In a community with plenty of smokers and limited competition, starting a vape shop is potentially a very profitable proposition. There’s often a significant difference between the wholesale and suggested retail prices for vaping products, giving you plenty of breathing room to establish healthy margins for your shop. Some products are definitely more profitable than others, though, so it’s important to establish a good balance. You need to carry the products that people want, and you also need to carry the products that will make you the most money.
You want to run a successful vape shop, and we’re going to help you do that. These are the most profitable products that you need to carry.
Refillable Vapes
Refillable vapes like the XROS 4 will always be the crown jewels of any vape shop. Vape kits are often fairly pricey – and if you can manage to sell a refillable vape, you can be confident that the buyer will become a consistent customer because that person will always need e-liquid and replacement pods or coils. Those products can be even more profitable than starter kits, as we’ll explain in a moment. Although small pod systems are probably the most popular refillable vapes today, it’s good to carry a wide variety of different vapes. You’ll want to carry at least a few traditional pod systems along with some larger pod mods and full sized vape mods.
Bottled E-Liquids
Here’s where running a vape shop can be extremely profitable. Most bottled e-liquids are produced domestically, which means that they’re not subject to tariffs like Chinese-made vape hardware. Vape juice is also very inexpensive to produce, which means that the wholesale prices are often very reasonable and leave plenty of room for profit.
Remember that every time you sell a refillable vape, you’ve just created a potential new repeat customer who will return on a regular basis to buy vape juice – so it’s important to offer the widest possible selection. Every e-liquid brand has many different flavors, and you’ll want to carry multiple nicotine strengths for each flavor as well. Don’t forget that you’ll also need to carry both freebase and nicotine salt e-liquid.
Stocking your vape shop with e-liquid will require a substantial investment because there’s so much available, and everyone wants something different. Vape juice has a shelf life of about a year, though – so once you’ve purchased your initial stock, you can replace just the products that sell out and won’t have to worry about a major refresh for a while.
Replacement Pods and Coils
In addition to vape juice, everyone who buys a refillable vape will also need a constant supply of replacement pods and/or coils. As long as you carry the e-liquid flavors and strengths that your customers want, you can be confident that they’ll always buy their replacement parts from you as well because it’s convenient to do everything in one trip. To capture this repeat business, you need to make sure that you always have the necessary replacement parts for the vape kits that you carry.
Remember that vape pods and coils often come in multiple resistances, and different people have different preferences. A pod or coil with a higher resistance produces a cooler and smoother vapor, whereas a lower-resistance pod or coil creates bigger clouds with a more intense flavor. If possible, you’ll want to carry all of the available pod or coil resistances for the devices you sell.
Don’t forget that pods and coils aren’t the only vape accessories that people buy. If you sell vape tanks, it’s a good idea to carry the replacement glass for those tanks. If you sell mods with removable batteries, people will need to buy batteries in order to use those devices – so you should carry them. Other profitable and potentially useful accessories that you should consider carrying include external battery chargers, USB cables and carrying cases.
Disposable Vapes
You’ll need to carry disposable vapes in your vape shop because those are the most popular vaping products on the market today. It’s never a bad idea to steer customers toward refillable vapes given the profitability of those products, but there will always be some people who simply have no interest in using anything other than disposable vapes. If you don’t have what they want, you’ll lose their business.
Because a disposable vape only lasts a few days before running out of e-liquid, people who use these types of devices love to experiment – and brand loyalty is rare. That’s a good thing for you because wholesalers sometimes have trouble keeping certain brands in stock. Pay attention to customers’ requests and try to carry the most popular brands if you can, but you shouldn’t worry too much if you’re unable to stock a particular brand. People are always willing to try a new disposable vape that has a large flavor selection or an interesting new technical feature. You should make an effort to find and carry disposable vapes that would look exciting to you as a consumer. If you do that, you’ll have no trouble selling them.
Other Alternative Nicotine Products
Although vapes are the most popular alternative nicotine products today, they’re not the only ones that exist. Nicotine pouches and modern nicotine gums have also proven to be very popular, and people who visit vape shops are highly likely to be interested in them.
Nicotine pouches and gums aren’t quite as popular as vapes, but they’re great to carry as add-on items. Also, there are some people who use oral nicotine products but don’t vape, so carrying a selection of nicotine pouches and gum can potentially expose your vape shop to people who wouldn’t have purchased from you otherwise.
One of the important things to understand about modern oral nicotine products is that they come in a wide variety of strengths ranging from 2 mg to well over 10 mg. It’s a good idea to carry as many different strengths as you can because there’s no single strength that’s more popular than the others.
