B&M survival?

[ghostrider1971]

I went to my local B&M again today....saw some eye-popping sights!

1) 100ml of Element ejuice - £65 (Yep....£65!) - also saw another juice (locked in a glass cabinet!) for £38 for 30ml...

2) Aspire Cleito - £25 (Bought another one on Amazon for £16 today)

3) Wismec RX200 - £65 (Seen them for £35 online)

How do these places survive? I know that some have great people who give good advice, do minor repairs etc and understand they have rent/wages/utilities etc

I wonder what will happen to them if/when the TPD kicks in? Will it have an effect?

I appreciate that some people don't like buying online/waiting for postage/want to see what they are buying etc but at a 35-40% mark-up how do these places survive?

[djs]

Sept 3, 2016 16:56:41 GMT ghostrider1971 said:

I wonder what will happen to them if/when the TPD kicks in? Will it have an effect?

I'm guessing the TPD will kill off some and make the existing ones even more expensive with 3 x 10ml for £20 or more.

Asking £65 for 100ml of liquid is just 'chancing it' as in a month or two, it'll be down to half price, then probably 25% to get rid.

[SteveF]

essentially......

face-2-face advice because all those you-tube vids and glowing reviews mean squat to somebody who doesn't know the first thing about buying their first or upgrading their e-cig.

Gotta have it NOW!.....I did it, I paid £30 ott of fastech prices for a mod that I wanted right then

online purchasing isn't always that easy, I'm surprised by the amount of younger people that don't have a credit card or even a mobile phone contract. Often as not a person can't disclose their spending habits to their partner when perhaps only one has a credit card or a joint account.
Cash or debit card rule.

British guilt...... even knowing all about the grey-import sites I bet you want to throw the dog a bone when you go into your local B&M vape shop and punish them for an hour? Bag of cotton...bottle of juice......'ahh sod it I'll have that atty'

Stupidity....who the heck pays £65 for a bottle of juice?

[Perpetua]

Incredible as it is to us . . . . not everyone shops online, finds a forum or group to point them in the right direction of competitive deals.

I was chatting to a gent the other day who I meet on occasions dog walking, we got onto the subject of smoking/vaping - he'd stopped vaping as he was finding it too expensive buying eliquid from our local shop compared to his rollies, it had never occurred to him to look online.

Partly I think in his case it was also the lack of confidence in knowing where to look - a B&M shop gives a certain feeling of ' security ' which buying blind off the internet doesn't always give.

[Chrissie]

Sept 3, 2016 16:56:41 GMT ghostrider1971 said:

I went to my local B&M again today....saw some eye-popping sights!

1) 100ml of Element ejuice - £65 (Yep....£65!) - also saw another juice (locked in a glass cabinet!) for £38 for 30ml...

2) Aspire Cleito - £25 (Bought another one on Amazon for £16 today)

3) Wismec RX200 - £65 (Seen them for £35 online)

How do these places survive? I know that some have great people who give good advice, do minor repairs etc and understand they have rent/wages/utilities etc

I wonder what will happen to them if/when the TPD kicks in? Will it have an effect?

I appreciate that some people don't like buying online/waiting for postage/want to see what they are buying etc but at a 35-40% mark-up how do these places survive?

Blimey those really are inflated prices

[SteveF]

Sept 3, 2016 17:59:01 GMT Perpetua said:

Incredible as it is to us . . . . not everyone shops online, finds a forum or group to point them in the right direction of competitive deals.

I was chatting to a gent the other day who I meet on occasions dog walking, we got onto the subject of smoking/vaping - he'd stopped vaping as he was finding it too expensive buying eliquid from our local shop compared to his rollies, it had never occurred to him to look online.

Partly I think in his case it was also the lack of confidence in knowing where to look - a B&M shop gives a certain feeling of ' security ' which buying blind off the internet doesn't always give.

Absolutely Perpetua, not everyone shops online.

Excuse the waffle...

I was involved in the new start-up of a small B&M (not vaping) 4-5 years ago. Did well enough in the first year. £20k startup, finished that year owning £75 worth of stock outright with a gross turnover of £140k.

Not bad considering the stock purchases, still not that much in the pocket after taking 28% off for overheads. We didn't quite make miwlionaires Rodders

But I don't see much difference between that and the startup of our local B&M vape shop 15 months ago, if anything I think they started with much less and a lower margin than we did.  The B&M margin is roughly the same 30% reduction that we get from fastech or 15-20% from web based UK retail.

We had a majority of customers that didn't buy online, some who didn't even research online. We also had a good percentage that simply didn't want to buy something blind or without the B&M aftersales. Of course we had about 20% that purchased small items but came in expecting internet prices for larger stuff.
 And then there were punishers who simply wasted an hour of our time and used us as a showroom for internet purchases....not from us of course.

 We got screwed by the big companies that could buy bulk and were set up for internet retail. I mean placing single orders the equivalent of our annual turnover on a monthly basis with huge bulk purchase discounts. They could sell products for the same price as we bought them, a long way from the 'level competition' promise of our suppliers.

Walk in trade is still big, a lot of people like that personal touch so B&Ms are set to survive as long as they can offer a good variety of products, compete (within reason) with web based sale and importantly offer good service.

[lobeydosser]

Some time ago I wrote in here asking about what happens to my 24mg vaping after the TDP comes in and whilst some of you kind souls try to explain it to me, well I just didn't understand it all.
However I went into our local B&M shop the other day and the guy there not only explained sub-ohming to me but he also showed me the set up that would give me the hit I would require.
Only then did what others at AAE-C drop into place.

He was quite confident that TDP would have little effect on their Vaping Sales.

Certainly, of the 8 or 9 Vapers in this village, I think only 2 have ever bought anything online.
What, to me, is more important is that all of these non-online people found their way to Vaping through B&M Shops.
In other words, they heard about Vaping from somewhere and then went looking for somewhere where they could buy it.

I think that us who are in an online group forget that the majority of Vapers are using the B&M Shops for all of their supplies.