This bothers me.What is your opinion on badged ecigs

[SheerLuckHolmes]

I will say it again...
Value is what the buyer is willing to pay and the seller is willing to accept. When they come to an agreement you have value. Period.

You can dress it up differently, you can dance around it anyway you like, but this is the bottom line!

It drives me crazy when I buy something, bring it home and there is ALWAYS someone, friend ~ relative ~ neighbor that says, "How much did you pay for that??? WOW, wish you would have told me, I gotta friend and we could have saved you 18 multibillion dollars on that. Man you got hosed!"

Well where the **$#%^&&(*&# were you before I bought this? They are never there before, NEVER! It is something about our culture that makes you superior if you can get XYZ product for $whatever$ below what it actually cost to make the thing in the first place!

I am happy that I found e-cigs when I did. I don't give a %$^^#U*^*(&*()&* what I paid for it, what I will pay for it or who gets the money as long as it AIN"T THE GOVERNMENT.

Rant Over, please go back to vap'n now! Thank You.

 

[Sparky400]

It drives me crazy when I buy something, bring it home and there is ALWAYS someone, friend ~ relative ~ neighbor that says, "How much did you pay for that??? WOW, wish you would have told me, I gotta friend and we could have saved you 18 multibillion dollars on that. Man you got hosed!"

Me too. And, agreed. Most people agree you can ALWAYS get a better price if you put more time and effort into it, but what's your time worth?

All the folks who are willing to buy in bulk from China are a great example.

 

[trog100]

folks dont aways just buy products.. sometime they want to buy status... this is where brand names come in useful... why else would someone pay 5000 dollars for a watch.. it dosnt tell the time any better than a 50 dollars watch..

you could say its an over priced rip off but the people that buy them quite clearly dont think so...

nether do your kids when they demand brand name trainers and stuff.. sooo brand names are worth something to some people.. they are just used as an identity badge.. in short they tell the world which gang you belong to..

so does putting too much emphasis on things being as cheap as possible... he he..

trog

 

[MHR7331]

Me too. And, agreed. Most people agree you can ALWAYS get a better price if you put more time and effort into it, but what's your time worth?

All the folks who are willing to buy in bulk from China are a great example.

Yeah, I've had zero issue with buying direct from China. If you're buying a lot of stuff, the added shipping cost is WELL absorbed by the discounts you can get. And I've had amazingly good customer service from Chinese vendors as well; they operate a world away, so they NEED to be good to entice foreign customers to give them a shot.

On a side note, I only buy trinkets and generally-useless crap at malls. Anyone who isn't fully aware of the tremendous overhead required in running a mall kiosk is just asking to get ripped off. Have a couple friends who run one at an upscale shopping center in SoCal; their rent is staggering.

 

[Lightgeoduck]

folks dont aways just buy products.. sometime they want to buy status... this is where brand names come in useful... why else would someone pay 5000 dollars for a watch.. it dosnt tell the time any better than a 50 dollars watch..

you could say its an over priced rip off but the people that buy them quite clearly dont think so...

nether do your kids when they demand brand name trainers and stuff.. sooo brand names are worth something to some people.. they are just used as an identity badge.. in short they tell the world which gang you belong to..

so does putting too much emphasis on things being as cheap as possible... he he..

trog

he he I guess I am a GANGSTAR then... I would wear my colors proud but they cost too much.. hehe

 

[dhardison]

I'm really glad the NPRO was in the Pilot truck Stop the day I found out about electronic cigarettes.

Me too because I never would have tried them otherwise. I had seen them at the mall but was put off by the price. Pilot had the NPRO starter kit for $20 off so the price was only $50. I smoke $400 worth of analogs a month so I knew I could make the numbers work if I liked the product.

 

[Greg B]

Go easy on SE and other brick-and-mortar retailers. Not only do they have to try to compete with online retailers despite much higher overhead, they face a really unpleasant future: Either vaping is heavily regulated or even banned, or it goes mainstream and the independents have to compete with Walmart, CVS, and 7-11 as well as the online stores.

If the latter, would you rather have an established brand like SE you could potentially sell through the big boxes, or would you rather be selling generic OEM?

P.S. I have no connection to SE or any other vendor, but my first VP did ship from RMV today.

 

[MHR7331]

Go easy on SE and other brick-and-mortar retailers. Not only do they have to try to compete with online retailers despite much higher overhead, they face a really unpleasant future: Either vaping is heavily regulated or even banned, or it goes mainstream and the independents have to compete with Walmart, CVS, and 7-11 as well as the online stores.

If the latter, would you rather have an established brand like SE you could potentially sell through the big boxes, or would you rather be selling generic OEM?

P.S. I have no connection to SE or any other vendor, but my first VP did ship from RMV today.

I have no sympathy for companies who sell products at unbelievably inflated prices. Why buy an SE kit when you can buy a comparable product elsewhere for a c-note less? If they can't find a way to adapt and remain competitive, let 'em burn.

 

[hifistud]

Well, now, let's see.... The Joye510 is branded as??? TECC Titan, Janty Dura C and what else?

The 401 is branded as??

And so on and so forth. Branding is important - any marketing guru will tell you that. And branding doesn't come cheap, neither does advertising, marketing, rent, and other b&m overheads (speaks one whose rent and overheads eat 90% of his company's income in these days of recession).

General rule of thumb is that a product needs to bring in at least three times what you paid for it in order for your business to be profitable - and no business gets to keep the whole difference between retail and wholesale price. That's for "quality" product. Pile it high and sell it cheap stuff is a different tactic that, as yet, the PV market hasn't become big enough to allow to work.

When it does, though, you'll see prices tumble - and all the mall independents vanish as they suddenly become unable to compete with the massive chains with their incredible bulk buying power.

Or, to put it another way, if I had fifty million quid to invest in this market, I could very likely undercut every other vendor out there in no time flat, buy up every last piece of stock in China (yes, the world market is that small) and achieve monopoly status more or less overnight. And nobody would want that, because, once I've got control of the market, I'm putting prices right back up again.

$100 is around £60, is it not? Those who know the FOB price of kit out of China will know that's not massively profiteering - it's a tad high, truth be told - but in terms of mark-up, it's a damned sight smaller than, say, branded clothing (Levi, Wrangler Berghaus etc) or fast food. Or coffee (I won't mention Starbuck's).

 

[jj2]

I overpaid for my first three models. The third I liked the best and it was about double the price from the factory. I don't regret the money spent but I learned, buy direct, it's a whole lot cheaper.

 

[hifistud]

I overpaid for my first three models. The third I liked the best and it was about double the price from the factory. I don't regret the money spent but I learned, buy direct, it's a whole lot cheaper.

And absolutely fine until 11:30 on a sunday night when you've only 2ml of juice and your last atty goes belly up, and the closest neighbour with a likely spare is 100 miles away.

THEN you're round to the closest store at 08:15 Monday banging on the doors...

 

[Snarkyone]

I don't want to see the governments step in to protect stupid people from themselves. We already pay too high a price for idiots running around as it is. Survival of the fittest can't be regulated, let the stupid ones die out. If we had done this years ago the world would be a better a place.

 

[trog100]

I don't want to see the governments step in to protect stupid people from themselves. We already pay too high a price for idiots running around as it is. Survival of the fittest can't be regulated, let the stupid ones die out. If we had done this years ago the world would be a better a place.

eugenics was the in thing in America many years ago until Hitler gave the idea a bad name.. he he

you are right about consumer protection laws tho.. having to protect the stupid buyer dosnt work to the advantage of the intelligent one..

as for the value of brand names.. they do say this one is worth 19 billion dollars.. and i bet most americans havnt even heard of it... he he

Louis Vuitton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

its also one to the most copied brands in the world.. which dosnt seem to do it any harm..

trog

 

[MrKai]

...the fact that some of the branded models are customs or tweaks...some of them are getting stuff just out of R&D (for better or worse in some cases) and some of them have special relationships and quasi-exclusivity with the OEMS.

Also, for every SE selling a branded kit at 200%, there is a branded kit selling at +40% with a steady stream of stock.

I have bought things from many vendors among us branding OEM'd stuff and if I've had a problem, been sent free replacements, had someone to actually talk to, etc.

This costs money

Another benefit of this is a sort of "artificial selection" in that VARs feed data back to OEMs that directly aid in the creation of new products and product classes to further expand and improve the market, in perception as well as the quantity and more importantly, quality of the products

It is a beautiful thing

-K

 

[Snarkyone]

eugenics was the in thing in America many years ago until Hitler gave the idea a bad name.. he he

you are right about consumer protection laws tho.. having to protect the stupid buyer dosnt work to the advantage of the intelligent one..

as for the value of brand names.. they do say this one is worth 19 billion dollars.. and i bet most americans havnt even heard of it... he he

Louis Vuitton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

its also one to the most copied brands in the world.. which dosnt seem to do it any harm..

trog

Well, I am not advocating actively hunting them down....or am I?

 

[MHR7331]

as for the value of brand names.. they do say this one is worth 19 billion dollars.. and i bet most americans havnt even heard of it... he he

Louis Vuitton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

its also one to the most copied brands in the world.. which dosnt seem to do it any harm..

trog

LV is almost as ubiquitous in the U.S. as Chevy, McDonalds and Apple...

 

[navyboym]

Caveat emptor. That's what ECF is for.

You have hit a Libertarian nerve. Here's my rant:

Please do not let the government get into it with "for our own good" controls! Stupid, ignorant, and lazy are not strong survival traits. They should not be protected and reinforced by government fiats, especially those that infringe upon the rights of the rest of us.

For example, I have no problem at all with Vapor4Life branding the KR808D-1 as "Vapor King" and charging a bit extra for it. I expect that most ECFers would agree with that example. At the other end of the spectrum is Inhalerette/ElectroBZ, which provides a mediocre product and is grossly overpriced (and whose luring into monthly refill practices I find offensive).

But where do you (or Big Brother) draw the line? At Smoking Everwhere? They provide a decent (albeit high-priced) product and support it, not with good customer service, but with great merchandizing - which has put e-cigs in the face of millions of people.

Let the free market shake it all out. Or, as John Galt would say, "Get the hell out of my way!"

IM(not so H)O

Amen bruthah!