Review of the first day of activity

Montréal, October 18, 2018 – Following the official opening of its first 12 stores and the launch of the transactional website SQDC.ca, the Société Québécoise du cannabis (SQDC) draws a positive assessment of the first day of activity that took place smoothly.

Store network
The development of the first 12 stores was completed on time and the stores all opened as scheduled at 10 a.m. yesterday morning. The Société was anticipating a high volume of in-store traffic for this important opening and staffing was planned accordingly. An average of 10 advisors were present at each store to meet the significant demand from customers and two security agents were on site to oversee queue management diligently. No major incidents were reported, despite the large number of people creating waiting lines of up to 4 hours in some cases.

Transactional website
The transactional website SQDC.ca was operational at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, just over two hours before the stores opened. It has been able to support the volume of visits and transactions, despite higher than expected traffic. The site received more than 450,000 visits in 15 hours (until midnight), had more than 7 million pages read, and customers were able to place their orders throughout the day. Given the large number of orders right from the start and the risks of Canada Post rotating strikes, delivery normally scheduled in 2 to 5 days might, at first, experience delays of 5 days or more.

Over 42,000 transactions in stores and online
The SQDC recorded over 12,500 transactions in stores and 30,000 online orders. This volume of orders far exceeds the SQDC's initial expectations, but also demonstrates the reliability of the Société’s systems. Note that it was difficult to accurately anticipate the volume of sales, given the lack of data for a market that, 48 hours ago, was still illegal.

Inventory management
Some products are shown as unavailable on the website. Given the enthusiasm created by the legalization of cannabis and the scarcity of products throughout Canada, the SQDC expects significant
in-store short-term supply challenges. For online purchases more specifically, we can expect more product shortages, especially for oils, capsules, atomizers and pre-rolled joints. The next few days will allow the SQDC to evaluate the evolution of its inventory and manage the product supply accordingly.