EDIT: TL;DR, caution advised, you may need a nap before you finish. Also, I know this doesn't answer your question exactly, but it's the thoughts through my head so I guess I kinda have the same question as you. I should also add, that I sell for a living and have for the last 8 years. Lot of phone sales and even more face to face. The sales aspect is the part I feel the most comfortable with out of everything so I'm looking forward to hitting the streets so to speak if I do decide to go this route (pretty sure I've already decided). lol

I think the profitability/success of your juice depends on a few factors. I've been weighing these heavily myself recently as I've had dozens tell me to sell my juice and had someone offer to back me to get started on a large scale last week.

Basically, first of all, how good is your juice? That's obviously a major factor, but to be honest, with all of the 'bad' juice vendors out there making money, it's not the largest factor.

The largest factor, impo, is your ability to market and sell your juice line. If you are looking to sell online, you will need a large amount of knowledge when it comes to online marketing and social media. If you are looking to sell wholesale to B&M's you will mostly likely need to hit the phones, send out samples, and have a reasonable ability and motivation to "sell" your product.

Next thing to consider is start up funds. First bulk order to put together supplies to be able to fulfill sales if/when you get them. Then factor in Insurance costs with your bottom line as well as a minimum of a quarterly payment up front. Expect this to be a minimum of $1000 for a quarterly starting payment.

Based on my calculations, in order to get me from being the average joe mixer with about 200 flavors and enough PG/VG to last me personally, and some of my friends a good 3-4 months, I'll need to drop about $2,000 on start up supplies. This includes:

• More equipment for mixing larger batches by weight ~$200
• Amber Glass storage bottles for larger quantities of nic/pg/vg ~$80
• Labels (design, purchase of, and ink for) ~$300
• Misc (mini-fridge/freezer, heat gun, extra crock pot for steeping, sample boxes and shipping supplies) ~$300
• Bottles (500 glass for me) ~$200
• Flavors ~$750 (bulk of my most used TFA in my 7 recipes I'm planning to launch with and a bunch of FA to continue to develop my line)
• Nic ~$105 for a liter of NN 100mg in PG (enough for 555 30ml bottles mixed 6mg on average)
• PG/VG, 4L PG and 8L VG for me, $100, using NN again here
• Shrink Wrap ~$20

That breaks down to $2000 more or less on the head.

Then factor in your price breakdown and profit margins. Here are the assumptions I've made based on my research. Prices are likely actually a bit lower than market average but I'm ok with that being the new guy with no track record and minimal 'offical' reviews of my juice line.

Wholesale to Retail Stores, Price Breakdown

                                |30ml Breakdown (15% Flavor, avg)	|15ml Breakdown (15% Flavor, avg)

---------------------------------|--------------------------|-----------------------------------------------|
Nicotine |$0.19 |$0.10 VG |$0.13 |$0.07 PG |$0.07 |$0.04 Flavor |$0.32 |$0.16 Bottle |$0.42 |$0.39 Label |$0.12 |$0.06 Shrink Wrap |$0.04 |$0.04 Cost per Bottle (30ml) |$1.28 |$0.86 Average Wholesale = |$5.50 |$3.50 Net Profit per Bottle = |$4.22 |$2.64 Profit Margin |230% |207%

Online Sales, Price Breakdown

                                |30ml Breakdown (15% Flavor, avg)	|15ml Breakdown (15% Flavor, avg)

---------------------------------|--------------------------|-----------------------------------------------|
Nicotine |$0.19 |$0.10 VG |$0.13 |$0.07 PG |$0.07 |$0.04 Flavor |$0.32 |$0.16 Bottle |$0.42 |$0.39 Label |$0.12 |$0.06 Shrink Wrap |$0.04 |$0.04 Cost per Bottle (30ml) |$1.28 |$0.86 Average Online Sale = |$7.99 |$4.99 Net Profit per Bottle = |$6.71 |$4.13 Profit Margin |424% |380%

I have not factored any costs into here for web design or online marketing for two reasons. First I'm still looking into it personally, secondly, I can make my own website just for the purpose of a reference for vendors, and maybe, vendor order placement. I'm personally looking at starting with my local B&M's where I can talk to them face to face and 'sell' them on my product. Assuming things don't suck, I'll obviously open up the website for random vapers to place orders but it's not factored into the above.

To wrap it all up, I've been mixing about 6 months, in this time I've little more than covered my costs (which was my goal) by selling on the super cheap to friends and family ($5 for 30ml bottles). I supply about 10 vapers at the moment for pretty much all of the juice they vape, some heavier vapers, some not so much. It's covered virtually all of my ~$1000 I've spent on R&D so far and am excited at further considering the possibility of going live before the end of the year.

I should add, I also factored in my mixing hourly wage. My assumption is that once I'm set up and running with the proper equipment, I can mix, label and seal 40 bottles an hour. Taking the lower end, if I'm only selling 15mls to B&M's I'm clearing $105 an hour for my active mixing time. The question is, how much time do I need to spend selling, servicing, and mixing new juices.

Next thought and I guess hope, is how much do I need to sell monthly in order to make the money I want. This is easiest to breakdown to a daily level. I want to clear $6,000 a month to do this full time, that's $200 a day, 7 days a week. My local busiest B&M sells about 200 bottles of juice a day. Let's assume the average B&M I sell to does 25% of that business (probably closer to average). If I can capture 10% of their market share with my juice line, that's 5 bottles per day. I need to have 10% of the market share of 15 B&M's that sell 50 bottles a day. I'm going to do my best to avoid consignment sales as well, but starting out, I doubt I'd turn that down.

EDIT: Spelling Sucks