released in an underperforming state. It arrived in the industry as a proven, consistent, reliable, durable product from the artisanal cheese, charcuterie meat and dry aged steak world. That was the origin of its invention. That part of our business is ongoing and has been around for 20 years. Now, it does not change that there is hesitancy in the market to adopt our solutions, driven by many of the same factors of lighting: risk, legacy thinking and overall capital shortages.

My motivation is my desire to change the story. I want to help make the industry better by allowing growers to optimize all the hard work they do to produce amazing flower. As a consumer, I had my own personal motivation to change my own experience of smoking harsh cannabis. For me this had to change, and now we have a solution to foster that change that not only works without question and is backed by science.

When I interviewed David and Jane Sandelman, I found it really fascinating that Cannatrol’s technology can also be used for cheese curing as well. What would you say most surprised you about the design of the Cannatrol machines and their usage?

I think the simplicity of all of it. I think when you think about the basics of what we do and offer, while science sounds complicated, and to some degree it is, the science of vapor pressure or dewpoint is around us every day in our lives. Like gravity, we take it for granted. We don’t think about a ball dropping from our hands and falling to the ground. We KNOW by experience that is what will happen every single time you drop it.   Dewpoint is something that happens every day. We see it; we accept it as it happens, but no one really thinks about why, what or how it is happening. We just accept it.

The gift David, our inventor, gave us was being able to mimic that science, through control, invention and software. Science tells us that if we control vapor pressure at certain set points, we will reach a stable water activity of .60. This is the point at which microbials, molds, mildews and bacteria are unable to colonize further. That won’t happen some of the time; it will happen every time. No different than the ball dropping. That is physics. That is science. We did not invent physics, that was already discovered, documented, and written in science books. We just created technology to control the environment to produce physics to occur. And as we say, you can’t Phuck with Physics. Why does this matter?

The growers and consumers all want a consistent, repeatable process, delivering the finest consumer experience available. That was a huge motivation for me to tell this story and change the way consumers experience it.

What are your duties as Executive Vice President of Sales? How did your experience running a gardening and horticultural business give you an advantage in sales for such specific and refined machines?

My duties are many. I run global sales which includes strategy, formulation and execution of our business plan. I report to the owners of the company and our board of directors. I am responsible for driving and achieving our revenue goals. I oversee a team of sales professionals, mentoring and assisting them in performing the necessary duties to achieve results. The foundations of our successes are rooted in the principles that we  strive to achieve everyday: Serve the customer, improve touches, drive EBITDA, reduce risk (competitively/quantitively), drive valuation and augment our financial performance.

The horticulture business taught me to be resilient, nimble and agile. Farming is tough, regardless of the crop. You learn quickly to be relentless, overcoming obstacles and opposition. The word is perseverance. When I began working in horticulture lighting, I was again challenged by an entirely new technology and industry. I used perseverance to my advantage and drew from experience of learning something totally new. This gave me confidence that I needed to do the job. I knew the cannabis space needed this last part of the process to be solved and again relied on previous experience to give me the confidence to do it again. I have been curious and educated about science throughout my life, but it has taken some time to understand our technology and solutions. Truth be told, I am not all the way there!

But I had the confidence that I would get there. It does not hurt that our co-founder and inventor David is an excellent teacher, as well as the sales team that came before me. I have been blessed with many mentors and friends that have formed my knowledge, character and style. In short, life prepared me for this moment. If you get a chance to roam this planet for a bit of time, and you pay attention, you have a pretty good shot at success.

Based on your experience in the role, how would you say the needs and objectives of cannabis cultivators that Cannatrol has worked with change across different state markets?

I don’t know if there is a drastic difference in the needs or objectives across different state markets. I think operators share many of the same objectives and challenges. The core drivers are quality, consistency, repeatability, brand and cost to produce. Cost to produce is often overlooked or not understood entirely. While that does not matter as much in new emerging markets where price is elevated, as the market matures, those who have figured this out early are the winners. They do not need to pivot at the last moment to be successful.

These companies ride the good times early and when price compresses, they have very little to change to stay on top. No doubt the business may not be as successful on paper. However, they still have what most would consider, regardless of industry, a solid business. Many take short cuts, all under the mindset of saving, when in reality, they are losing big before they even know it. Many don’t realize that by NOT doing or spending optimization, they are spending more in the long run. So many look at the cost up front, and that can’t be overlooked; however, many simply don’t take the time to do the math and pencil out the return on investment.  You hear ROI spoken a lot. How many people actually take the time to understand it and then apply to their model?

How do you see the technology that Cannatrol produces evolving in the future, as the cannabis industry itself and the technological needs of the businesses evolve, too?

Our technology is rooted in physics. That will not change. I think our systems will upgrade across the board with better sensors, improved software and control, larger commercial scale adoption as the industry matures and regulation becomes tighter.  Because we control vapor pressure, which is also a big part of the grow side of the business, I see our technology as the top solution there as well. Because we are able to control the environment so precisely, it allows the plant to reach its fullest potential.  Growers seek that type of control to provide predictable outcomes.

Consumers demand a quality, predictable product. We already have systems in grows using this currently.  The results are noticeably encouraging. As always, we won’t just trust in anecdotal evidence. We will run it in the lab with controls in place to demonstrate and document those results. When you work from the lens of science, physics, mathematics and truth, then these discoveries become unchallengeable. This is the basis of all invention.