I can't stand when a seller tells BS just so they keep your business. I would be more likely to be a repeat customer with a vendor who is honest. A local vendor charged me $25 for an RBA that I know they later spent $5 or less for. I never went back. And they didn't even flat out lie to me like these people did. I work hard for my money.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to operate a B&M store?
Just imagine yourself dropping about $2,000-5,000 on various ego type batteries, $5,000-10,000 on a good selection of mods, a thousand or so on the numerous different coils out there, thousands for popular juice from different sources, thousands on tanks, tens of thousands to build (counters, displays, racks, flooring, construction) a really nice retail space. And then you still have to pay rent, electricity, water, license fees, and taxes. I bet if you dropped about $50-80k to open your own shop there is no way you would be selling a $5 RBA for much less. And depending where they buy and how many they buy it might cost them more then you think.
I can often buy stuff on Ebay for less then a local store pays since they typically buy in lots from a distributor. And because are many factories making the same thing of varied quality and price levels. But aside from all of that vape stores still cater to a niche market that is still pretty small overall. I bet your local vape shop actually makes far less profit to this day than your local smoke shop. So it will take a very long time for a typical vape store to make money unless then are making it from juice. They can't survive just selling coils especially with all the RBA's out there at this point. So if the only thing you ever buy is a mod or RBA a year they need to make the money somewhere.
