Why are B&M's outrageously expensive?

[Alien Traveler]

Like it or not, the market for vape gear is primarily current or former smokers. The fun fact about that group is that it includes people of all backgrounds and income levels, who somehow always find (or used to find) hundreds of dollars of disposable cash every month to purchase cigarettes.

And even funnier: the same people of all backgrounds and income levels somehow always used to find hundreds of dollars of disposable cash every month to purchase food.
You see, when need in cigarettes (to feed addiction) is on the same level as need for food... It is not a fun. It is necessity. When "people of all income levels" stop smoking thanks to vaping, I'd rather see their disposable income increase, not decrease because of predatory practice of (some) B&Ms.

 

[Robert Cromwell]

I may be in the minority AT, but my primary reason for switching to vaping was to save money. And I have. I have saved over 50% from my cig budget of 130/mo. And the savings are now increasing rapidly I expect to spend less than $15/mo for the next 3 months. I might need a new bottle of flavoring or two. After 3 months I will need to restock VG?PG and some flavorings spending approx $60 for another 3 months of vaping. I have wasted a bit on flavorings that I will not use but that is settling down to a nice set of flavorings. I might need some more wire in about 6 months but have enough cotton for a few years.

About 1/2 of my previous spending was on hardware that I have passed on to other people to get them off of cigs. I found the 808 stuff to not be quite what I wanted/needed for my vaping. I now have hardware that will satisfy me for a while.

 

[HauntedMyst]

I buy juice from a local B&M, but only because I'm able to taste before I buy and they have an ongoing buy 2 get 1 free deal. 90ml for $20 isn't too bad and the juice is good. Otherwise, I'm buying online.

That's a great deal from a store. I've never seen that locally and rarely online. For those that buy bottled juice, having a juice bar would be a money saver.

In my vape travels around Chicago, I've seen exactly one store that looks like they thought about having a professional presence in the vape scene - a CigNot in Oak Park. The rest of them are all either cigarette or head shops with a small supply of vape equipment or vape shops that are opened in dirty, run down, nearly out of business strip malls with a smattering of garage sale display cases filled with over priced equipment and staffed by some kid whose apparent life goals include wearing and collecting acid rock concert t-shirts and drinking. He has no interest in retail business but thought his ability to make a fog tornado, super twist quad coil made him uniquely qualified to open a vape shop. Shop locally makes great sense when its a business that provides value to you. Sadly, that isn't the case for the vaping world from what I have seen. Vaping grew up in the digital age and is suited online shopping and support.

 

[Liskrig]

I like a couple of vape shops, there is Worcester Vapor that is VERY competitive on prices to the point where you only pay maybe 10% more than you would online from a good shop. The other one Vape Daddy in Framingham holds a place in my heart because they basically saved my life. They are VERY expensive, but the customer service is unmatched.

 

[Alien Traveler]

I may be in the minority AT, but my primary reason for switching to vaping was to save money. And I have. I have saved over 50% from my cig budget of 130/mo. And the savings are now increasing rapidly I expect to spend less than $15/mo for the next 3 months. I might need a new bottle of flavoring or two. After 3 months I will need to restock VG?PG and some flavorings spending approx $60 for another 3 months of vaping. I have wasted a bit on flavorings that I will not use but that is settling down to a nice set of flavorings. I might need some more wire in about 6 months but have enough cotton for a few years.

About 1/2 of my previous spending was on hardware that I have passed on to other people to get them off of cigs. I found the 808 stuff to not be quite what I wanted/needed for my vaping. I now have hardware that will satisfy me for a while.

My main purpose was to get rid of smoking. But I also wanted from now on to spend as little as possible on my nicotine dependence. Just to have reliable and comfortable nicotine delivery system. FDA prompted me to stockpile my devices/DIY stuff, but I am still well below $1,000 in my first year of vaping. I can go for 5 years without any vape-related purchases but PG and VG (and they are really cheap). I can even survive 10 years. Sure, if something exceptional will surface on a market, I can buy it - like really well engineered RTA, or mod with temperature control for kanthal, but only if it will be manufactured in China.

 

[Robert Cromwell]

Only if it will be manufactured in China? I only buy pre-steeped VG and PG.

 

[inswva]

While only tangentially related, I passed a local "buy here pay here" used car lot this morning which is now flying a large "VAPE" banner. Need a $75 eGo starter kit to go with that 1984 Cadillac Cimmaron? Come on in!

 

[Alien Traveler]

Only if it will be manufactured in China?...

It means things developed and manufactured in China - so they will have reasonable price (like subtank), or cloned things - so I will not pay outrageous "authentic" price.

 

[Robert Cromwell]

It means things developed and manufactured in China - so they will have reasonable price (like subtank), or cloned things - so I will not pay outrageous "authentic" price.

Yep my frugal part agrees with you. I will never buy any vaping gear from the EU. Their hardware is silly expensive.

 

[Robert Cromwell]

While only tangentially related, I passed a local "buy here pay here" used car lot this morning which is now flying a large "VAPE" banner. Need a $75 eGo starter kit to go with that 1984 Cadillac Cimmaron? Come on in!

Ohh man that would go well with my $800 1989 Toyota pickup I bought a few weeks ago.

 

[Traijan]

I may be in the minority AT, but my primary reason for switching to vaping was to save money. And I have. I have saved over 50% from my cig budget of 130/mo. And the savings are now increasing rapidly I expect to spend less than $15/mo for the next 3 months. I might need a new bottle of flavoring or two. After 3 months I will need to restock VG?PG and some flavorings spending approx $60 for another 3 months of vaping. I have wasted a bit on flavorings that I will not use but that is settling down to a nice set of flavorings. I might need some more wire in about 6 months but have enough cotton for a few years.

About 1/2 of my previous spending was on hardware that I have passed on to other people to get them off of cigs. I found the 808 stuff to not be quite what I wanted/needed for my vaping. I now have hardware that will satisfy me for a while.

For us it was a combination of reasons...
1. My dog would run to the bedroom every time that I'd light up a smoke. (that greatly disturbed me as he'd never had a hot cherry fall on him, or gotten burned in any way, he simply hated the stink and smoke).
2. To save money, we used to be able to buy native cigarettes for only $14.00 a carton, once they got burned on the deal they shot up to $50/carton and between two of us smoking between 1 and 4 packs a day it got to be ridiculous.
3. To get rid of the stink on us, our clothing, out home, and our dogs which are poodles who's hair holds all smells like cooking, smoke etc.


Originally we expected to pay out up front on equipment until we got satisfied with what we had but now I went into a local B&M to buy some juice that they make in the shop (or someplace, maybe their kitchen for all I know) and they're charging $15.00 for about 13ml (it's supposed to be 15 but none of the bottles are actually full) and well... I'm tired of it. I wanted to save money overall but with the price of local juice it just isn't happening. I'm not an "online" type of person, I rather buy locally when possible but not at such high prices, we have only one B&M that charges online prices for hardware as long as you pay cash but his liquids are also crazy high, like $20 for 15ml. I'm so headed in the direction of DIY liquids at this point. If I could have procured PG locally I would have already started but all the Hay & Grain / Feed / Tack stores don't sell PG which surprised me since they use it in the farm industry/ horses, cows etc.

I really don't want to spend $45.00 week on liquids anymore but that's what it would cost around here for 45ml and I can't imagine it costing them more than 2.50 for the 15ml when made in large enough batches.

Okay, there's my rant for the day LOL.

 

[Robert Cromwell]

For us it was a combination of reasons...
1. My dog would run to the bedroom every time that I'd light up a smoke. (that greatly disturbed me as he'd never had a hot cherry fall on him, or gotten burned in any way, he simply hated the stink and smoke).
2. To save money, we used to be able to buy native cigarettes for only $14.00 a carton, once they got burned on the deal they shot up to $50/carton and between two of us smoking between 1 and 4 packs a day it got to be ridiculous.
3. To get rid of the stink on us, our clothing, out home, and our dogs which are poodles who's hair holds all smells like cooking, smoke etc.


Originally we expected to pay out up front on equipment until we got satisfied with what we had but now I went into a local B&M to buy some juice that they make in the shop (or someplace, maybe their kitchen for all I know) and they're charging $15.00 for about 13ml (it's supposed to be 15 but none of the bottles are actually full) and well... I'm tired of it. I wanted to save money overall but with the price of local juice it just isn't happening. I'm not an "online" type of person, I rather buy locally when possible but not at such high prices, we have only one B&M that charges online prices for hardware as long as you pay cash but his liquids are also crazy high, like $20 for 15ml. I'm so headed in the direction of DIY liquids at this point. If I could have procured PG locally I would have already started but all the Hay & Grain / Feed / Tack stores don't sell PG which surprised me since they use it in the farm industry/ horses, cows etc.

I really don't want to spend $45.00 week on liquids anymore but that's what it would cost around here for 45ml and I can't imagine it costing them more than 2.50 for the 15ml when made in large enough batches.

Okay, there's my rant for the day LOL.

TSC sells PG USP grade for about $22/gal. I use it and several others do as well. VG I get on Amazon so far for about $12/qt. I could buy larger quantities and save some but would worry about it getting over steeped

And yes there have been many benefits to my quitting smoking besides saving money. Except for the dog thing pretty much the same ones as you have plus I feel better and have better wind, etc.

 

[dhood]

That's way too much for "shop juice". It should be more in the 10-15 range for 30ml. Anything over that is gouging, in my opinion. My locals that have shop juices give you 50-60 ml for $25, depending on the shop. One of them recently re-did their formulas for their top 7 sellers and now they sell it for $25 for 30ml. I've decided that after vaping that for 8 months, EVERY MORNING, that it is now time to move on to something else for my morning vape. Luckily I have over a dozen other vape shops to shop at and more than a few have good quality house juice (one of them has Dr. Crimmy's as their house juice).

 

[hashtag]

There is a set price for most things, this price is the MSRP. If a shop is charging more than the MSRP then they are ripping people off. It is that simple. Many of the local shops I go to are charging around double the MSRP for many of their products and that is just being greedy and taking advantage of people who don't know what the price should be.

In pretty much any other industry I can go online and get a slight discount, I can't think of any other industry where I can go online and get the product for half the price I pay in store. I am all for local businesses making money but can't support a business that is aimed solely at ripping off their customers because their customers don't know enough about the product to know they are being ripped off.

 

[jseah]

I may be in the minority AT, but my primary reason for switching to vaping was to save money. And I have. I have saved over 50% from my cig budget of 130/mo. And the savings are now increasing rapidly I expect to spend less than $15/mo for the next 3 months. I might need a new bottle of flavoring or two. After 3 months I will need to restock VG?PG and some flavorings spending approx $60 for another 3 months of vaping. I have wasted a bit on flavorings that I will not use but that is settling down to a nice set of flavorings. I might need some more wire in about 6 months but have enough cotton for a few years.

About 1/2 of my previous spending was on hardware that I have passed on to other people to get them off of cigs. I found the 808 stuff to not be quite what I wanted/needed for my vaping. I now have hardware that will satisfy me for a while.

That was my primary reason as well. I had a monthly cig habit of a little under $300. Of course it really didn't work out that way as I bought way more mods and tanks than I really needed to. Now that I have started DIY'ing my juice, it should balance out in the end. My best estimate when I was still vaping store bought juice was that the ongoing costs (just coils and juice and ignoring the initial outlay for mods and tanks) would be around $150-$200 a month. With DIY and also that I've started rewicking the Subtank OCC, my monthly cost will be under $30 a month.

 

[puddinman]

Think of it this way. Shops that stand the test of time will charge what the market will bear. if they don't, they will quickly fold or change their pricing. If your local is charging outrageous prices it's because 1)they have little competition, 2) they provide service that justifies the price or 3) they don't know what the hell they are doing.

In any case, there must always be a balance between operating expenses and price. Cost of goods sold is a major determinant aside from overhead. It may seem to make sense to charge less and sell more but real world conditions don't always work that way. Some markets won't support volume sales. Good management will always charge as much as possible while maintaining the goal profit. Anything else will result in business closure.

 

[Mogar]

Well lots of people got pulled in on this one... Let me change things up 15 degrees so you might understand just a bit.
- Did you know that you can order a car online and have it delivered to your home? Would you do this without even looking at the car or maybe test driving it? Without B&M you would be doing things blind.
- How many times have you ordered juice from your favorite online stores and found out that the flavor was not to your liking? Guess what that juice is going to either sit or get tossed. If you were in a B&M you would be able to taste it first.
- Those that say "you can just make your own for 80 cents a bottle" Ok, when was the last time you went to the corner store and bought a bottle of soda? Well guess what, you just got taken... not only taken but taken HUGE! When you go to the store and buy your Super Mega Bladder Buster do you know what the most expensive part of that is to the store? The CUP! It costs 7 cents for the cup, 1.5 cents for the straw, 1 cent for the lid approximately 9 cents for the soda with ice... Can you do this yourself, yes but the convenience of going into a store and buying it, you are paying a 600-800% markup (unless you are in the movie theater then its closer to 5000-7500% markup!!).

 

[SleeZy]

Well lots of people got pulled in on this one... Let me change things up 15 degrees so you might understand just a bit.
- Did you know that you can order a car online and have it delivered to your home? Would you do this without even looking at the car or maybe test driving it? Without B&M you would be doing things blind.
- How many times have you ordered juice from your favorite online stores and found out that the flavor was not to your liking? Guess what that juice is going to either sit or get tossed. If you were in a B&M you would be able to taste it first.
- Those that say "you can just make your own for 80 cents a bottle" Ok, when was the last time you went to the corner store and bought a bottle of soda? Well guess what, you just got taken... not only taken but taken HUGE! When you go to the store and buy your Super Mega Bladder Buster do you know what the most expensive part of that is to the store? The CUP! It costs 7 cents for the cup, 1.5 cents for the straw, 1 cent for the lid approximately 9 cents for the soda with ice... Can you do this yourself, yes but the convenience of going into a store and buying it, you are paying a 600-800% markup (unless you are in the movie theater then its closer to 5000-7500% markup!!).

I agree with you, altho it kinda sucks to buy juice for nearly 20$ for 30ml when you can/could DIY for way cheaper. (Which i'm personally learning atm.)
And atleast in EU most mods/hardware got 50% markup from the US prices. So for me to buy hardware even, it's way better to order from US or China.

Look at the subox kit for example, in EU it's about 120$ vs 50-60$ pretty much everywhere else. And now i'm talking about online stores, cuz we barely have vape shops in sweden.

I do understand why there's a markup but some does it abit over the top imo. Especially considering alot of ppl rather use internet to order their gear.
I could understand 20-30% markup but not 50% and up.

Also speaking about huge markup, pizza can be made for a few cents yet it costs about 8.4$ to buy a pizza. But ye...

 

[twgbonehead]

Look, a vape shop is really a boutique store, pretty much by definition. A "single-product" outlet. As such, you really have to expect to pay more. Even the "Mall Cart" stores that sell, for example, sunglasses or iphone cases are very high priced. I think it would be better if vape retail outlets could leverage other retail space, such as a counter at a convenience store, or a department at Best Buy or K-Mart, or a decent setup at a smoke shop. And as vaping gets more popular, and gear gets simpler to use this might very well happen (unless the FDA kills everything).

Let's face it, the concept of a vape store really isn't the most practical business idea, unless you can charge much higher prices for what you sell. Partnering with other products is really the only way to make this more economical. And you can stock a huge amount of product in a small display case, with a rack on the wall for liquids; even a small dedicated vaping store winds up being a big waste of space (if you're talking efficiency, which is necessary for low prices).

 

[Completely Average]

Well lots of people got pulled in on this one... Let me change things up 15 degrees so you might understand just a bit.
- Did you know that you can order a car online and have it delivered to your home? Would you do this without even looking at the car or maybe test driving it? Without B&M you would be doing things blind.
- How many times have you ordered juice from your favorite online stores and found out that the flavor was not to your liking? Guess what that juice is going to either sit or get tossed. If you were in a B&M you would be able to taste it first.
- Those that say "you can just make your own for 80 cents a bottle" Ok, when was the last time you went to the corner store and bought a bottle of soda? Well guess what, you just got taken... not only taken but taken HUGE! When you go to the store and buy your Super Mega Bladder Buster do you know what the most expensive part of that is to the store? The CUP! It costs 7 cents for the cup, 1.5 cents for the straw, 1 cent for the lid approximately 9 cents for the soda with ice... Can you do this yourself, yes but the convenience of going into a store and buying it, you are paying a 600-800% markup (unless you are in the movie theater then its closer to 5000-7500% markup!!).

#1. I pretty much did precisely that with my car. I went to a dealership to look at the car and take it for a test drive, and then came home and bought it online to save money. End result is I got a brand new 2012 Mustang with only 16 miles on the odometer for $19k.

#2. I've only bought a few small bottles of juice online to test flavors, and quickly decided I could do just as good if not better myself. I quickly jumped into DIY juice, and now nothing gets tossed and even if it did it's only a loss of a few pennies. I've also tried juice bars, and for the most part their flavors are equally bad and quite often their cheap sample tanks don't provide an accurate representation of what the juice will taste like in my tank.

#3. I NEVER buy a cup of soda to take home and drink later and I don't know anyone else who does either. When was the last time you drove to a store and bought a single cup of soda to bring home and drink the next day?

Buying a drink at a movie theater is indeed expensive, which is why I always sneak in my own bottles from home. I would sneak in the popcorn as well if I could figure out where to put it. Buying a drink at a restaurant is not comparable as you can't bring in your own drinks. I never buy drinks that I'm going to take home because I have drinks at home already that cost much less.

And for the record, I'm currently pricing out the cost of a soda fountain for my home theater. That will be the end of cans and bottles for me.