As a fledgling business owner I wanted to go to spread the word about my business but I could not afford to pay the £2.5k for the smallest stand so I stood out side the main door on Saturday handing out flyers before getting moved along by the staff. I then moved to the car park to hand out flyers, later on in the day I managed to get two tickets from people leaving and eventually found an exhibitors car pass on the floor, so that was a score. On Sunday I scored another two second hand tickets, it did not take long as it seemed that many people did not hang around for too long.
This was my first Expo and I generally concur with what has been posted already, the turn out was paltry, too many disposables and once you have seen and tasted one sickly disposable you have seen and tasted them all. The main issue is that there is huge amounts of profit involved in disposables, even more than the juices, which are massively profitable judging by the Lambos and Mercs in the car park. Even the juice companies are going to start or have already started to have disposables filled with their juices so not to loose out. The Expo organisers are as guilty or even more guilty than the CEOs trying to bolster their bottom line, they are ruining the business that is feeding them. It seems to me that these companies don't want to help people stop smoking but just want to have the people hooked on 20mg disposables with no way to ever stop and annoyingly it is these 20mg disposables that the kids get their hands on.
I watched many people rock up to the venue and most of them were carrying mods and DTLing on the way there. I asked many vendors and punters what they thought of the show and it was mostly disappointment with the crowd from the vendors and the vendors from the crowd.
I guess the highlight of the show was when the Vaperz Clouds rep let his thoughts be known when picking up their prize with an amplified "fuck disposables".
I will still probably do the six hour round trip again though as I need to get the word out...
Same thing has happened in advocacy too as vapers have been excluded from the debate at the expense of industry reps in some guise or other.
Conferences used to be filled with independent researchers too, presenting findings from interesting studies. I rarely bother attending now as they have become talking shops with the same funded faces regurgitating the same industry-friendly opinions, paying lip service to things we actually want/need.
I hated the advent of the large venue Vape events, my first visit to vape expo just confirmed it would be my last and I was only there for about three hours. Thing is, I doubt there is any modder community left to speak of to fill a modder section anymore.
Who was picked up on this?
You probably won’t remember but I was the guy in the black jacket with the beard walking in about 10.30 with the lady in leather jacket (@LDotKDot), said we had seen you on POTV.
a friend is sending me the video of "Fuck disposables" but does anyone have it here
It's a shame that just one person and his giant ego managed to destroy Vapefest. That was always a good weekend.Well i was gonna go. Almost did... Almost.
I been vaping almost 5 years and have never been to an expo or meet. For the first time i had time of which coincided the conditions were perfect. So why did i decide to go to work instead? Lol
Well the disposable talk put a damper on things and knowing a lot of people werent going because of it. Then i saw the hotel prices lmao. Anyhow i digress. I would love to meet you guys, truly i would. Id happily pay 30 quid and stand in a field for the privilege (the first person to ask me to paypal them 30 quid and gives me an address for a field gets their gear swapped for smok stuff circa 2018/19). To my knowledge there aint many on the forum round this way. Ive met eyeballkid and jackiemax back pre covid but seems like theres noone within miles lol.
Seems a shame so many were seemingly dissapointed with the expo and as we have all said these disposable things are a blight on society and the environment. Theres no way they could stack up to a zelos kit or the t18 kit ever!
What happened?It's a shame that just one person and his giant ego managed to destroy Vapefest. That was always a good weekend.