It might cost him well over 3-5 dollars a bottle to make a bottle of juice. If you include employee time, manufacturing costs, and silly designed bottles and other packaging.

Does that make his juice any good? No. It could be great juice, or mustard milk might blow it out of the water.

The problem is his elitist attitude.

It's juice that will be gone in a couple days to a week. I don't need cum extracted from the balls of virgins in a secret valley of the himalayas. I need something that tastes decent and gives me nicotine. Luckily we have this subreddit and all the great mixers who share their recipes.

The short answer is yeah, he's full of shit.

I guess if you use glass bottles, and really exotic flavors (they would have to be outrageously expensive), and straight overpaid for nicotine you could have a legitimate claim that ingredients cost $3-5. In reality, this doesn't happen.

$400/gallon means he's buying PURE nicotine. I buy 60mg/ml, and I use less than 2ml for a 30ml batch at 3mg. A gallon of PURE nicotine could provide for a massive amount of product.

Since you're in the DIY forum, you probably know how cheap it is to make your own e-liquid. I know for me personally I don't buy my supplies in MASS quantities from a wholesaler, as a shop would, and my prices are easily less than $1/30 ml bottle. The most expensive part is the bottle.

Ultimately, no shop owner in his right mind is going to tell you the truth that he's selling 30ml's for $25 when his actual material costs are $0.25.

You have to remember that he doesn't get to reuse bottles, and he probably has professional labels. The packaging costs for commercial juices is probably about half the damn cost, as with most industries.

This is still excluding things like traditional overhead, storage, temperature control in the facility, clean room costs, labor for mixing / repacking, and a bunch of other stuff that you don't see per bottle necessarily. Of course, all of that is assuming he's not making it in his bathtub...

He is correct about the nic if you buy STRAIGHT nic but a gallon of nic would last you ages.

My DIY bottles cost me about $3.50-$4.50 per bottle without labor costs involved.

My nicotine is $170 per liter -- $400 a gallon is close.

My flavorings cost anywhere from $40-80 per 30ml.

He's correct, for the product he's selling.

The number of vendors offering this level of ingredients is small. Maybe 5 known brands?

I'm not sure how OP and the juice vendor first started their conversation, but when it comes to calling a business out on their approximate margin of profit, I veer to keep those words to myself. Business is about making profit and really, there's nothing wrong, business-wise, about shops selling juice for the price that they are. We, as DIY Juice hobbyists, know really how much it costs to make a bottle of juice, but I'd be careful to call a business out on how much their markup is, especially on social media. Vapers are willing to pay certain prices for juice, so it's not really the business' fault for selling juice at those prices.

I just keeping making my own liquids, and sometimes give it away or sell it really cheap to friends/acquaintances. That's my way of spreading a similar message, and one that may be less abrasive and perhaps less damaging to other people's livelihood.

Or am I being too "understanding" of the business-owners? I, myself, was a small business owner in the past, so I guess I have a bit more of a soft-spot for them...