I was hired by a shop in Pittsburgh to expand their vape offerings, and while I have them stocked on normal vape shop products, I've been toying with the idea of offering DiY supplies in the store.
The big problem I see is moving enough product to make it viable. We don't currently, nor do we have plans to, make our own ejuice. So all of the flavoring would need to be sold. So how many people in Pittsburgh DiY and how many of them would actually come in? I could probably pretty easily stock TFA, Cap and FA, I'm just not sure it would be viable. Obviously my prices would be more than BCV and the like as well.
What are your thoughts? Would you buy from a B&M if you had the option? I feel like if nothing else, you'd at least be able to talk to fellow DiYers.
I've been thinking about doing DIY nights in my neighborhood where a lot of people vape. Basically I'd charge a cover, provide the supplies (PG,VG,NIC,Flavorings, and bottles) and then have a little workshop on how to DIY. Everyone could make a 30ml batch for their cover and some useful information if they wanted to get into DIY.
I think that this kind of event could create a market that you could sustain. Sure some would go online and get the supplies cheaper, but a lot would come back to the next group workshop for the advice and the community and buy their supplies from you.
I don't know if it's a good idea or not. One of my local Indianapolis vape shops has a limited selection of DIY supplies- LorAnn flavorings, PG, VG, Nic, syringes and the like. I never see anybody in that section of the store, really, and I'm the only person that's purchased any of it that I know of. Now, I just order all of my stuff online. Much wider selection, better prices... It just doesn't make sense for me to go there and buy stuff.
Perhaps developing a DIY starter kit would be a good way to gauge the interest of local vapers. Put together a $60-$70 kit, stick a few of them on the shelf, and see what happens.
> DIY starter kit
That's an interesting idea. But god, trying to narrow down the flavors for it would be a hard task. lol
Unless you're also going to get heavily involved in internet sales, I doubt that there would be enough local interest, even in someplace the size of Pittsburgh.
A good part of the DIY community is DIYing because of price; they are generally value-oriented. So if you can't sell at the price of internet suppliers, I don't think you'll attract much business. And because DIY seems so 'internet-centric', you'll always have customers complaining about your B8M 'gouging' them, even though you're only selling at a price that covers your costs of doing business.
Unless you can develop another type, of DIYer, one who shops on impulse and isn't price sensitive, I don't think DIY supplies in a B&M is going to make a lot of business sense.
I also wonder about cannabalizing a bit of your liquid sales, but that might be minor.\
Juice sales are the bread and butter of a b&m. You don't want to hinder that in any way. Or more accurately, the b&m owner doesn't.
Yeah, but I don't think it'll interfere too much. Most people can't be bothered. But your right about juice saes being where i's at. That's why Keystone Vapors and Witty Octopus were our first two vendors, and I just made an order for Lenola Cream today.
I was about to come post about how much I loved the idea of selling DIY supplies in store, but you bring up some really good points.
My only thought is that if a store did mix their own juice it might be cool to sell some of the supplies to customers as well. But it certainly wouldn't be a highly profitable part of the business.
Yea, I kinda expect/expected a lot of 'yea, that would be a really cool idea' posts, but the reality would be if those people would actually buy and if there enough of them to buy even in a major metropolitan area.
I don't think the internet is even supporting very many net DIY shops. And of those, I worry some of them may not be financially/operationally viable, considering the consistent number of stock outages they seem to have.
>you'll always have customers complaining about your B8M 'gouging' them, even though you're only selling at a price that covers your costs of doing business.
You should come to SoCal and see the amount of money these local shops throw around, they're far from struggling.
Cool idea in theory. You could always bring in a small assortment to test the waters. Dont plan on making money on it at first, just establish a run rate/gauge interest.
I would worry about the liability issues with offereing DIY at a shop. There is always some stupid motherfucker out there who will fuck him or herself up. So selling 100mg nicotine to said stupid motherfucker would be a worry for me.
Also it would depend on your selection, a lot of times I put in an order from BCV and they are out of one or two flavors (INW biscuit still alludes me). I don't want to place another order just for those flavors so I wait until the next time I need to stock up. Being able to go into a B&M to pick up a specific flavor for a recipe I saw here might be useful. Trouble is I never go to B&M's so marketing would have to be very strong to even let me know that's an option.
I don't know that there's a huge market for a solely DIY section at a B&M. One way I could see it feasible is a sort of open source recipe idea. I know you guys mentioned not selling your own juice, but why not get 10-20 basic-to-mildly complex mixes to sell, with the idea of having the recipes open source. Get people to buy the liquid, teach/sell them on mixing their own. This way you make some profit selling some juice while getting more people interested in your DIY market. I think this would solely depend on what your profit margins are for your DIY stuff, however.
Hey Captain_Sasquatch! There's Always Money in the Banana Stand has been in my rotation for some time now. It's one of the few I make more than 5mls of at a time. lol I'm actually planning to make another bottle tonight. Thanks again for sharing that. :)
Anyways, that's a pretty interesting idea as well. I'm going to talk a few of these over with both this store and a few others I work with in the area, see what pans out.
It tastes like a banger in the mouth!
I'm vaping it right now! Thanks for the kind words. It is indeed a great flavor. Keep us all posted on any developments you have. I think it's an interesting idea. I don't usually go to a B&M but if I found one that wasn't full of cloudbros and catered to a DIY crowd I'd definitely give it my business.
There have been a few times i was out of something and would have been more than happy to pay a premium for being able to go buy it at a b&m same day. But think about this... Do you want your customers to get into DIY? I'll bet most of your margin is on juice, and sure only a small % will get into it but it will probably come at a loss for your shop.
start small and expand bigger. depending on the price and offerings i'd totally buy from b&m. the owner of my b&m said he's toying with the idea of opening a warehouse and basically doing what wizard labs etc does. the most popular and best diy place is in british columbia and im in ontario. shipping is a pain in the ass, so having something local with good quantities, varieties of flavorings as well as supplies would be helpful to people who'd rather shop closer to home than buying from afar.
There is a shop by me that does it. prices are stellar on Nic, but high(er) than online for flavors and vg, so if i get my nic from there constantly, and if im in a pinch ill get flavors and vg if needed.
edit, i also get flavors from them if i dont really need any flavors and just want to try one out.
From my perspective, (pretty new to DIY) I would probably buy from local shops ESPECIALLY if they had an area where I could mix. I would bring in my own flavors and pick up a few that I know I need and try out some new recipes. Right now my biggest issue is getting all the different flavors for recipes I want to do; but I have to compile a list of liquids, then order it, and of course wait... Then I use the new stuff for the recipe and find that I'm missing something else... then compile a new list, order, repeat. If I could walk in, buy mix, test, then buy again, that would be great.
Basically, using a local shop to fine tune / tweak recipes. Once I know what I want though, I don't think I would stick around for the inflated cost unless it was a place I really liked and wanted to help the local business. (one shop here actually falls under that category)
I think I would be able to stand a few extra dollars on top of the online costs just for the convenience (like +$2-$3 on top of the ~7-10 for 120ml bottles of flavoring) But I would probably be more interested int he smaller 1oz bottles of flavoring since it would be primarily to test and I wouldn't want a bunch of something that I wouldn't use much of.
Just my thoughts on it