At a glance
Company snapshot
Headset is a Seattle cannabis data and business-intelligence company. Its software turns point-of-sale, menu, inventory, government and public-company information into retail dashboards, supply-chain tools and market projections. It is an industry-services company, not a cannabis producer, brand owner or dispensary.
Founders and origin
Cy Scott, Scott Vickers and Brian Wansolich founded Headset in 2015 after helping create Leafly in 2010. Headset identifies Scott as chief executive, Vickers as chief technology officer and Wansolich as chief design officer. Their Leafly experience provided an early view of strain information and consumer discovery; Headset shifted the focus to operator analytics.
What the platform includes
Current products include Retailer for store-level sales and inventory, Bridge for brand and distributor collaboration, Insights for market intelligence, Vault for analytics-ready data delivery, Nexus AI for ordering and ERP workflows, Brand Locator and a hemp-beverage dataset. Different subscriptions answer different questions and should not be treated as one universal feed.
Data scale
Headset says its network includes more than 3,500 retail partners in the United States and Canada and has aggregated tens of billions of dollars in receipt-level transactions. The platform page says roughly 34 cents of every U.S. and Canadian cannabis dollar flows through its systems. These are current company-reported coverage metrics, not government census totals.
How market estimates are built
Data starts with participating retailers’ POS systems, is aggregated and anonymized, normalized to a product taxonomy, reviewed by humans and tested statistically. For Insights, Headset uses government-reported market totals where available, then projects category, brand and product performance from a selected store sample. Published rankings are estimates, not a literal count of every transaction in a state.
Known methodology limits
Coverage differs by market and regulatory channel. Headset groups fully vertically integrated sales under “House Brand,” which can understate a named brand’s sales inside its own stores. Sales totals exclude consumer-paid taxes, and historical numbers can change when regulators finalize totals or Headset updates forecasts. Those rules materially affect comparisons.
Markets and users
Headset serves retailers, producers, brands, distributors, investors and analysts across legal U.S. states and Canadian provinces. A 2024 methodology page listed adult-use, medical or combined coverage in 18 state and provincial markets. The current product page also tracks hemp-derived THC beverages in selected states and metropolitan areas.
Research use and recognition
Headset data is frequently cited by companies, journalists and academic researchers; a California Department of Cannabis Control-hosted study used its transaction data and described the coding and projection methods. Citation does not make every vendor ranking definitive. The date, market definition, sample and treatment of vertically integrated sales should accompany any claim.
Why Headset matters. Headset created a shared measurement layer for an industry fragmented by state law and incompatible retail systems. Its value is speed and product-level detail; its risk is false precision when a projection is repeated without methodology. A strong brand page should explain both the platform’s reach and the sampling decisions behind its widely quoted market rankings.