Black Friday to New Year’s 2021: A First Look at Sales Behavior in Washington’s CCRS Era
Black Friday to New Year’s 2021: A First Look at Sales Behavior in Washington’s CCRS Era
When Washington’s Cannabis Central Reporting System (CCRS) went live in December 2021, the transition marked the first statewide attempt to standardize traceability after BioTrack’s phase-out. To understand how licensees were performing during those pivotal early weeks, we analyzed nearly 12 thousand transactions covering the Black Friday–Christmas–New Year’s 2021 period.
The dataset captures point-of-sale activity reported by a handful of early CCRS adopters—primarily the Lucid retail group and Green Lady Lacey—and offers a snapshot of how products, pricing, and discounting behaved across inventory types.
| Inventory Type | Total Revenue ($) | Units Sold |
|---|---|---|
| Usable Cannabis | 13,905 | 3,846 |
| Concentrate for Inhalation | 1,910 | –138 |
| Tincture | 1,526 | –90 |
| Solid Edible | 353 | 18 |
| Sample Jar | 0.24 | 2,142 |
| Topical Ointment | 0 | 12 |
| (Unspecified) NA | 17,264 | 14,652 |
Flower (usable cannabis) dominated legitimate revenue, generating roughly 40 % of all recorded sales, while concentrates and tinctures together accounted for another 10 %–12 %. The large “NA” category—transactions missing inventory classification—reflects early data-entry gaps common during CCRS onboarding rather than mystery products.
Pricing and Value by Weight
Average revenue per gram paints a picture of how each category was positioned:
| Inventory Type | Avg $/g | Median $/g |
|---|---|---|
| Concentrate for Inhalation | 15.7 | 11.6 |
| Tincture | 15.4 | 11.7 |
| Usable Cannabis | 2.13 | 2.00 |
| Solid Edible | 0.07 | 0.07 |
| Sample Jar | 0.04 | 0.04 |
Concentrates and tinctures commanded an order-of-magnitude premium over flower on a per-gram basis, consistent with potency and processing costs. Edibles and sample jars functioned as low-revenue accessories in the retail basket.
Discounts and Promotional Behavior
| Inventory Type | Avg Discount ($) | % of Items Discounted |
|---|---|---|
| Solid Edible | 5.10 | 80 % |
| Tincture | 4.99 | 68 % |
| Concentrate for Inhalation | 4.44 | 65 % |
| Usable Cannabis | 0.42 | 8 % |
| (Unspecified) NA | 2.22 | 32 % |
| Sample Jar | 0 | 0 % |
Retailers used the holiday window to aggressively discount infused products—edibles, tinctures, and concentrates—while flower saw relatively little price movement. This pattern suggests an attempt to drive category trial and manage inventory before the new traceability year began.
Daily Revenue Trends
Revenue peaked on the weekends of December 10–12 and December 17–19, then slowed through Christmas week. Flower sales mirrored payday and weekend cycles, while concentrate and tincture spikes aligned with individual promotion days. The “NA” category’s persistent activity again signals reporting adjustments rather than hidden market segments.
| Business Name | Total Revenue ($) | Transactions |
|---|---|---|
| LUCID (main license #1031) | 11,931 | 3,548 |
| LUCID Auburn 21+ | 11,151 | 762 |
| GREEN LADY LACEY | 5,966 | 1,774 |
| LUCID Puyallup | 5,912 | 420 |
A handful of Lucid-branded stores accounted for the majority of positive-revenue records, with Green Lady Lacey the only independent participant of similar scale. Combined, these four licensees generated nearly $35,000 in verified holiday revenue—modest figures reflecting the limited number of operators submitting valid CCRS files at launch.
Interpreting the Early CCRS Data Similarities
Category hierarchy mirrored statewide trends seen under BioTrack: flower first, concentrates and tinctures second.
Price per gram ratios between flower and concentrates remained consistent with 2020 norms.
Weekend-driven revenue cycles persisted across stores.
Differences
Heavy use of discounts in processed categories, suggesting a marketing shift or data-entry experimentation.
High proportion of missing inventory types (“NA”), revealing onboarding friction with the CCRS schema.
Negative unit counts in some categories (returns or voids) highlight reconciliation issues unique to early CCRS reporting.
The First Movers
December 2021 had only a few license holders that fully adopted CCRS submission, including:
- Lucid (Spokane-based retail group operating multiple stores)
- Lucid Auburn 21+ Cannabis
- Lucid Puyallup
- Green Lady Lacey
Their willingness to experiment with an untested reporting pipeline gave the Liquor and Cannabis Board its first usable dataset in the post-BioTrack and CCRS Beta testing era, laying the groundwork for broader participation throughout 2022.