Ryan Roebuck

Ryan Roebuck noticed a trend in Canada that most of the cannabis offerings were homogenized to a point where there was little identity between competing brands and retail locations.

“The industry was very much being built as ‘one for all,’” Roebuck says. “People were more concerned with trying to scale and become as big as possible, as quickly as possible, rather than trying to identify who their specific customer base is and what demographics they wanted to target.”

Roebuck wanted to create something different for consumers and built Edition to be the premier high-end cannabis retail chain of Canada. The company has two beautiful stores open in Toronto, each with a signature, minimalist design and their own line of in-house products. Roebuck plans to open locations in New York City and Miami by the end of 2021.

Roebuck initially thought his future was going to be in investment banking or venture capital, and it was, just not in a traditional sense. In 2011, Roebuck became one of the founding members of PharmaCan Capital, now known as Cronos, which helped establish some of Canada’s largest licensed producers, including Hexo, Peace Naturals and Whistler Cannabis Company.

“Some of the players that became the biggest LPs globally were initially funded through our investments,” Roebuck says. “That was the first foray into the space.”