Atari Posted April 30, 2011 Posted April 30, 2011 (edited) Give me a little background, who are Ares and Athena? the real people Wow, that's an open ended question. Neither one of us really knows how to answer it, but I'll tell you a little about us; Athena and I have been together about 5 years. We both love sports cars. Athena drives a Silver Toyota MR2 Spyder and I have a Black Toyota Supra Turbo. The company truck is a Black Ford Expedition. We both love animals. We've got two dogs, Akitas (Logan and Blaze), male and female, a cantankerous female calico cat named Newt, 3 chinchillas, 3 chickens and a 125 gallon saltwater reef fish tank. We grow some of our own food. Athena is a fantastic cook and a pretty amazing artist. She's very creative and I think this is why she can create such awesome tasting eliquid. I'm more analytical and business minded. I've got a background in computers and technology. tell me a little bit bout the company and what got you into the business. I smoked cigarettes for 27 years. In 2009 I started looking into ecigs, and like many people I got suckered into buying one of those small, overpriced under performing models with prefilled 'mystery nut juice' cartridges. I hated it. I spent a lot of time and money buying different models until finding one that I liked. After that I decided that there needed to be a company that helped spare people all of that trouble and that only sold "decent" ecigs -- Ares was born. Then I started wondering what was in this "stuff" that I was vaping. After finding that most juice was made in China and most people had no idea what was really in it, I started looking into making my own and the Ares USA made eliquid was born. Shortly thereafter, Athena got involved and I found she was better at making the flavors than I was. The first 10 or so flavors are mine, after that, the other 60+ juices are her creations. What is an average day like at ares ecig? We check the new orders, verify everything is in stock, make juice, pack and ship the orders. We try to get everything out within 24-36 hours of the order being placed. We return customer phone calls and emails. If we have inbound shipments we restock inventory and verify the website has the correct product counts. (We stock everything we sell, no drop shipping here.) The rest of the time we spend in the juice lab tinkering with flavors or testing new hardware. We're up to 77 right now. After the VapersPlace giveaway is done, we'll be releasing a bunch more. We also use everything we sell, and I personally use every new ecig model for at least 2 - 3 weeks before we're willing to post them for sale on the website. How do you create new flavors and how do you decide if they make the final cut? It's a lot of experimentation. I don't even want to think about how much liquid we've destroyed because it just wasn't good enough. The final cut, that's really subjective. Both Athena and I test vape everything over the course of a couple of days, if we both agree that it's something we'd buy ourselves, we'll put it up on the site. We also get suggestions from customers for new flavors, and if we make a liquid that they suggest and wind up listing it on the site, we send them a 30ml bottle of it free of charge as a "thank you". What has Ares built their reputation on? Quality eliquid and customer service. We're not looking to make a quick buck, we want long term relationships with our customers. If a customer isn't happy, they aren't coming back. We do everything we can to make sure our customers get good value for their money and walk away happy. Almost all of our customers are repeat customers, and many of our referrals are via word of mouth. I think that says a lot. Any thing new in the works we can look forward to? Lots of new flavors for now. We'll be coming out with the options for 50/50 PG/VG and VG only juice on most of our flavors soon as well. We're also looking into opening a retail store and manufacturing our own line of ecigs made here in the US, but that's a ways down the road. The business is 100% self funded and we have no investors or debt load. We want to keep it that way. It allows us to maintain our standards without competing outside influences. What are your best sellers and personal favorites? Sweet Tobacco is our best seller by far followed by Black Cherry, French Vanilla and Peach. Kevin-UP and Key Lime Pie are both quickly moving up and will probably both be best sellers very soon. Personally I vape Sweet Tobacco @ 24mg every day and Athena loves the Key Lime Pie @ 0mg. You are the first vendor I get to ask this and Im so excited. give us your take on the recent FDA regulation developments and how you feel it will help or hurt the industry and your company personally We're "cautiously optimistic". It's great that they finally have let go of the foolish attempts to regulate this as a drug. That's a win. But I'm worried about what regulations and taxes they will push down. No sales to minors, no nic strengths over 36mg/ml, quality standards, those are regulations I think are great. But I'm worried about how much they will drive up the prices via new taxes, or how onerous the regulations will be. I guess we'll have to wait and see. It's still a step in the right direction. Any thing else you would like to mention or tell everyone about Ares? We really do care what goes into our juice. Our base liquids are USP grade made in the USA. We use natural flavors 99% of the time. (Some flavors you just can't go natural with, like butter. Natural butter contains dicetyl and it's dangerous to vape, so we use an artificial butter flavoring. Our juice is dicetyl free). We hand craft this liquid and consistency and quality are our primary goals. We even use bottles made in the US. We've also recently opened a wholesale division with some pretty aggressive discounts so other vendors can have a reliable quality source for US made eliquid. Last question, why should I buy from Ares ecig? We'll treat you right. We'll sell you a hand crafted top quality elquid for a reasonable price. We're not in business to compete with cheap juice from overseas. Ask around, talk to our existing customers. I suspect you'll be hard pressed to find an unhappy one. We treat people the way we want to be treated. If you ever have a problem with something we've sold you, let us know and we'll make it right. I won't say the customer is always right, but the customer is always the customer and deserves to be treated well. Vaporchaser aresecig.com Edited April 30, 2011 by Atari
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