Once upon a time vape advertising was at the forefront of many store owners minds, but leading up to the Food and Drug Administrations deeming regulations, those terrorizing regulations would be all many are worried about. What this article is more directed to is addressing some of those questions and concerns by store owners, to give them the real hard facts of how the FDA regulations will effect the vape advertising sector of the industry, what vape store owners are doing post FDA regulations, why they should continue to build and develop their brand, and to provide information on what they should do going forward.
Notice: Due to the large amount of information provided in this article, we have split the article up into 4 Pages.
The FDA’s Stance on Vape Advertising
There are many store owners that believe the FDA’s deeming regulations will dramatically effect the vape advertising sector of this industry, but that is further from the truth than you think. If you’re currently waiting to “see what will happen” over the coming months or years, you’re setting yourself and your business up for a drawn out demise.
We all know that the vaping industry is rather small compared to other industry types, but even though it’s small, there are many businesses within the space — you may have heard some referring to the vaping industry as “saturated”. To break this down and to give you a better outlook of just how cramped this compact industry has become, Norm Bour from Vape Mentors claimed in the start of 2015 that there are about 6,000 – 7,000 vape shops in the United States, but if you count in the amount of convenience stores, drug and food chains, smoke shops, head shops, and mass market retailers, those numbers would be closer to about 35,000.
There are others that have sourced cold call centers that estimate the number to be around 12,000 vape shops in the United States today. For comparison, HighBeam Business reported statistics that in the late 2000’s, nearly 7,000 establishments were engaged in the retail sale of cigarettes, cigars, tobacco, and smokers’ supplies. What’s fascinating about this is that data was provided on Statistic Brain that there are roughly 45,000,000 smokers in the United States, while there are only 2,750,000 vapers in the United States.
Now that you’re aware of just how saturated the vaping industry and its market has become, it’s clear to see that “waiting” on hope or change will not lead vapers into your shop or to your store, and it certainly doesn’t help you sell your product and turn a profit. If you take any advice from myself or this blog in general, as a store owner you must continue to fight for your business, you must continue to think positive, and never roll over to play dead.
Continuing on to the topic at hand, Greg Conley – the American Vaping Association President & longtime vaping advocate, has shared in the past that “there are no advertising restrictions in place, other than modified risk claims.,” meaning that the advertising sector of the vaping industry was left nearly untouched by the Food and Drugs Administrations deeming regulations.
