Online CBD Sales Dip, but Smaller Stores See a Bump

An analysis published this week by MJBizDaily—showing a 2 percentage drop in market share by revenue of the top 20 CBD brands—reflects a broader, post-pandemic trend: the (slow) return of brick-and-mortar shopping. 

As the report shows, major CBD brands like Charlotte’s Web, CBDistillery, Lazarus Naturals, and others collectively dropped from 18% to 16% of the market share in the second quarter.

This gives the proverbial “little guy” a bit of breathing room, says Bethany Gomez of Brightfield Group, a cannabis analytics group.

“People are ready to explore a little bit more,” she said, adding, “They’re going out to stores … to farmers markets. They’re going out to all these kinds of independent retailers.”

Indeed, offsetting the dip in online CBD sales is a bump in market share for smaller CBD operations, which increased from 67% to 71% in the same quarter (Q2 2022).

Brightfield Group and most other insiders concur that this rebounding effect has a limit; a shaking up of the well-entrenched market leaders is very unlikely, but the trend is significant enough to elicit action from the big players.

Finally, the cannabis-based prescription drug Epidiolex (used for some epileptic disorders) saw a much larger surge than small CBD retailers, increasing 12% over the second quarter as both sales and price increased over last year. 

Big or small, online or brick-and-mortar, we will continue to do our part to thoroughly vet every CBD product we come across so you can make more confident decisions on a CBD gummy, tincture, oil, or capsule from a trusted brand that works for you.