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Do You Really Pay More When You Buy Vape Gear Locally?
Guest post by Jason Artman
Members of the vaping community have repeated the above statements so often that they continue to be taken as the gospel truth even today, several years into the history of the vaping industry. The fact is, however, that the industry has changed in a few critical ways. The idea that you’ll always save money when buying vape gear online isn’t necessarily correct anymore – and reading this article, you’re going to learn why buying from a vape shop near you like The Vape Bar is a better idea than ever.
Local Vape Shops Have More Competition Than Ever
One of the reasons why brick-and-mortar vape shops acquired a reputation for overcharging during the early years of the vaping industry is because many communities didn’t have multiple vape shops – so the vape shops that did exist in those towns could essentially charge as much as they wanted. The owners of those shops knew that they had little hope of winning over the people who normally bought their vape gear online and that most of the people who entered their shops were either doing so because they were new to vaping and needed a lot of advice – something that you can’t really get from an online vape shop – or because they needed to buy something right away and couldn’t wait for shipping. Lack of competition, in other words, was one of the biggest reasons why some local vape shops charged as much as they did.
Today, lack of competition isn’t really something that applies to local vape shops anymore because even medium-sized towns typically have multiple vape shops. As soon as a competitor enters the picture, prices invariably drop because it’s no longer possible for a single shop with no competition to fix prices at inflated levels. Local competition is one of the biggest factors helping to erode the price advantage that online vape shops once had over brick-and-mortar shops.
Local Vape Shops Always Have the Craziest Sales
If you have a local vape shop that’s been open for a long time, you have no idea of the amazing things you might find if you poke around and ask a few questions. If you’ve been vaping for a while, for instance, maybe you’re a fan of vintage vaping devices like the ProVari series or classic bottom-feeding rebuildable atomizers. At your local vape shop, you could potentially find a cache of replacement parts to help you keep your vintage equipment running. You may even find a collection of unsold devices. Local vape shops have little incentive to keep those vintage products on the shelves because most people are only interested in current products. If you’re interested in older equipment, ask some questions and be prepared to make an offer. A local vape shop with a stock of older products will probably be happy to let those products go for almost any reasonable price.
Buying a cache of unsold vaping hardware at well below the original retail price isn’t the only crazy deal that you might find at a local vape shop. Brick-and-mortar vape shops also often find themselves with supplies of e-liquid that they want to sell as quickly as possible. A local vape shop might have a large amount of vape juice on clearance because it’s nearing the expiration date, for example, or because the manufacturer has made a change to the product’s packaging. It’s okay for a vape shop to keep older hardware around until it eventually sells, but the same isn’t true of e-liquid. When vape juice is past its best-by date, no one will want to buy it – so the clearance prices for older e-liquid can sometimes be pretty crazy.
Whether you’re looking for hardware or vape juice, you’re definitely more likely to find an insane bargain locally than by buying online.
Regulatory Changes Have Made Shipping Vape Gear Expensive in Some Regions
One of the reasons why buying vape gear at a brick-and-mortar vape shop isn’t as bad of an idea from a cost standpoint as it once was is because competition and other factors have combined to bring local prices down. The other factor affecting this situation, though, is the fact that online vape shops – at least those in the United States – have become more expensive than ever thanks to recent regulatory changes.
The main regulatory change affecting online vape shops in the United States is one that was put in place in 2021, and it’s known colloquially as the vape mail ban. Under the new law, the United States Postal Service is no longer allowed to deliver vaping products to consumers. The other major parcel carriers – UPS, FedEx and DHL – all enacted similar bans in 2021. That has left online vape shops with no option except to ship products to their customers via private courier networks, which is substantially more expensive.
The United States also enacted a law last year that required all vape shops shipping across state lines to begin collecting extensive records and providing those records to the tax collection authorities in all states to which they ship. Between the increased shipping costs and the onerous record-keeping requirements, running an online vape shop in the United States has become more expensive than ever. Those new costs have largely been passed on to consumers.
You Can’t Put a Price on Supporting a Local Business
In this article, we’ve explained the major factors that have closed the price gap between online vape shops and brick-and-mortar stores. The statement that you’ll always save money by buying vape gear online simply isn’t true anymore – and getting a fair price isn’t the only good reason to buy your vaping supplies locally. The other reason is that buying locally means you’re doing your part to keep a local business running and to create jobs for people in your city. You really can’t put a price on that.
