Started by friends and business partners Nam Tran and Shea Ryan, The Goodfellas Group is riding inside the curl of a new wave of B2B events.
Based in Southern California, their highly anticipated event, Network Show, is the first fully devoted Cannabis B2B event in the Los Angeles area. Speaking with the Leaf via email, Tran said that this year, they plan to keep the same energy but spread it across a larger footprint.
Ryan and Tran run both Network Show and The Goodfellas Group. Since 2017, Goodfellas has been consulting, co-packing, helping with sales, manufacturing, distributing and sourcing product in an effort to, as their mission statement states, “create a more sustainable Cannabis industry for our families and larger community.” As such, Tran said, “We face the same hurdles our exhibitors face everyday,” something which puts them in a unique position to empathize with the ever-increasing costs of getting your brand out there to make an impact in the market.
Tran detailed how Network Show wants to accomplish, on a larger scale, what he’s done working with small Emerald Triangle farms as The Goodfellas Group.
“It carries over the same business ethos of impact over profits. Create impact, and it will create opportunities for profit. Profits will create more opportunities to create more impact,” he said.
The event itself is an example of this cycle, as Tran expressed that they hope to create new impact this year through a welcome mixer, dinners, afterparties, outside events and a guidebook.
“We understand the trade show experience, and value goes beyond just the trade show floor,” Tran said.
Part of that experience seems to be creating more affordable ways of connecting California’s top brands with stores all over the state. When asked about this, Tran calls it less strategy and more of an understanding of where the market is today and the struggles being faced by even the most long-standing brands and retailers. Trans told us that he believes “the industry as a whole needs to be stable for success and growth to happen. We are just doing our part to help achieve that with the rest of our community.”
Many of the people at booths that the Leaf spoke with off the record last year said the ability to cover the rising costs of staffing and running an activation has allowed them to focus more on creating engaging moments with industry members, putting less pressure on how many sales they logged that day. This speaks to the success of Tran’s ethos of impact creating opportunity. Since debuting in 2023, Network Show has seen attendance grow to over 5,000 professionals, buyers, owners, operators and purchasing staff walking the showroom floor.
Coming to the Port of Los Angeles Sept. 23-24, Network Show is shaping up to be the B2B event of this summer. Tran said he and Ryan are just doing their part to help achieve growth and success for the rest of the community.
“We are not the first ones to be here, and we won’t be the last,” Tran said. “We’re just paying it forward.”
thegoodfellasgroup.com | @thegoodfellasgroup | networkshow.co | @network_show
