A question for juice vendors about availability...........or anyone else of course.

[Soldier Blue]

Over the last three years I've been vaping I can count on one hand the amount of juices I've bought that I'd consider as 'keepers'. Unfortunately every one of them has now become virtually impossible to buy.

So, my question is why ?

Surely, from a business point of view if you have a product that sells, you keep on making it. Now forget the rule of 'supply and demand' as I'm in the business world myself and I fully understand that if you get a product that sells well, there is a point of view that by making it harder to obtain you increase its demand but with juice that rule is madness.

A case in point is Boba's Bounty which is probably one of the most sought after juices in the UK - to the point that I actually travel to the States 3 or 4 times a year and ensure I get a stock pile of it whilst I'm there. A 'nearer to home' juice would be GVC and again of late, it's a nightmare to get hold of. (Until tomorrow)

If I had the exact recipe that Grant has, I'd be employing people to churn it out and make hay while the sun shines.

Your thoughts on this matter would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance, SB.

P.S. - Before the posts come in about 'I have a custard recipe', so do I but I'm generally talking about juices that are harder to work out their ingredients and I understand why Grant doesn't employ anyone but that is another matter altogether.

 

[leisureliquids]

Could be a number of behind the counter answers. When a vendor imports eliquid, he had to do it in bulk and I mean bulk which attracts VAT Charges every time as well as weight based shipping charges. It can get to the point where the vendor makes NO money and with forum discounts etc, actually loses money on the sale of eliquid, depending on a number of factors such as the price paid etc. I'm sure there are several vendors who run particular lines at a loss, but gain profits from other lines. Vendor may cut his losses on that particular eliquid? This is just one example to throw into the pot!

 

[KulrMeStoopid]

Over the last three years I've been vaping I can count on one hand the amount of juices I've bought that I'd consider as 'keepers'. Unfortunately every one of them has now become virtually impossible to buy.

So, my question is why ?

Surely, from a business point of view if you have a product that sells, you keep on making it. Now forget the rule of 'supply and demand' as I'm in the business world myself and I fully understand that if you get a product that sells well, there is a point of view that by making it harder to obtain you increase its demand but with juice that rule is madness.

A case in point is Boba's Bounty which is probably one of the most sought after juices in the UK - to the point that I actually travel to the States 3 or 4 times a year and ensure I get a stock pile of it whilst I'm there. A 'nearer to home' juice would be GVC and again of late, it's a nightmare to get hold of. (Until tomorrow)

If I had the exact recipe that Grant has, I'd be employing people to churn it out and make hay while the sun shines.

Your thoughts on this matter would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance, SB.

P.S. - Before the posts come in about 'I have a custard recipe', so do I but I'm generally talking about juices that are harder to work out their ingredients and I understand why Grant doesn't employ anyone but that is another matter altogether.

I have the recipe and I would be glad to take your money to make you e-liquid

 

[VaperCaper]

I'm having trouble sourcing a US liquid for our site as well. The people that make the stuff are having to wait longer than expected for the supplies they need to make it, as I order quite a few litres in one go they can't just make my order up out of stock.

I really don't get the fascination with GVC, I've vaped about 100mls now and I don't like it, but each to their own, there's a few popular liquids I've tried that I didn't like all that much.

As far as supply issues, it's worth pointing out that it's significantly easier to make a litre of something than it is to make 100 litres of something. You have issues with mixing as well as issues with recipe multiplication. If a batch isn't mixed properly the flavour and the nic level can vary in it, and also if your recipe for something isn't exactly spot on you can easily multiply errors in it when you scale up production.

Certainly in the food business, accurate recipes are highly prized assets. If anyone asks me for the recipe to X then what I give them isn't the 'true' version, though it'll work fine at a domestic level of production it'll go wrong if you tried to use it at a commercial level of production. Getting things really accurate takes a lot of time and effort (or blind luck)

 

[Reevo]

Me n Juice threads don't mix lol. I agree with you though Soldier Blue, as a vaper I want to try popular juices like Bobas, Namber juice, Mount Baker Vapor, but trying to get em over here is difficult. I don't get the "Ration" supply method either, if I was lucky enough to produce a popular juice it would be readily available, like you say "make hay while the sun shines", the next popular juice is just around the corner and it might not be one of yours.

 

[stayinwonderland]

I've never known an industry like it. Can't think of a time when I've gone to make an order (mainly for DIY supplies) and everything's been in stock. So it's not just flavours that have stocking issues, it's also concentrates.

Best thing to do is to find replacements. Like maybe King's Custard is as good or better than GVC? or Nicoticket's Creme Brulee/Custard's Last Stand?

But I do wish the UK vendors would step up their game and start producing the same legendary products as the US. Still early days and I'm sure the world of vaping flavours will grow until we have a chocolate that tastes like chocolate! Then we'll say "Ah, when i was a lad you could get TEN MILLS for a fiver."

 

[Fleabag]

My worry is that it'll get like the essential oil market.
Many years ago, before it was popular (and when chemists were allowed to actually make stuff), you could pop into the chemist before your holiday, get an empty pump spray bottle and 50 or 100ml of citronella oil to answer all your mosquito-repelling needs.

Now, even for the cheap stuff, you're paying 3 or 4 quid for 10ml of the stuff

Already, the market is doing a similar thing with flavour concentrates. Despite all the scaremongering about sourcing only e-juice supplies - these are simply repackaged food flavourings that are suitable for use in e-cigs (which most of them already are).

The e-cig industry is inflating prices on these, largely because they know e-cigs are in higher demand than baking ingredients!

 

[Colonelboom]

@stayinwonderland also hit the nail on the head regarding the age of the industry here too. I know of very few vendors who are raking in such amounts in usable cashflow that would be able to buy in the quantities and variations needed to keep products in stock all the time. As an example I have to buy 250 bottles from one supplier of e-liquid in one job lot, having nearly or totally sold out of certain juices in their range at certain strengths it is nigh on impossible for me to justify another 250 bottles when I have nearly 175 of the last order still on my shelf.

At the moment I am building a totally new juice brand, adding new lines to PlumeBlu and restocking everything I currently keep back into stock and by my estimation if I were to do it in the way I would like to the stock level I want, I would need £5-10k sat here in a bank that wasn't earmarked.

Having just blown another £2k on basics from my China supplier to see me a bit closer to Christmas it leaves very little in the pot until more sales come in to deplete the stock I have (a lot of which will be liquids again) that in turn needs to be somehow replenished. People always say being in business isn't about managing profit - cashflow is far more important, sometimes it is really difficult to balance it all out though.

I would love to know what kind of volumes the sought after liquids are being bought up in per month versus the batch availability though. If it were me and I had a popular juice line I would try to expand the manufacturing capability to cope.

 

[VaperCaper]

It's also worth pointing out that when a vendor buys stock they have to pay for it all upfront (at least all of the smaller vendors will)

I work in event catering full time atm and when we need supplies for that we ring up a supplier and they deliver whatever we need on 30day terms. If you're a large established company you can alao get hold of short term money from banks at favourable rates there are maybe 5 big UK ecig companies that may be able to get stock on credit and get cheap lines of credit from a bank to pay for stock. Pretty much all of the rest of us have to guess at how much of X we will sell and try and get that much stock in.

I usually guess wrong :7

Come and ask the same thing in a year when I have 18months of sales figures to number crunch and I'll be guessing right more often and will have more money in the pot to make it easier to buy more stock in the first place.

 

[Colonelboom]

Pretty much all of the rest of us have to guess at how much of X we will sell and try and get that much stock in.

I usually guess wrong :7

Lol, with you on that one

A few months ago I got contacted by a company offering me Aspire BDC clearo's, just as I was putting an order in elsewhere. Having never heard of them before I put the idea back for a while just so I could channel the little money I had into restocking things I knew to be good quality. I really should have just bought a load there and then - they would have gone and sold just as everyone caught on to how good they were - silly me

As you say though VaperCaper, unless you have big buying power you don't get decent options for financing bigger buys. There is so little (useful) help available to startups and small businesses over here that we all walk a tight rope between slowly growing and strangling through lack of cash flow. Even things that we do to try and make our service a cut above (nice packaging, labelling machines etc) all add up.

It's not like we are all stealthvape you know - throwing hundreds of jiffy bags around like they are going out of fashion lol