Lorillard purchases Blu E-Cigs
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Their theories on dual use are laughable. It just proves they really know nothing about what motivates smokers. They see us as insatiable nicotine fiends. Nicotine use isn't the same as some other addictive drugs that seem to require greater and greater amounts of the chemical in order to achieve the desired effect (high.) As I've said many times before, it's more like being thirsty - we don't become immune to the effects of water on our body. If we are thirsty, we drink until we are no longer thirsty. The amount of water needed to quench our thirst doesn't increase over time. Nicotine is basically the same - most smokers don't need to keep increasing their intake to get relief because there is a pretty common threshold. My husband is a dual user of snus and e-cigarettes, but he doesn't use them both at the same time. He uses one or the other at the same frequency as if he was using only one product - just sometimes he can't use his e-cig, he finds "something missing" in the e-liquid or he wants to experience the feeling of vaping. We don't eat the same thing for every meal every day, nor the same amount of food. It's just for variety - they just don't get it.
Switching between tobacco/nicotine products doesn't mean anything more than someone who is thirsty switching between water and lemonade. They aren't going to drink more or "too much" just because they are using two varieties of liquid.
Part of the problem is that the ANTZ are convinced, because we all answered their survey studies that we wanted to quit smoking, that none of us actually enjoyed smoking/tobacco/nicotine or they assumed that a lot of us weren't just telling them what we knew they wanted to hear. So, why would we want variety? Why would we want flavors? Why would we not want to be "free from the nico-demon?" They cannot fathom any of it. Personally, I liked smoking and if anyone asked me if I wanted to quit, when I said "Yes" it really meant "I know I should quit" not that I really wanted to quit.
Asking a smoker if they want to quit smoking is like asking a teenage boy if likes the pictures in Playboy. Kind of one of those Catch 22 questions, LOL!
Three things to keep in mind:
1. Kessler's previous job was running U.S. Smokeless Tobacco. So he already had a mind-set for Tobaccco Harm Reduction before he came to Lorillard.
2. Lorillard has no smokeless tobacco products. Their main revenue sources are True and Newport cigarettes. The major tobacco companies are fully aware that the days of combustible cigarettes are numbered. A smart leader will begin diversifying now.
a) The market for smokeless tobacco product already has several large players.
b) E-cigarettes are an emerging market.
c) Lorillard is the first big tobacco company to enter the market.
3. Mr. Kessler is an e-cigarette user himself.
See there I go again assuming
I thought he was running Lorillard b4 Blu came into the pic. Did he say he uses e cigs in the vid? I was doing other things while I listened I could only actually watch for so long then his hands started driving me nuts.
OK, did you mention this at the CASAA board recap of your trip the other day?? I must have missed that part! LOL! Did he mention this during his TMA dinner speech or something?
I may have trouble forming a proper english sentence every now and then but I am pretty good at paying attention
See, people keep forgetting about the universal laws of supply and demand.
Folks, we aren't smokers anymore and have to stop thinking like one. When you were a smoker, did you ever search for a better tasting, better performing cigarette like you did for an e-cigarette? Did you see dozens of forums and Facebook pages and groups dedicated to the smoking enthusiast? Did you ever feel like the science was on your side and empowered to fight for your right to smoke? Did you even care enough that caffeine users were given free reign (even to youth) yet nicotine users were vilified to fight against it? Or were you pretty much resigned to it?
We are pioneers here. Unlike when most of us started smoking, we haven't picked the already-losing team to join in the last half. This time, we have the option to be involved from the ground floor. If anything, most of us who have been activists are ahead of the game here - we can counter the ANTZ tactics before the public makes up it's mind. In fact, everything the ANTZ have been selling the public SUPPORTS vaping and the public will see through their duplicity in trying to ban e-cigarettes or make them less appealing. But we cannot give in and crawl back into our little smoking hole and let them have their way again. We MUST speak up not only against the ANTZ propaganda, but to manufactures of e-cigarettes to demand what we want as consumers.
Why did we leave smoking behind and go with e-cigarettes? Because they were far less hazardous, cheaper, pleasant and an effective and acceptable replacement for smoking. Companies know that is what we want, so why change that and take away the reasons we switched?
What would you have done if mods or better models, flavors and refills never existed due to early FDA regulations and you were stuck with that first crappy e-cigarette as your only option? Would you have stuck with it anyhow? Would you have gone back to smoking? Would you have contacted the company and requested more flavors and more options? Well, look what happened - consumer demand resulted in the e-cigarette market we have today.
That demand won't go away just because e-cig companies or the FDA wishes it so. In order to retain e-cigarette consumers, companies WILL have to innovate and adapt to market demand or they will lose customers to off-shore companies and back to smoking. The genie is already out of the bottle, folks. Even if the FDA tries to regulate e-cigs to be pre-filled, low nic, tobacco-flavored minis and that's all new vapers have available to them, these forums and facebook groups, with stories of wonderful mods and different flavors and refill bottles and drip tips, etc will still be here on the internet for them to find - and people are still going to want them.
Consumers will demand it and companies will be forced to find a way to provide it or close up shop.
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I meant about how I missed the part where Mr Kessler is an e cig user. I wasn't sure if we all were privy to that info and I missed it along the way or if Elaine was letting a cat out of a bag.
Regarding the supply and demand thing. What happened to us being 5% of the ecig community and being a niche market? My desk is covered with kanthal wire and SS mesh and everything under the sun to perfect the rebuildable atty. Point is are we really enough of the market to control the demand value? Do you see BT getting as deep into this as most of us here require to get what we need?
There were people from several e-cigarette companies in attendance. I don't recall which of them, but one mentioned that Mr. Kessler uses e-cigarettes himself.
Mods, high-end devices and DIY are a tiny niche market. I think the eGo-style device market and bottle refills are getting to be pretty commonplace now and growing fast. The fact that Johnson Creek, one of the largest refill bottle liquid suppliers in the US, is thriving and even launched it's first device (an eGo, not a mini) tells me that the demand is there for the "move-up" devices and refill liquids. Otherwise, they wouldn't have made the investment.
We all know that if we hadn't had an alternative to that first mass-market mini that we would have either gone back to smoking or quit altogether (probably with an NRT.) That fact will not be lost on BT companies. Lorillard knows that not everyone who starts using the blu e-cig will be happy with it and most probably weren't former Lorillard customers that would go back to Newport or Kool. They will want to retain those customers who would otherwise be lost and an eGo-style with refill liquids & flavors has been the most successful "move up" choice to date. So, they won't get into anything more fancy than that, but that will at least leave the door open for all of the boutique vendors, IMO.
So you see, it's not the 5% niche that Lorillard will seek to retain, but the eGo-style users, those who would go back to smoking and those who would go back to NRTs. That's probably a considerable market. I think it's highly likely that they'd follow Johnson Creek's lead - especially since they already have a relationship with them. Johnson Creek may even eventually become their "move up e-cig" branch. If Johnson Creek can stay in business with it's current business model then that keeps the door open for a lot of the other alternatives.
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Yes, they're called pipes.
It is a somewhat underground community based in home-grown tobacco blends and the community is very similar to the e-cig community in terms of size and finding flavors is concerned.
But the mainstream cigarette user isn't normally interested in anything "better", they just, I just, wanted my fix because I was a poor sufferer of "not-having-a-job-itis". I think Blu and any other company that steps into the mainstream will also go this direction for:
1. Control over the chemical structure of the e-cigs and how much nicotine they provide.
2. Cost
3. New customer ignorance
New users have no idea that mods exist, that filling your own carts exist, that any of it exists and some NEVER look it up. I have met a few e-cig users that go to the mall and buy the overpriced cartomizers because they either don't know any better or they're too lazy to get online and wait for an order whether it be based on blind idiocy or they just don't feel like using a computer to order nicotine is a good idea. I don't know, but I honestly do know people who think everything that exists in the entire universe can be found in Wal-Mart and Sears.
(The South of the USA in the movies is exactly the same South of the USA in real life)
(Even worse, I once knew this one guy I went to college with who smoked two packs of Newports a day, and walked to the gas station from his house every, single, day to buy them without ever buying a carton to save money.)
You're also forgetting that many large companies are profit-oriented above most everything else. Not to mention, most people I've met in my lifetime are terrible, self-centered human beings. If someone is only buying juice every month and only buys one pack of cartomizers to go along with it, then the company is pulling in minimal profit and said terrible human-beings might not like that so much...
Pre-filled, however.
There you go.
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Maybe. Or maybe the video was a corporation in an obviously dying business (by government force and ANTZ propaganda) seeing a way to stay in business.
Are you telling me you don't look at e-cigs and see the future of smoking? I sure do. I saw it 3 years ago when I tried them and quit because they weren't good enough. Now with my eGo-C I see something that is good enough, not perfect but good enough. With BT behind it I imagine something coming up that was as perfect as cigarettes.
I remember similar predictions of doom and gloom around here 3 years ago when I first tried e-cigs. I quit figuring they were garbage and with all the doom and gloom they had no chance of getting better. They barely stood a chance at surviving 2009.
Here we are 3 years later.
Let's imagine a law requiring prepacked.
Why wouldn't a bottom feeder bottle tank fit into that?
What reason would they have to ban VV or juice? Juices have been around for nearly 10 years and how many problems has their been with them?
I'm sure they'll try but not having a good reason is exactly why we need people like CASAA. They can bring up the fact that there hasn't been a problem with juice sales up to this point but banning them and creating a new class of criminals running nicotine labs out of their basements would be causing a problem.
Wasn't that a picture of Blu before BT took over? Am I missing something?
Of course I think e cigs are the future of smoking, and for that matter e cigs are already more than your description of "perfect" cigarettes. If I was able to switch overnight from 2+ PAD to exclusive vaping with no major withdrawls or side effects, I would say IMO its pretty perfect. Now that I'm 4 months in and have fine tuned what works for me it is perfect.
I have no idea when that pic was taken but the context and timing in which it was presented into this thread led me to say that.
As far as the rest of your post that I chopped out it is all redundant to this thread, has been discussed a while back and several good points were presented to explain why such things will be banned with the forthcoming, speculative regulation.
But thanks for playing.
These companies don't exist in a vacuum. If we found mods and eGos and refill bottles, then so will a LOT more people after they try a BT pre-filled.
Yes, plenty of people will want to stick with a blu style and be perfectly happy, but as more companies like Johnson Creek choose to not even go the mini pre-filled route, advertise and become more well-known, then more and more smokers WILL know about the alternatives. More and more stores are opening in malls and strip malls that offer a whole spectrum of options. The reason most people don't know about options is that the mini pre-filled was the earliest model to hit the market and start franchising. The eGo styles and refill bottles are catching up and they are catching up fast.
Yes, companies care about profits, but your scenario is thinking too narrowly. I'm sure they are thinking much bigger. You are thinking about the current market make-up of mostly mass market users vs current mod/eGo-style users. You are forgetting about the millions of current smokers out there who wouldn't be happy with a mass-market pre-filled. So while those may have the biggest return on investment while they are being used, they aren't going to make any money at all if consumers think the product sucks and just go back to smoking. Or worse yet - never even try it because of negative word-of-mouth.
And guess who are the most vocal vapers out there? Us.
The Lorillard CEO said on the video that he is aware that the blu in it's current set up is 15% of the way there as far as the technology goes. Any company that wants to make money - especially one that has been around for a couple hundred years and with billions in funds - isn't going to settle with the low end product and just keep their fingers crossed that no one else comes up with something better. Look at the diversity the tobacco industry already sells. Look at the innovations they have come up with to keep their customers while addressing changing social standards. I'm counting on the fact that Lorillard wants to make money as being the reason that they WON'T want to stick with a low-end device.
Their target market isn't the 2.5 million current vapers out there. Their target market is 450 million smokers. I'm sure they'd rather have 200 million people buying liquid refills once a month and being satisfied, repeat customers than having only 4 million buying pre-filled carts, half of them hating them because they suck and then going to snus or dissolvables or back to smoking or quitting altogether. The fact of the matter is that the e-cig market would not have even half of the growth potential if it is based on only offering a pre-filled mini business model until the end of time. Lorillard obviously already knows that or the CEO wouldn't have been talking about the potential for developing even better technology.
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Good blog post by Michael Siegel; he makes many of the same points that we have been making regarding this being a good thing:
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/05/in-embarrassing-ironic-twist-lorillard.html
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/05/in-embarrassing-ironic-twist-lorillard.html
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