If you’re looking to do something big for your local vape scene, here’s my story and my personal tips to create a local vape meet.
As many of you may have recognized by now, vaping and this website is a huge part of my life. In my eyes, Guide To Vaping has become very successful, but my second goal in my vaping career has always been to throw an event that I could be proud of, that others will enjoy and benefit from. The vaping scene has slowly picked up in my area and I’ve been contemplating on planning a meet sometime, which would complete the event goal I’ve had in mind.
Although I write on this site and have played a decent role in this industry, it’s felt to me like I’ve done a big share as far as the web goes, but that only puts me so far into this thing we call vaping. It was time to take it to the streets, literally. However, I was intimidated. I’m alright when it comes to sitting behind this screen and keyboard, and I’m not sure I can talk and express myself the way I do on this website. I’m just a 29-year-old guy, still looking fairly young, still a kid at heart and happens to be very passionate about electronic cigarettes and the culture behind them. I have no clue on how to plan a vaping event, even if a small local one. I don’t know where I should start, what I should do or who I should talk to. With that said, I began to think of a plan and then put it into action once and for all.
Here’s what I did…
1. Create A Facebook For Your Area
What you will first need to do is create a Facebook Group for your area. This will allow you to interact with vapers locally and will give you an insight of just how many people could attend your event. Since my area was slow to pick up on the vaping scene, I created the group a while back so that it could build in members as the scene matured. Choose a name for your group where it will be easy for people to search on Facebook. Here’s an example of how I worded mine: CityHere Vapers
2. Location of The Meet
Once you’ve built up some members on your Facebook Group, you can then talk with them and see who would be willing to attend the vape meet. Once you know you have an okay amount of people who will show up, it’s then time to pick a location. Most people who set up vape meets will go to a restaurant or a venue at a hotel. To escape the costs of renting a location, I decided it would be best to have the meet at a place where vapers already feel comfortable, such as a vape shop.
I’m not sure how it is where you live, but there are many vapers here that have their preferred vapor shops and I would hate for one vapor shop owner to feel uneasy about having a meet at another vapor shop other than theirs. With that said, I decided it would be best and fair to talk with the local vapor shops and ask them if I could hold the meet at their place. For an example, if you have 10 vapor shops in your area, each meet would be in a different shop. That’s 10 meets you can schedule.
Most vapor shops will be comfortable with letting you host a vape meet at their shop. Not only does it bring visitors and potential customers to them, but it also creates free advertisement for them. Some shops may even help with the snacks, refreshments and giveaways since you’re basically doing them a solid.
3. Scheduling The Vape Meet
When you schedule the vape meet with these vapor shops, you can choose to hold the meet at whatever time is best for you, the vapor shops and the people who will be attending the meets. What I thought would be best for my schedule and the schedule of vapor shops, along with those attending, is to hold a vape meet once a month. This will not only give the vapor shops a break and time to prepare, but it will also give myself time prepare for the meet with gathering snacks, refreshments, giveaway items or anything else needed. It also gives those attending the meet time to make plans to be available the day of the meet.
As for a date, to make things much easier, I figured a good day would be every third Sunday of the month for our local meets. Be sure to talk with the vapor shops and see what date would be best for them, but try to stick with the same date each month as much as possible so that those who are attending will know easily that the event date will be each month.
4. Planning Out The Meet
It isn’t hard to entertain vapers. To be honest, I can sit in a room with just one vaper for hours and talk until my mouth can’t move. With that said, don’t stress over what to do or what to say. These people will attend the meet for the friendly company alone. If you feel that your meet should be a bit more interesting than normal chits and chats, you can take some ideas from what I have planned.
- Have multiple giveaways.
- Share e-liquid samples. (you can contact e-cig companies to donate e-liquid for the event. most companies will do this since its free advertising for them)
- Find someone who is willing to build coils for RBA users.
- Announce to everyone where they can go to join your Facebook Group, if they haven’t already.
- Announce to everyone the sponsors of the event, if you have any. (companies that may have donated samples or products for the event)
- Announce to everyone any special deals or sales that the vapor shops may be running, and thank them for letting you hold the meet at their place.
5. Have The Vape Meet
When you go to the meet, don’t stress about anything. This day is supposed to be a day of friendly conversations, chill time and tons of vapor. If things don’t go exactly as planned and the amount of people you thought would show up didn’t, don’t worry about it. All it takes is you and friend for it to be a meet. By the next time you meet, more people will have heard about it and they’ll want to join in on the fun.
Are you planning a meet in your area? Let us know in the comments below!
