Juul attracting teens by giving them that quick nicotine high while adults who just wants a nicotine fix doesn't pay much attention to them is impressive to you? How so?
Sorry, Bill, but it sounds like you're just hitting the shallow talking points. "Attracting teens by giving them that quick nicotine high?" Surely you don't really believe that's what they set out to do, and what made them this successful? I know you're disappointed they are slow to offer lower nic levels. But if someone starts with a low one, and it just doesn't do it for them, what good have they done? You'll have to do a little online research about what they did and how. Start with their patent applications.
But the idea that they did all that research and work to get to the teen market, and achieved the success they have doesn't come close to holding water. They're obviously smart enough to know that vaping technology changes so quickly that a business model focused solely on that wouldn't get them where they wanted to go. It was mostly about the already addicted people that have no interest in what most of us do here, with experimenting, building, those that've been thru the early cigalikes and everything since that do this as a hobby. Most people just want something easy they can pick up in the convenience store, like their smokes.
Much of my family is mostly lifelong smokers. I tried everything I could to get them into vaping the last couple of years - giving equipment, tailoring juices just for them, offering to build their atties for them. But none of them cared enough to even swap drop in coils for more than a couple of weeks. Over the holidays, I found 6 of them had quit this year - hadn't had a cigarette in months. All but one was doing it with...you guessed it - Juul. (okay, one had a Suorin Air, but he started with Juul).
Their product wasn't developed for teens. Did they use social media and "ignore" that their product was becoming popular with teens? I'm sure they did, and I've heard complaints about those marketing campaigns, but nobody has showed me anything really offensive. And I've looked for it - a lot. So show me what they did so wrong?
Juul was introduced less than 4 years ago. You've seen the numbers. A $38
Billion company in 3.5 years. That's
not impressive, by any standard? I don't know what you do for a living, but it impresses me. It positively dwarfs the biggest names in the vape industry...even all put together. This is not a company that said "hey, let's make the best RY4 EVER!" Or took a Kayfun design to improve it and sell 20K units a year. It's impressive. I'd throw out that even if only 60% of their product was in the hands of real existing smokers trying to quit, they've done a lot of good. That's a lot of cigarettes not smoked, and a lot of people given the hope of quitting. And even if 40% of their product was in the hands of teens...it'd be the mostly the same teens that would've been buying Marlboros anyway.
Look, they're a company trying to make money, not a 501C founded by Mother Theresa. And of course, not everything they've done is a benefit to the vape industry (or me). Benefiting the industry isn't any company's primary goal. But nobody is going to convince me they should be considered tantamount to BT....yet.
(...But basically, the 1st thing you mentioned.)
