Are Premium Juice Vendors Taking Advantage of us?
- Thread starter drysprocket
- Start date
- th_trl_thread_readers 0
- Status
I missed the thread but in my experiences it means premium price. Not premium quality.
Sent from my HTC One M8 Harman/Kardon edition
I find that the juice that my local Brick and Mortar store makes to order is better than the so called premium juice that they sell. I can also adjust the ingredients to my liking at a price that is 25 % cheaper than the so called fancy stuff.
If the vast majority of buyers didn't find it to be of premium quality, said vendors would find themselves without enough repeat customers to grow or even stay in business...
Have to disagree. Look at the popularity of cig-a-likes and other cheap, low-end vaping gear. Much better products on the market with much better bang for the buck. Surely voluminous sales doesn't mean quality products.
No large company when it comes to e-liquid or cigalikes would survive without repeat customers. Some get repeat customers because of quality; some because of price...I actually do think many are satisfied with cigalikes- dual users who want to smoke where they are not allowed. Some people even quit with them and only use them. This is a hobbyist vape site, but many here don't even know what quality is, given the popularity of Fastech...
You continue to make the point that customers means having a quality product. I couldn't disagree more.
I don't know that this is strictly a hobbyist site, albeit many of us are, or have become hobbyists; but, there are still a multitude of beginners and people looking to quit here..
Also, while I agree FastTech predominately sells less than high quality gear, if you're careful some high quality items can be found there.
It's kind of how business works, in most cases... I also said low prices will draw and retain customers- whether a product is good, or not...
I posted about this not long ago. Prices per ml that are 2500% higher than the price of 10 year old Bourbon that is paying regulatory taxes no less.
So YES they are bending people over. BUT, they couldn't do that unless people willing bent over to take it. Free Enterprise dictates a demand economy for good or bad. It the market will give $1 per ml of juice then so be it. I personally won't be doing so anymore but on rarest of occasions and it had better be good. I've tried so many "Premium" flavors in shops and they are all just blah to me for the most part.
If everyone would take the plunge into DIY and use the forums to pass on their creations we could all find what we wanted or close to it for our tastes for pennies. These juice companies are making a killing right now. Just think when government starts to regulate and tax them how much more a bottle will cost? All the more reason to get into DIY and learn. I just did and I am more than happy and we have a great start right here on ECF to learn from each other and make our own juices we like. You can look at profiles of flavors you might like from recipes and then adjust the % or add another flavor, leave one out etc and get creative.
These companies (well some of them) I am sure put lots of time into testing mixes to get a taste profile they want. But in the end they are just guessing and I am willing to bet making a large spread of flavor %'s at once to reduce time to find the right mixes. Even in my little clandestine juice lab
I realize I am just chucking flavors I think will meld into what I might like on a whim. So I do 3 or so small 3ml batches with varied %'s and test. Gets me closest quickest.
These big juice makers are buying their supplies in bulk (I hope) so their cost is minimal. The bottle and label probably exceeds the cost of the juice itself especially once you include labor and any overhead.
I'm off to vape on my Sugar Bear Cuttwood clone I discovered on here and tweaked to my taste. So long $25 per 30ml B&M store pricing. Costs me about $1.20 now!
Having worked using Industrial Chemicals I know how cheaply you can get 55 gallon drums of things for and the markup by the time the maker sells it and the retailer marks it up on the end is likely in the 1500% to 2500% range. Not bad margins if you can get people to pay them!
CC
So YES they are bending people over. BUT, they couldn't do that unless people willing bent over to take it. Free Enterprise dictates a demand economy for good or bad. It the market will give $1 per ml of juice then so be it. I personally won't be doing so anymore but on rarest of occasions and it had better be good. I've tried so many "Premium" flavors in shops and they are all just blah to me for the most part.
If everyone would take the plunge into DIY and use the forums to pass on their creations we could all find what we wanted or close to it for our tastes for pennies. These juice companies are making a killing right now. Just think when government starts to regulate and tax them how much more a bottle will cost? All the more reason to get into DIY and learn. I just did and I am more than happy and we have a great start right here on ECF to learn from each other and make our own juices we like. You can look at profiles of flavors you might like from recipes and then adjust the % or add another flavor, leave one out etc and get creative.
These companies (well some of them) I am sure put lots of time into testing mixes to get a taste profile they want. But in the end they are just guessing and I am willing to bet making a large spread of flavor %'s at once to reduce time to find the right mixes. Even in my little clandestine juice lab
I realize I am just chucking flavors I think will meld into what I might like on a whim. So I do 3 or so small 3ml batches with varied %'s and test. Gets me closest quickest. These big juice makers are buying their supplies in bulk (I hope) so their cost is minimal. The bottle and label probably exceeds the cost of the juice itself especially once you include labor and any overhead.
I'm off to vape on my Sugar Bear Cuttwood clone I discovered on here and tweaked to my taste. So long $25 per 30ml B&M store pricing. Costs me about $1.20 now!
Having worked using Industrial Chemicals I know how cheaply you can get 55 gallon drums of things for and the markup by the time the maker sells it and the retailer marks it up on the end is likely in the 1500% to 2500% range. Not bad margins if you can get people to pay them!
CC
Last edited:
I'm not saying the juices taste bad. I'm saying the "Premium" is just being used as a marketing term. I'm saying you can get juice just as good if not better at a small fraction of the cost.
The public is very easy to manipulate with marketing terms. It's why Budweiser is the King of Beers and they even have the majority of the public convinced that Shock Top is a premium Belgian White Ale.
It's also why Plasma televisions were just phased out in favor of much inferior LED sets. Now with new marketing, people are getting sucked into the 4K scam even though the human eye cannot tell the difference between 4K and 1080p.
But as long as television manufacturers can market a "Premium" experience, they can continue to trick the public into prematurity spending thousands on tech that's no better then what they already have or can currently buy for $300 to $500.
Sent from my HTC One M8 Harman/Kardon edition
I posted about this not long ago. Prices per ml that are 2500% higher than the price of 10 year old Bourbon that is paying regulatory taxes no less.
So YES they are bending people over. BUT, they couldn't do that unless people willing bent over to take it. Free Enterprise dictates a demand economy for good or bad. It the market will give $1 per ml of juice then so be it. I personally won't be doing so anymore but on rarest of occasions and it had better be good. I've tried so many "Premium" flavors in shops and they are all just blah to me for the most part.
If everyone would take the plunge into DIY and use the forums to pass on their creations we could all find what we wanted or close to it for our tastes for pennies. These juice companies are making a killing right now. Just think when government starts to regulate and tax them how much more a bottle will cost? All the more reason to get into DIY and learn. I just did and I am more than happy and we have a great start right here on ECF to learn from each other and make our own juices we like. You can look at profiles of flavors you might like from recipes and then adjust the % or add another flavor, leave one out etc and get creative.
These companies (well some of them) I am sure put lots of time into testing mixes to get a taste profile they want. But in the end they are just guessing and I am willing to bet making a large spread of flavor %'s at once to reduce time to find the right mixes. Even in my little clandestine juice lab
These big juice makers are buying their supplies in bulk (I hope) so their cost is minimal. The bottle and label probably exceeds the cost of the juice itself especially once you include labor and any overhead.
I'm off to vape on my Sugar Bear Cuttwood clone I discovered on here and tweaked to my taste. So long $25 per 30ml B&M store pricing. Costs me about $1.20 now!
Having working in Industrial Chemicals I know how cheaply you can get 55 gallon drums of things for and the markup by the time the maker sells it and the retailer marks it up on the end is likely in the 1500% to 2500% range. Not bad margins if you can get people to pay them!
CC
You are talking about the cost of raw ingredients, not the actual cost of being in business...
The Harman Kardon Edition phone was only $30 more then the traditional M8, comes with audiophile grade DAC software and higher end IEM headphones. It was also cheaper for them to do compared to the money involved in the horrible sounding Beats Audio they used in the M7 and Evo models.
Sent from my HTC One M8 Harman/Kardon edition
Yet you pay for water at a store. I buy expensive juice at times too but that doesn't consist of the inconvenience of steeping and waiting for vape mail. And I'm still paying$8 to $10 less for 30ml of Halo then Steve is, even at a B&M.
Would there really be a convenience in waiting a week or two for water mail?
Sent from my HTC One M8 Harman/Kardon edition
like i previously stated in this thread, you know alot of these so called 'businesses' started off as people just mixing their own eliquid in their homes and selling it right? They have no overhead, they do it themselves, do work themselves, and never had a shop front to begin with. Im willing to bet some still dont have shopfronts or many workers because they do it themselves in their own home. There are many local vape shops that carry 'brand' eliquids, and a majority of them carry 'house eliquids' which are basically just their own DIY mixes sold at higher prices. There is no production line for eliquids, the minimum you need is one dude tasting it and saying "oh thats a good flavor" order some bottles, order some labels, then make a batch. Keep that bottled .... in ur fridge then go to the usps shop to ship out orders, that is literally how everyone ran their 'business'.
for example, look at thevapingrabbit.
if you read their about us page, it literally is just two people thinking of what would be a good flavor, making it, then shipping it, no info about any storefront, no overhead.
to quote: "From start to finish, everything is hand crafted. We mix, steep, label, bottle and wax every single bottle that leaves our lab."
so handcrafted is nice, i guess, because i dont have a machine at home to mix it for me so i handcraft it as well. They mix it, check i can do that too (shakes bottle), steep it (you dont really need to steep all eliquids fyi, but this literally just means not vaping it right when you make it, check i can do that. they bottle it, thats nice of them, im glad i dont receive my eliquid loose in a box. and they wax it, oh nice pretty wax, definitely worth it.
Last edited:
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
