Arizona weed brand giving away $10K to drum up business

The race to sell weed the cheapest in Arizona’s cannabis industry is so intense, local dispensaries are making less and less money as they try to edge each other out in a crowded market. One cannabis company is trying something different.

The Mazor Collective, which owns Giving Tree Dispensary and the Sneakers cannabis brand, will pay one lucky customer to smoke its products.

Anyone who buys a five-pack of Sneakers prerolls (which go for $29.50) will be entered into a $10,000 giveaway drawing. A piece of paper inside the preroll packaging will contain a code that buyers can enter at sneakerscash.com to join the giveaway. The winner of the $10,000 will be announced on Feb. 14.

Customers don’t have to travel to Giving Tree in North Phoenix to enter the giveaway. The Sneakers brand is available at about 60 dispensary locations across the state, including Curaleaf, Trulieve and JARS throughout the Valley; Nobel Herb in Flagstaff and Tucson’s Green Halo.

Since Sneakers is attached to a small cannabis company, Mazor Collective founder and CEO Lilach Mazor Power argues the odds of winning aren’t as remote as they might seem. Then again, the point of the promotion is to develop a host of new loyal customers.

“Once they try it, and they realize the quality that they get, they become a loyal customer pretty quick,” Mazor Power said.


Mazor Power openly admits that the giveaway, which accounts for an entire quarter of the marketing budget for Sneakers, is a gambit to combat a slowing cannabis market. The Grand Canyon State has become oversaturated with weed brands and dispensaries, tanking the cost of weed. That means killer deals for Valley smokers but a difficult business environment for sellers.

Despite low prices, and arguably because of them, dispensaries are selling more weed than ever before. But they still are seeing an appoximately 20% to 25% decrease in revenue over the past two and a half years, said Mazor Power, who is the former board president of the Arizona Dispensaries Association. Over that same period, the price per unit for weed sales decreased by almost 40%.

Last July, sales at state-licensed dispensaries in Arizona fell to less than $100 million per month for the first time in years, according to Arizona Department of Revenue data. In 2021, a year after Arizona legalized marijuana for recreational use, the Mazor Collective had more than 60 people on staff. But after layoffs in 2023, the company now employs 38 people.

Other dispensaries and brands have left the state due to Arizona’s lethargic cannabis market, but Mazor Power plans to be around for a long time. She’s heartened that her company has seen a slight increase in sales in recent months, but she knows it will take creativity and boldness to survive what she believes is a cyclical and temporary downturn.

“In a market that is so saturated and so competitive, to be a small business with a small budget, it's been a struggle,” Mazor Power said. “How can we even compete these days? You literally have to pay people to smoke your weed.”