This week’s podcast is with Joe Deighan, Founder and Director of Research at TAAT Lifestyle and Wellness (CSE:TAAT / OTC:TOBAF).
This is our second podcast with TAAT – we previously had the opportunity to speak to Setti Coscarella, the CEO of TAAT, which is still also available on our podcast feed. If you are educating yourself on TAAT, it is worth downloading that too.
TAAT Lifestyle & Wellness is on our pick list
The Armchair Trader has been tracking the progress of TAAT since it was trading at C$1.26 last year; the stock was nudging C$4.88 at time of writing. TAAT represents a revolutionary ‘third path’ approach to helping smokers with their efforts to give up smoking and quitting nicotine. Up until now, the main options on the market have been nicotine patches and vaping. Deighan refers in this podcast to the real impact TAAT’s proprietary Beyond Tobacco cigarettes are already having.
This was our first opportunity to speak properly to TAAT since the company fully rolled out its distribution into Ohio, which was selected by Coscarella as the first US state in which the product would be made available. Coscarella is a veteran of the tobacco industry and is looking to ‘engineer’ growth in the lucrative US market.
We talk a lot about distribution in this podcast, as it is such an important piece of the TAAT strategy in the US. TAAT has signed Crossmark, one of the biggest sales organisations in the US, which is assisting TAAT with its wider national sales efforts. It is also launching an e-commerce site this week as a third leg to its expansion in the US.
TAAT distribution strategy
Ohio is really the test bed for selling Beyond Tobacco and Deighan goes into some detail on the company’s interactions with distributors in Ohio and with end customers, including critical customer feedback and re-order numbers.
“Right now we are still isolating it in Ohio but it won’t be too much longer before we are expanding it outside Ohio,” Deighan tells us. “Working with Crossmark we want to make sure this is something we can scale – we want to be able to take this out to thousands of stores, tens of thousands of stores.”
We also talk about TAAT’s manufacturing capacity and its existing operations in Nevada, which Deighan is overseeing in Las Vegas. This will be very important if the company is going to meet burgeoning demand. TAAT is aiming to bring production up to 300 pallets of cigarettes per month – it is currently producing around 45 pallets per month as part of its initial seeding campaign in Ohio. For smokers and investors outside the US, we also asked Deighan about TAAT’s international plans and how the core TAAT Beyond Tobacco material can be adapted to other markets.
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