I Recently Watched a Panel Discussion That Stopped Me in My Tracks.
It was a roundtable of cannabis industry figures - breeders, distributors, researchers and retailers - talking about strain trends, consumer behaviour and the genetics race. The kind of conversation that usually happens behind closed doors at expos like Spannabis, not on YouTube for anyone to watch.
The panel featured Dr Riley Kirk from the Cannabis Research Coalition - author of Reefer Wellness, a book I've referenced before in our terpenes post and one I'd genuinely recommend to anyone serious about understanding this plant - alongside Alex Labretton from Enigma Farms, Josh Rutledge from Flavor House, Grayson Lichtenthaler from Highway Distro and Sean Stewart from Supercraft.
You can watch the full discussion here.
I came away from it thinking about our own customers. About what they buy, what they ask for, and what it means for how we source. Because a lot of what this panel described - without ever mentioning UK CBD flower specifically - maps almost exactly onto what we see at Originals every single day.
The Moment That Really Hit Home
One of the retailers on the panel described a customer coming back after a purchase and saying something along these lines - that was some of the best product I've ever tried. What else do you have?
Not - can I get more of that? But - what's next?
The panellist's reaction said everything. That's the consumer mentality. You find something exceptional, it blows you away, and immediately you're wondering if there's another tier above it. Is there something even better? The hunt never really ends.
I recognised that immediately. Because I'm exactly that customer myself - and so are the vast majority of people who shop with us.
Flavour Chasing - Why We're All Guilty of It
Look at our bestselling strains right now. Rainbow Sherbet, Critical Berries, Lavender Cupcakes, Sour Lifter, Bubba Kush. Every single one of those has a completely distinct terpene profile and character. Sweet and fruity. Berry forward. Floral and spicy. Aggressively sour and gassy. Deep, earthy kush.
Our customers aren't buying the same strain week after week. They're building a rotation. Sampling. Comparing. Chasing the next flavour experience. And when something genuinely exceptional lands - like the Rainbow Sherbet that Benzil reviewed, where he openly admitted he wished he'd bought more of it - it creates this moment of real excitement that then immediately triggers the question: what's coming next?
Dr Riley Kirk put it well on the panel. Once you're introduced to quality, you just want to try more quality. It's not necessarily about the specific cultivar - it's about the standard of the experience. Find a grower or a source doing things properly and you want to work through everything they produce, not just return to the one thing you know.
That's exactly the relationship our customers have with us. And honestly, it's the relationship we have with the farms we source from.
Gas vs Sweet - Where Do UK CBD Customers Sit?
One of the more interesting discussions on the panel was the split between what Riley Kirk described as the legal market moving toward sweeter, more fruit-forward profiles - almost following the nicotine vape craze - versus the legacy market still strongly gravitating toward gas, skunk and those more challenging, savoury aroma profiles.
Looking at our bestsellers, our customers sit in an interesting middle ground.
Rainbow Sherbet and Critical Berries are undeniably on the sweeter, more approachable end - fruity, dessert-forward, the kind of strains that convert people who didn't think they'd enjoy hemp flower. Lavender Cupcakes brings floral and spice. But Sour Lifter and Bubba Kush sit firmly in legacy territory - gassy, kushy, the kind of profiles that the panel described as resonating most strongly with people who have a long memory of what really good cannabis smelled like.
We're not one or the other. Our customer base spans both - the flavour chasers who want something new and exciting every time, and the old school heads who know what they like and occasionally want exactly that. The trick is sourcing for both without compromising on quality at either end of the spectrum.
The Downside of the Chase
Here's the tension that the panel touched on and that we feel very directly at Originals.
If customers always want something new - and our bestsellers are the proof that they do - then we're constantly under pressure to source the next exceptional thing. That's actually one of the things we love about this job. The hunt is genuinely exciting. Going to Spannabis, talking to farmers, getting samples in, finding something that makes you put down whatever else you were doing and pay attention - that's what gets us out of bed.
But it also means that when something goes out of stock, it sometimes doesn't come back. The Rogue Valley harvest is annual. A specific phenotype from a specific cultivator in a specific season is exactly that - specific. When it's gone, it's gone. And occasionally a customer who fell in love with something from a previous season has to hear that we can't get more of it, and that's genuinely one of the harder parts of what we do.
The panel made an interesting observation about strain lifespan in retail - how even genuinely exceptional genetics can cycle out of consumer interest relatively quickly because people want the next thing. One panellist noted that even a product everyone agreed was the best they'd smoked could be passed over for something new within weeks. That's both liberating and a little bittersweet. It means the search never really ends - which is exciting. But it also means some genuinely special flower gets less time in the spotlight than it deserves.
What the Genetics Race Means for UK CBD
The broader point the panel was making - and the one I found most relevant to what we're doing at Originals - is that the genetics race is accelerating. Breeders are running thousands of seeds a season to find one or two keepers. Phenohunters like High Alpine Genetics, whose work we've covered in our Know Your Genetics series, are selecting the finest individual expressions of those crosses. And the cultivators growing the end product are constantly being asked to bring something new.
For UK CBD customers, that's an almost entirely good thing. The pace of genetic development in the Type 3 space right now means that what's considered exceptional keeps getting redefined upward. The Rainbow Sherbet that landed with us this season would have been unimaginable five years ago - and there's something even better being hunted right now in a greenhouse in Colorado or a field in Oregon that we don't even know about yet.
That's what keeps this interesting. For us sourcing it, for Benzil reviewing it, and hopefully for you consuming it.
The hunt goes on.
This article references a panel discussion from the YouTube channel linked above. Views expressed by panel participants are their own. This article reflects the personal perspective of the author.