Today, Vancouver’s oldest and busiest pot shop, Main Street Marijuana, celebrates its first birthday.

The store opened a year ago today with hundreds of eager customers lining up along the sidewalk waiting to get in. At the time, Main Street only carried a couple different strains, and the prices gave customers sticker shock.

Some worried about how the store’s presence would change Uptown Village. And there was a little trouble on opening day as police approached a man handing out free samples of home-grown marijuana outside the store.

To be clear, the man wasn’t affiliated with Main Street, and he said he gave out that pot in protest of the store’s high prices. Turns out that man, Adam Alexander, is the same person who was arrested a week ago in a drug raid of an illegal pot retail operation called Grow Systems Northwest.

The challenges didn’t end there for Main Street. Supply shortages early on forced the store to briefly close a couple of times, and Owner Ramsey Hamide struggled to fight price gouging from growers. Meanwhile, Clark County welcomed six other stores to the mix, adding plenty of new competition for Main Street.

But for all that could have gone wrong, it’s been a wildly successful first year for Main Street, as the pot shop has emerged as a leader in the experimental industry. Today, the store has more than 250 marijuana products, and all flower sells for $20 or less per gram.

Over the course of the year, Main Street has pushed to the front of the pack, leading Washington’s 160+ pot shops in sales for the past four months. By the end of June, Main Street had sold more than $9.5 million worth of marijuana products, falling just behind New Vansterdam in gross sales for the year.

The store is celebrating the big milestone by launching a snazzy new website with strain reviews, grower profiles, a menu, a blog and an informative Cannabis 101 section. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a gander when you get a chance.

Hamide said Main Street also has several specials running through the weekend to mark the anniversary.

-Three Life Gardens joints selling for $20.

-Discounted six-packs of truffles from Magic Kitchen for $30 through the weekend (normally, they sell for $45).

-100 milligram pebble candies for $40.

With a growing supply chain, a recent shake up in Washington’s marijuana tax system and more states preparing to legalize, Hamide sees an almost limitless future for Main Street. He predicts huge price drops over the next few months, and some prices are already coming down.

– Justin Runquist