Hey guys,
As the title says I have an idea...
Basically, I have had a thought and I think that its brilliant! I know how difficult it is to get hold of some concentrates (especially here in the UK). I have tried so many times to get hold of extremely popular concentrates and have found it difficult to get hold of any!
So, what if I (with the help of a few) were to setup a website that hosts various DIY eJuices either popular ones from Reddit and various other outlets, collate them in one place as products, take collective payments from X amount of people that are interested in the recipe. Once the order amount is completed we order the concentrates in bulk then seperate, re-pack and send them out to the collection of people that ordered...
This will keep the price down (example £40 each or, $62) to make 2L of eJuice. The only thing that would not be supplied with the order would be Nicotine, VG & PG.
Please let me know your thoughts and share the input. Lets see if we can get something great going here!
I am a Graphic Designer so if anyone has knowledge on website coding, bootstrap, seo, social media, etc. Then I will be more than happy to talk about things with you.
I'm hoping my idea doesn't get shot down. I am aware that this may have already been done before but I think we could do it BETTER!
I look forward to seeing everyones input.
It's a good idea until you start valuing your actual time.
I've done group buys in other industries and in the end I usually worked my ass off for the equivalent of $2 an hour -- if I am lucky.
One group buy I did on an item that costs $75 individually shipped and I brought it down to $40 individually shipped ended up costing me over $2000 out of pocket because of chargebacks ("I didn't recognize the charge") and people moving ("Well it isn't my fault I moved from LA to Singapore, and you said free shipping!"). Or even better, after they received it, "I really don't need it and no I can't return it because I misplaced it but I really do need my money back so I can buy tickets to the 50th Eagles reunion tour."
Personally, I find a high majority of DIYers to be some of the worst cheapskate assholes in the entire vaping industry that is 80% cheapskate assholes to begin with.
I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.
I sent a $60 bottle of an aroma volatile to a DIYer (not on reddit) on credit and not only did he never pay me, but he threatened to sue me because his dog got into it and had to go to the vet. Because I didn't put a skull and crossbones on the bottle.
If you have the patience and don't care about investing hundreds of hours of your time for no financial incentive, go for it.
I like the point and its nice to have a little input from someone who's done group buys beforehand.
The point you raised about being $2000 out of pocket or losing cash wouldn't be an issue.
Everything is paid upfront before the order of concentrates is made, the product is updated on the site of how far away the goal is for payments before order and once shipped everyone is notified of the delivery date.
I understand the complications but this is also a better alternative to holding large quantities of stock before shifting any of it, because it is already sold for before the order has been made.
Thank you for your input I will keep it in mind.
If it was me, I would just buy wholesale and sell at a profit -- the risk versus reward is way better.
That being said, I already have a few supplies businesses where I lose money and don't care. It isn't enough to make me cry too often, and one nice thing about having a business where I lose money is that I can openly troll shitty customers mercilessly forever and I pride myself on that fact.
Now, if you're a nice guy who wants to help others, doing group buys will definitely remove those 'features' from your personality quickly, lol.
Personally, I want to help others. I would like to make profit while doing it also. Like you said I don't want it to make me hate doing it. Seems I may have to take a second thought on this haha!
Just sick of working a 9-5. Thought if I had something on the sideline just ticking over it would be enough.
I don't think I'm going to give up this easily but I'll definitely rethink the strategy a little more.
>I sent a $60 bottle of an aroma volatile to a DIYer (not on reddit) on credit and not only did he never pay me, but he threatened to sue me because his dog got into it and had to go to the vet. Because I didn't put a skull and crossbones on the bottle.
What an absolute loon.
A couple of issues that I can think of.
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Many times, people are only missing a couple of flavors and are not going to want to purchase them all. It seems to usually be one ingredient that no one can find.
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Most likely, the amount of time it takes for you to collect enough orders, receive it from the manufacturer, split it up and get it to the customer, the other online vendors will have it available. They most likely placed their orders as soon as it starts selling like crazy.
Yes, a lot of people look for one or two ingredients for a recipe, let me put it in perspective. At the moment people are paying a 'premium' for concentrates in bulk. I'm not talking huge quantities either. For a 10ml bottle (I know its more of a sampler size) of concentrate it ranges from around £2.50 to £4.50 now lets say there are 6 flavours in a specific recipe, you know it's good because there has been a lot of 'hype' around this particular vape. Let's say for this purpose each 10ml bottle of concentrate is costing you £3.50. £3.50 x 6 = £21
That is a lot of money to be spending when it could potentially be making you around 300ml of eJuice (just a rough estimate).
We are talking about making 2L of eJuice for £40. The savings people are making is nearly 7x what they would be paying at the moment.
I work in a manufacturers so I know how long import/export and shipping times take.
The shipping times from America to the UK is around 7-14 days and Europe to the UK is 5-7. Dispatch usually takes 1-2 days with items unless you are ordering direct from China.
The amount of time it takes to split up concentrates is minimal, this can be done in a few hours. We shift large quantities of hand made products that are not stocked each day and once you get into the rythem its easy.
I know friends of mine would be willing to help me out for a pint so that makes it easier.
The reason I came to reddit was so that there could potentially be a 'customer' base on launch. Someone I know launched an eJuice line and within a week he had 800 people interacting with his Facebook page.
Ordering from a vendor in the UK at the moment is not the easiest thing, quite a lot do NOT ship in bulk quantities. This way people can order large quantities of concentrates and do whatever they like with it. Sell it to their mates, colleagues or vape their way through 2L.
Would you order concentrates in bulk for a hyped recipe before you try it? I typically only order in bulk once I've tried a recipe and would either import direct from the manufacturer or buy them from Chefs Vapour or FA UK.
The recipes will go up based on a voting system.
If anyone is familiar with threadless?
Basically, we could incorporate a voting system. Users can submit recipes and others can trial them if enough like it the recipe gets upvoted onto the bulk order page. There we can buy in bulk as a group buy and distribute it to the contributors. Overall making it cheaper for everyone. Win Win :)
You mean Gremlin DIY Recipes?
I would be in if the cost will be £30-£40 (money I will not cry over if I loose). That being said I can see it less stressful for you and more convenient for others if you buy them yourself/ business partner(s) and sell them with a reasonable profit, even if you start really small (2-4 recipes a order)
Lately I tend to buy ready mixed flavorings if I can because :
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I might need 0.x% of y flavours and z% of others and a uneven "stoc" will pile up in my cupboard resulting in me throwing a lot out after a wile
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I've got less time lately for playing around with recipes and less time to mix
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I still want to mix my own because the majority of the e-juice I've ordered lately had bad quality nicotine in it or it got bad till I got it.
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juice is really expensive in UK and if someone can buy 20 ml of flavorings and 100ml vg base ( at 6mg/ml let's say) mix them in a 200 ml bottle and ad vg to fill( sort example to make it simple ) for what it will most likely be less than £20 than I can see a big enough market for you mate.
The thing is - you would not I think it's a little harder for someone outside of the UK to realise how much it does cost for small quantities of concentrates, as I am sure you would agree. This is saving A LOT of money for people in the UK. It may not be the best option for someone in the US but then again I'm not sure.
As with the majority of startups the order quantity is low. I was using the 6 flavours as an example. It could be something as simple as a Pluto Clone (again an example, I just know it uses 3 flavours)
The idea I have is to order the quantity that the contributors have requested + more out of the profit made on my side.
With some of the left over concentrates I will make pre mixes and sell them for the people that just stop by and potentially want to taste the liquid before they order in bulk. These eJuices will be cheaper than the ones currently on the market (at around £16 per 30ml. Whereas ours will be £10 for 30ml). This way it has a nice turnover with ready made juices for sampling and the bulk order system for serious DIY-ers.
Personally, I think it could work. I could set it up in a few days and have it running by next week. The thing I need to get is people on board for the idea.
I'm already on offer to sell small portions of anything I carry for DIY'ers, and will pick up at wholesale and pass on the cost from Cap and TFA since I'm already getting a shipment and their shipping prices are atrocious.
I've considered just putting a private page on my site for DIY_Ejuice and actually selling to make a buck or two off of it (you get it cheaper, I make a buck or two!) but haven't considered stocking anything I don't already use.
It's good to sell small portions to DIY'ers in the whole. Although, I am talking about group buying in large quantites to keep the cost down and I still make a small profit.
The idea of not holding stock is something I like. The rental of a unit to hold large quantities of concentrates is not cheap (around my area anyway)
But if you are only talking about flavoring the savings is too negligible to make this make sense.
Is the difference between 9 and 10 dollars worth that hassle
Here's an idea for you along the lines of what you're considering. There's a couple UK vendors that I'd (and others) would love to have access to but the fuckers won't ship to the US and I can't seem to find a US supplier. Cupcake is one and there's several lines from Chef's. Sell us bloody Americans some concentrates we can't get our hands on. Take payments from PayPal with a no comments about e-liquids note and don't ship until you have money in hand. Once you figure out the more popular flavors buy them in bulk and make more cash. Gives you a little start up and me my damn flavorings. Disclaimer: If there's already a supplier doing this ignore this post but please leave me a link.
I'll have a think about it and see what I can do. I am going to speak to some groups and see where I can get to with the current idea.
This will probably be something I consider later down the line. In the meantime I will keep a lookout for you, as soon as I find a vendor I will drop a link.
Thanks for commenting.
You've almost exactly described Flavour Boss - "We all put money together, pick a recipe and buy from the manufactors in bulk to save money."
The Facebook group membership is currently at 808 and rising daily.
I tried doing a wholesale group buy from CAP a few weeks ago, posted it on ecr_eu and looked for mainly swedes because then they could pay with a payment method called "swish", removing any chance of a chargeback with paypal and making me buy them concentrates. Literally no one was interested and that was a WTF moment right there. How the hell was nobody interested? I would pay more than they would with the handling fee etc, they would get concentrates dirt cheap while I saved on shipping I was already planning on paying because I needed a lot of CAP flavors.
I would do a group buy for the whole EU but then I would demand payment in Bitcoin, anyone interested in this?
This comment is basically my thoughts.
You wouldn't need to pay via bitcoin or swish... Set up a terminal with SagePay (it's free and they don't charge a fee per transaction).
They make money on the accounting side of things. Which only relates if you have their accounting software, this is not required when you sign up either.
Charge backs?
Here is the information on chargebacks via their website.
I'm also looking to help the vape industry and have a little income from it right now I started a vape shop on Facebook started a square up page for shopping cart and in my town in Vermont the entire state there is only 1 vape shop so I'm kinda holding a part of a monopoly so I'm going to build my name and brand up and slowly develops a nice shop to help others get juice at a decent price right now the closest place to get juice is 30 for a 30 ml bottle of scrap juice so I'm selling it for 25 for a 60 ml bottle and have about 20 consistent customers but i@want to get a little help from a sponsor or somthing like that to help me get product to sell because my money is always going right back into buying juice and buying stuff to better the site or buying graphic designers time but any help even@just pointing me in the right direction I've posted my link on Reddit and got a lot of constructive criticism so I have some things to change and move forward in the next month or so but I'm just trying to make something the people will like
I'm happy to help.
If you need a graphic designer for a smaller fee I am happy to help. Money isn't really an issue for me so I will offer my services for cheap.
Just a thought... What if you were to sell pre-steeped eJuice?
I am unsure that this is something you already do and I know that there are people out there that do this already but there is not as many people selling pre-steeped eJuice so the market isn't as competative as trying to start an eJuice line or selling someone elses eJuice.
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Is it just liquid that you are supplying?
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If not what else are you ordering in?
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If you are ordering in box mods etc... Where are you getting them from?
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Are you ordering eJuice from other companies or are you ordering concentrates, making liquid and selling it that way?
I am trying to get some information as I think I might be able to help. If you have skype we can talk over that. :)
Well I'm not totally sure where I'm headed but I order concentrates and I make juice I do steep it for at least 2 weeks before selling. I am slowly getting atomizers and box mods I've only purchased from e bay at the moment but I do have a few suppliers that I've talked to I have not went over there product yet because I am still trying to gather as much info about making juice as possible and to develop my flavors more I have 5 main flavors right now but I am still slightly tweaking them to better them suttle changes