Every week we hear from another out-of-state brand with the same question: "How do we get into dispensaries in [state]?" The answer is the same whether the state is Washington, California, Nevada, or Ohio. You can't ship cannabis products across state lines. You can't sell in dispensaries without a licensed processor manufacturing your product in that state. And in most rec-legal markets, new processor licenses are either capped, frozen, or buried in a years-long queue. So the real question isn't "how do we get in?" It's "who do we partner with?" The brands figuring this out are looking for co-pack relationships with licensed processors who also have distribution infrastructure. One partner handles manufacturing, compliance, sales, and delivery. The brand focuses on what it does best: recipe, marketing, and building consumer demand. That's not a compromise. It's the model. The alcohol industry figured this out decades ago with contract brewing and licensed production agreements. Cannabis is getting there, just slower. If you're a brand with a proven product in one state and you want to be in five, the co-pack-to-distribution pipeline is the fastest path that actually works.