I'm Spending Too Much On Vaping!

[Tam]

I've thought a lot about opening a shop, but after you figure rent, utilities, & insurance, you have to charge way more than what people pay for the same products online, where the major expense is server time (a few bucks a month & no lease). When people see that they can get your products online for a fraction of your price, they won't be back. In today's economy, it just doesn't make much sense to have a B&M.

That's true, for the most part. Okay, here's the 'but'.

BUT if you can move a lot of product and your online store is in line with the same prices as your B&M, you can make a go of it. My local B&M's prices are the same whether you walk into the store or go online. Although I balk at paying $12 for 12 ml bottle of juice that's a fixed 70 VG/30 PG, the rest of the prices are also very comparable to other online stores.

My local B&M started out in half of a very small store that also sold lots of bling and purses (The Pink Boutique). He got so much business that he opened another store on the north side of town that's easily five times bigger, and is close to opening up a warehouse. Great customer service, quality product, comparable prices and lots of education and patience with noobies and he continues to grow. According to him was very difficult to become a certified Joytech seller. His stores have that certification. I really don't know what that means but it sounds good and all of his product are genuine Joytech. No knock offs in his store so you can trust the stuff you buy from him - as much as you can trust any of the stuff that comes out of China anyway.

[Mrwaylon]

The most I spend every two weeks is about 60 bucks. Juice and coils lol. But the next two weeks I'll spend about 100 give or take they have two new mods coming in so I might pick one up.

[Thesheepdog]

I dont spend so much anymore. Just juice really and the occassional box or 3 of cartos. I have an 1100 battery, a 900 battery, an 800 battery and 650mah battery so feel I am covered for now. I have been fighting the infection in my lungs lately so have not vaped much. I have that juice still untouched!

Anyway, compare the minimal cost of batteries and such to being able to breath again. (well, except for the infection lol)

Tobacco is death. This aint that!

[Bebop]

For some reason the B&M stores near me seem to be a little more aligned with on-line pricing. Def not twice as much but certaiinly a premium is paid in store.

From what I see the main traffic is new people and the benefit is good customer service. If you don't have that , you won't survive long. Once the noobies get over the learning curve, know what they like, know what they want, I'm sure they migrate to more on line service. As long as you have the new guys coming in I think you can do alright.

And, I have to say, I do enjoy going in and seeing and holding the gear. On occasion I will buy something on the spot even if it means paying 20-30% more (a rough average). The key is do I enjoy being there? Do I walk away happy?

I bought my first RDA for $16 at a B&M, something I now know I can get on-line for $10-$12. But, I saw it, touched it, learned how to use it and watched how to rebuild it. It was fun. And I went home and dripped some fresh juice I had taste tested. It was great.

Edited October 5, 2013 by Bebop12

[Mrwaylon]

For some reason the B&M stores near me seem to be a little more aligned with on-line pricing. Def not twice as much but certaiinly a premium is paid in store.

From what I see the main traffic is new people and the benefit is good customer service. If you don't have that , you won't survive long. Once the noobies get over the learning curve, know what they like, know what they want, I'm sure they migrate to more on line service. As long as you have the new guys coming in I think you can do alright.

And, I have to say, I do enjoy going in and seeing and holding the gear. On occasion I will buy something on the spot even if it means paying 20-30% more (a rough average). The key is do I enjoy being there? Do I walk away happy?

I bought my first RDA for $16 at a B&M, something I now know I can get on-line for $10-$12. But, I saw it, touched it, learned how to use it and watched how to rebuild it. It was fun. And I went home and dripped some fresh juice I had taste tested. It was great.

My local vape shop is real good on there prices. Like there getting the itaste MVP 2 and I asked how much he said there selling the starter kit for I believe 52 or 56 plus tax.

[3Rutez]

In a few days, I will be placing some orders for : K100 mech mod, 2-18650 and 2-18350, intellicharger, 100' 30g Kanthal, and an ohm reader. Comes out to $117 with shipping included. Oh I cannot wait.

[ch1naski]

I buy a little something every time I enter a vape shop. I've never walked out empty handed. Glad I'm not alone here.

[kerk]

I wish I had you all's money to burn, but then, I wouldn't spend it on vaping. As of today, still have only spent $205 TOTAL since I started (which you can see below), and am good for at least a month, maybe two.

Maybe I should spend my profits on lotto tickets.....hmmmm.

[tzymroz2013]

i have overspent on vaping stuff several months running but I got a handle on it now. I now have all I really have to have. Really Satisfied for now. About the only thing from here onward that I purchase will be juice, wire and wick, and rechargeable battery's. May need some replacement parts for my rebuildables.

Have I lied about stuff purchased to the hubby? Maybe so but he always knew better and the real truth is he does not care as long as I am not smoking the stinkies.

[spydre]

First off, I could have sworn I posted to this last night, but I guess it didn't go through. That's what I get for using my nook.

Online is the way to go unless you have no patience

For the most part, I agree with you on hardware, or for a shop that doesn't manufacture their own juice. Better Vapes is where I get about half of my juices from, and they started out as a small online presence for about two years, and then opened their storefront 4th of July. The prices in the online store are identical, and they mix their own juice, so they can do custom orders ($8 for 22 ml). For certain things, well, Evods, I will certainly hit them first, or I would for other plastic tanks. But say for Pro Tanks, Davides, etc.? It's only worth it to buy from them if you are only buying one or two, where the price difference overcomes the shipping from say, Discount Vapers. Coils, I'll buy from the B&M because I'm not going to order coils online unless I'm ordering other stuff, too. Well, okay, I just looked at how much DV is charging for the MPT 2, plus their like $5 flat shipping rate, it breaks down to just under what I paid at Better Vapes for it ($19.99 before tax).

I have to stick up for my local B&M. They are not all bad. I happily pay $30 for 3-15ml bottles of the most vapable stuff I've ever encountered. The gear is over priced but is it unfair? Not really, IMO. Sure, I buy mostly on line but getting out and helping a B&M that's worthy is good too.

I have to agree mostly with this. Better Vapes, like I said, is fair priced on their juice, plus they can custom make it on the spot for you. Their juice doesn't HAVE to be steeped, mostly, but I've had some samples that they've mixed up for me, and fresh out of mixing, you could tell they needed to steep, and when I came back the next week, they were much better. They don't have a LOT of hardware, but they are REALLY knowledgeable. They have been trying to help me work through my tasting issues, but since it's neurologically related, I'm not sure if some things are going to come back, or will never come back. 618 and Honey Wood came back for me, but then changed again for me several days ago, so Honey Wood I have to mix now (and provided I get the proportions right, it's fine), but the past several days, with the exception of a few hours, 618 has been off - too strong on the tobacco, or even tasting burned on a setting that I know won't burn it because I vaped it all the time on that wattage setting. But they are trying to help me through this. You don't know how it broke my heart to go into Cloud 9 yesterday, and see all of these wonderful chocolate flavors (including one I had been searching for before my seizure - essentially thin mint), and to be able to taste everything BUT the chocolate. Like there was a chocolate/white chocolate or vanilla mix, and I could taste the white chocolate or vanilla on the exhale, but not the chocolate chocolate in the inhale.

But Better Vapes helps me out a lot. The largest pool of knowledge at Cloud 9 and 3D Vapors is the staff, who are dedicated vapers - with 3D, the owners opened up the shop because at that time - June - there were no vapor shops on our side of the river close by. NOW there's four. Other than Better Vapes, they carry another locally made juice, Apothecarium, but there's no website that I can find, the only mentions I can find for it on the web are shops mentioning that they carry it and it's made in Alton.

But back to Better Vapes, the owner has been trying to help me out through my taste issues (I think what's going on with the 618 is I'm in and out of being able to taste one of the flavors - not the caramel, because I can usually taste that fairly well, but something else, and he won't "describe" the flavor so I can figure out what I'm missing. I tried the tester of just non-flavor boosted 618, and it tasted fine. So he suggested mega boosting and seeing if that sort of clears it out for me, so he mixed what he called "maximum flavor boost" - 70/30 blend, and the highest flavor they can put with that much PG. Luckily, I only ordered an 11 ml bottle, just in case turning up the flavors that high either doesn't work, or causes more problems. I'm going to let it steep (or maybe speed steep it) If that doesn't for me flavor wise, then I'll go to the straight no flavor boost, maybe with the 70/30 ratio. But as far as taking care of us, once we started going in there regularly, every couple weeks, at least, if not more often, he, of course, would recognize us, both by look and by name. So the second time we custom ordered the 618 with the flavor boost, I just called it in, and he said, "well, normally we want you to pre-pay for a custom order, but you guys are in here all the time, so I'll just have it ready in 30 minutes." Well, today, he was going over mechanical mods with hubby for a good long time, and the one closest to what hubby had in mind was the Natural - which they were selling for $60, but he told hubby, "I tell you what, you decide you want the Natural, when you come in to get it, I'll knock it down to $50 for you." I've looked online since we got home. The only place I found the current version (not the telescoping) of the Natural online for less than $50 was DV. Hubby's, I think, actually looking at a Sigelei (I think 19?), but since I don't know the difference between mechanical mods, and frankly I don't know why one would want a battery tube without the circuitry to do the stuff I like my stuff to do. But that's his thing. But they are good to us. Retail on Evods there is 50 cents cheaper than DV (so $5.49) - whereas all the other shops in town you find them for $10.

I've thought a lot about opening a shop, but after you figure rent, utilities, & insurance, you have to charge way more than what people pay for the same products online, where the major expense is server time (a few bucks a month & no lease). When people see that they can get your products online for a fraction of your price, they won't be back. In today's economy, it just doesn't make much sense to have a B&M.

You know, the new store, Cloud 9, hubby thought that they were carrying pretty much exclusively Vapor Beast stuff, but I'm not so sure - the Sigelei Zmax they carried was a kit, and Vapor Beast doesn't sell a kit, just the straight thing you get from DV. One thing is, though, if they aren't selling at MSRP rather than discounted prices, then they are significantly marking up for purchasing/shipping. I think MSRP on an Evod is around $7, and like I said, they were selling it for $10. I guess I just went into it with higher hopes because they have SO MUCH SPACE, and could stock SO MUCH MORE (I'm pretty sure they have the same amount of display cases in their huge store that Better Vapes has in their very, very tiny store, and Better Vapes mixes on site. And well, just to make juice prices even across the board, they are charging the same price for all juices, despite the fact that while Vapor Beast charges $9 per bottle of juice (great juices, though, and they carry ALL of the Vapor Beast juices), I know one of the other companies (can't remember the name, hubby bought that brand and, well, he probably didn't HIDE his tackle box, I just don't know where it is - oh, I see it now, I just can't REACH it, because it's way on top of his 6 foot high desk) and we checked their website and 15 ml bottles are $7, while 30 ml bottles (which Cloud 9 doesn't carry yet) are only $10. I have NO CLUE what the third brand of juice they carry is - I didn't even try any from that line.

We are kinda straying off topic, but to add to the current discussion... Even though I can get the same products as my local shop for half the price, I tend to buy locally. Mainly because I am impatient, and secondly because I really like my local shop. The people there are super cool and knowledgeable.

Yeah, that's another reason why I go to Better Vapes. Well, I won't order a tank online unless I've tried one of them out before, and like I said, Better Vapes has been soooo helpful to us, particularly me, and he's gonna give hubby that discount on the Natural if he wants to buy it from there.

But back on topic - okay, we spent $90 at Cloud 9 on Friday. I spent, I think $25 at 3D the week before that, and I don't know what hubby spent last Saturday (not yesterday, but last week's Saturday) - well, I think he probably spent about $15, all he got was my Apple Fritter, which is growing on me, and a blunt tip needle. Then YESTERDAY, we spent, um, forty something at Better Vapes. Luckily, we got the refund disbursement on the student loan check in.

And finally - hubby has his Provari, he has his batteries, he's buying RBA's (and all the stuff needed to rebuild them, except the shops keep running out of stainless steel mesh, and he wants to have enough on hand in case he screws up), and NOW, he wants to by a mechanical mod. His mini Provari was more expensive than my Zmax (granted, I have more flavors, and way more tanks, but my orders setting me up with the zmax, the KPT's, the batteries/charger, it still totalled less than his mini Provari, I believe). But he understands what I'm going through with the flavors right now....sorta. Though he still thinks part of it is vapor's tongue, and it's not, I can tell the difference - what I'm not tasting are certain flavors across the board - not just a particular juice, but a flavor used in ANY juice - there were sooo many good juices from Vapor Beast that I tried, that had a chocolate base to them, and they were good, I just wasn't getting the chocolate taste out of them, just the other flavors. I looked for MONTHS for a good thin mints juice, and when I found it Friday, I couldn't hardly taste the chocolate - it was that way for the Vapor Beast flavor, and it was that way for the Better Vapes flavor based on thin mints and Andes mint/chocolate candy. Yeah, it was nice, (heck, maybe I should have gotten that instead of Papa Smurf as my palette cleanser), but no chocolate. And I actually had to, again, sit him down and say, "this isn't vapor tongue, this is a loss of flavor, or even worse, flavors totally turning around on me, that may last six months, or it may never reverse." I guess he doesn't understand why I can still taste foods flavored that way, but not vape, but the food flavor is more concentrated, I guess, and well, directly on the tastebuds. He just made me realize yesterday that in the 10 months since this happened the first time, he's never understood it in all that time.

[thvapor]

Oh lord my wife and I are new vapors and we are def spending some money.. we started out with the ego t 900mah luxury, than I got the k2 tank , she got the mini, blow through juices and atomizers,.. I bought the Vision spinner and some cartomizer tanks.. Now the expensive part.. spent 150 on a itaste mvp 2, and a kts clone kit , with juices.. today I spent another 50 dollars on itaste mvp because yes I have the kts mod the battery issue working 10hrs a day with only a wall outlet adapter worries me. looking at the ea pro mod clone so we shall see lol

[highpass]

Rixter,

What are these two little guys?

[Rixter]

Those are 350mAh eGo minis.

[highpass]

Cheers. Excuse my ignorance, but what is then plugged into them... nano clearomisers of some sort?

[IMEDICx90]

one looks like an HH cisco atty... and the other a vision eternity rda?

[highpass]

Ah, ok I'll go grab those. Just ordered a mini battery/kanger t3s clearo with 1.8ohm head. Trying to put together a mini system to replace my eRoll.

[IMEDICx90]

dont quote me on those man. they arent mine thats just what they look like to me. Wait until rixter responds. lol

on second look... one has a regular drip shield on it... the other one is an atomizer as well but it has an ego cone on it... i know rixter has been in love with his cisco atty's... but it might be the smoktech one he had before those... so ill let him tell you exactly which atty's he has on there, but they are definitely 510 dripping atty's.

[highpass]

No worries. I looked into the Vision and wasn't impressed with the reviews so passed on it. Same for the HH thing. Did come across the A7 which I'm researching now. Cheers for the guesses

dont quote me

[IMEDICx90]

the 510 dripping atty's arent guesses. That is in fact what they are, which version.... i have no clue. The ego on the right of the picture has an ego cone shield on it. The other just has a regular drip shield on it.

[Tam]

I'd hazard a guess that the one on the left is his Cisco HH.357 long barrel atty with a short drip shield on it. The one on the right might also be one but with an eGo cone instead of a drip shield. Both have the shorty drip tips.

This guessing game is fun!

As for bad reviews on the HH.357...really? After all the dozens of different atomizers I've used, the HH.357 is by far and away the very best of them all. I can't even use the others anymore, they just don't perform up to what I've become accustomed to.

Edited October 12, 2013 by Tameiki

[highpass]

Hm. I could only get hold of a 400mah mini battery (350 is out of stock everywhere) which runs 4.2v at max charge. The HH.357 clearly says nothing over 4v. Not a good match?

[Bebop]

4.2? Are you sure??

[Tam]

Hm. I could only get hold of a 400mah mini battery (350 is out of stock everywhere) which runs 4.2v at max charge. The HH.357 clearly says nothing over 4v. Not a good match?

4.2 volts at full charge??? If I remember correctly the fixed voltage batteries only run at around 3.7 volts at full charge...

The HH.357 would be wasted on anything less than a variable voltage device, imo. I have several at 2.0 ohm that vape at a minimum of 4.3 volts and I just recently got two more at 1.8 ohm that need anything between 3.8 to 4.2 volts to get the best performance. I'm using the custom HH.357 Hybrid spec.

My personal recommendation? Get a Vision Spinner at 900 mAh, a custom HH.357 at either 1.8 or 2.0 ohm, a genuine Empire Mod drip shield for the eGo battery (only these will cover the threads even on a Vision Spinner), and a few drip tips of your choice.

[Rixter]

All good guesses on what juicers I have on my mini eGos, but unfortunately, you guys were giving me just a little too much credit. Both mini eGos pictured are sporting Boge LR cartos and eGo cones. IMHO, are the HH.357 of the cartomizer world, and are the most pocket-friendly, reliable, and hassle-free delivery device for someone on the go.

Also, I know that some eGo minis start out at 4.2v when fully charged and gradually drop with use, but my minis are a regulated 3.7v.

Edited October 12, 2013 by Rixter

[spydre]

Those are 350mAh eGo minis.

Wow, Rix, those are teeny.

Question for you guys. This came up when I was researching my possible replacements for the Sigelei, and I brought up about what happens with an MVP when the batteries inevitably die, as all batteries do eventually? I was told, essentially, that it would take about a year and a half, and you pitch it, and then you upgrade.

So that brings the question to mind - how often do you upgrade your APV's, for those that still use APV's over mech mods?