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Juice Broker? Why Didn’t I Think Of That?
For quite some time now, especially after retail vape shops began opening up around the country faster than Starbucks, I wondered how shop owners figured out which eliquid brands to carry in their stores, and how much of an inventory they need to carry. Call it a ‘thought experiment‘ if you want… Because the industry is so young, and vape retail shops are even younger, there are no ‘tried and true’ methods that can help a shop owner know what type of eliquid, what flavors, and what nicotine levels are going to sell, and how much will sell. The result, more often than not, is carrying too much inventory, or too little, until the shop owner learns enough about his or her customers to order correctly.
When a shop owner carries too little stock it’s easily fixed by purchasing more, but only if the shop owner pays careful attention to not only which brands are selling well, but which flavors of that brand and what nicotine strengths in those flavors. It’s a lot more complicated than many people imagine, but at least buying more stock can be done quickly.
But what about overstocking? There is no ‘credit’ in the business of wholesaling eliquids to vape shops, or at least I don’t know of any, so buying stock for a vape shop is a gamble. And if you buy too much, or you’re so inexperienced in general retail business practices you buy eliquids that you like without regard for local demographics because, well, if you like them then surely your customers will too, it could be a fatal mistake.
It doesn’t take long to discover that the ‘tastes’ of your customers is subjective and fickle, and unless you have the staying power (read: money) to ride out the early mistakes every shop owner makes when they first open, success is anything but assured.
If a shop owner has shelves of eliquid that isn’t popular among their customers it going to sit there and collect dust. Every bottle that sits on the shelves, or in the stockroom, that isn’t being sold equals money invested without a return on that investment. Worse still, most eliquid brands don’t exactly have liberal return policies.
What’s A Shop Owner To Do?
Up until recently there wasn’t much of anything a vape shop owner could do about his or her unsold eliquids other than mark them down below wholesale in hopes they finally sell. In the meantime, the funds that the shop owner needs to stock the right eliquid brands, the right flavors, and with the right amount of nicotine, not to mention vape gear, can be impossible to earn. Make too many mistakes like that and before you know it that vape shop is so financially crippled the chances of going out of business increase greatly.
Solutions
If you’re a vape shop owner with an overstock problem what choices do you have other than a clearance sale? What you need, in my opinion, is someone, or some company, that you can contact whenever you need to sell off your overstock in one fell swoop so you have the necessary funds to stock eliquids that actually do sell to your particular customer base. Makes sense to me.
Clearance sales, when they work, allow for small amounts of money to trickle in, it is not a good solution.
These thoughts have crossed my mind before, especially when the vape shop owner is a friend and just starting out. I’ve always known that a vape shop owner needs time to get to know their customers and what they look for in both eliquids and vape gear, and I’ve known that the best way to clear out inventory that isn’t moving is to find a company that can take it off your hands with minimal losses and minimal hassles. What I didn’t know is that such a company already exists, and the business model seems, to me anyway, to be a win-win-win all the way around.
Juice Broker
The idea is simple, and the benefits of such an idea are plentiful. Juice Broker is a company that benefits both shop owners and everyday vapers. Let’s take a look at how the concept of a juice broker works.
The Vape Shop Owner
To illustrate it how Juice Broker works to the benefit of a shop owner I’ll use an analogy that should be easy to relate to. In this scenario I’ll be the owner of a vape shop that opened for business recently.
Spinfuel Vape Shop
As a passionate believer in vaping, and as a vaper for the past 4 years, I decided that because there wasn’t a single vape shop in my town that I would invest my savings and open one.
In a matter of weeks my very own Spinfuel Vape Shop opens to much fanfare, and from the comments made by my 
customers and the number of free samples I gave away on opening day, the future looks bright. Everybody loved the place, and I’m off to a good start. Now I just need to stay on course to insure my continued success.
In order to put my best foot forward on opening day I invested in minimal amounts of eliquid in a maximum amount of brands. I figured the more brands I carried in the beginning it would tell me which brands my customers want to see in my shop. I would then decide on the top 10 brands and carry those on a continuous basis.
After things settle down and I blow through my initial order of samples I’m now putting together my first big order. I found out during the first couple of days that my customers seemed to like fruity flavors the most, and 11-12mg nicotine strengths, so I decide that the bulk of my order would be fruity blends at the middle of the road nicotine strengths. In another couple of days the big order arrives and I stock my shelves, sit back and wait for the money to roll in.
Only it doesn’t.
As it turns out, the big crowd of customers that visited my shop on the first day was coming out to see the shop and cop some free samples. My “real” customers, the vapers that live in nearby neighborhoods surrounding my shop, are vapers that enjoy tobacco flavors and desert flavors, and there are a whole lot of vapers that build their own low resistance coils, or use subohm tanks. So of course my big order missed the mark big time. Misreading the initial activity of the early customers basically wasted most of what I just ordered.
Now, after a month of carefully watching what my customers are buying, and what they are talking about, I narrowed my eliquid choices and my customers are happy as clams… but I have a couple of hundred bottles of very expensive eliquids (I only bought the high-end brands because I’m a high-end guy!) sitting in the backroom… steeping and not earning me a dime.
I tell my best friend about my overstock situation and I tell him I’m thinking about doing a massive clearance sale. He tells me that would be a mistake because my customers won’t bother to buy them, or they already would have, and the cost of putting together the promotion would wind up costing me even more money. Instead, my friend tells me to look around and see if there was some kind of company that would take my overstocked premium eliquids off my hands at a fair price. What I need, he says, is a juice broker.
So the next day I Google “juice broker” and among the first results is a website with the URL, juicebroker.com. I click it and I see that this business sells a lot of high-end labels, Suicide Bunny, P.O.E.T., Cyclops Vapor, 5 Pawns, and so on. I think to myself “I have a lot of these brands in my back room just sitting there! I wonder if they would be interested in my overstock eliquid?” and as soon as I complete that thought I see a large banner on the site that says;
Are you a shop owner with some overstock eLiquid? Let’s talk!
Perfect! I click the button, and ask them if they might be interested in my overstock juice. I include some details of what I have and no more than a day later they contacted me. I’m asked to send a list of every brand, flavor, nicotine strength, and how many of each and what size, and then I wait. A little while later I’m made an offer. I consider my options and decide that this is the best way to go, so I sell my overstock, get paid, and restock my store with eliquid I know my customers want. Juice Broker saved me a lot of money that would have otherwise been lost to me because at least now I got some of my money back and I can now afford to buy what I really need… Since then, whenever I might wind up with another overstock situation I know who to contact. And because this is a fickle business, there will be times when I have other overstock situations.
The Vaper
In this scenario I’m a vaper that loves high quality eliquids. I love those boutique labels; 5 Pawns, Suicide Bunny, etc., but I can’t afford to pay $1 per mL for them. Not only that, but I’ve only had limited exposure to these high-end brands and I have no idea if I would like all their flavors, and at $30 a bottle buying one I don’t like is an expensive mistake.
If only there was an online store that sold these high-end labels at a major discount. If I could find one I could try out a lot of different flavors without spending a lot of money. Not only that, but instead of spending $50 a month for 7 or 8 random eliquids in tiny bottles with an eliquid subscription plan, I could make my own choices and get 30mL bottles instead. Buying eliquid from a website like that is a much smarter way to spend money on “eliquid discovery”.
So I ask around, I do some Google searches, and I discover Juice Broker. Right there on the homepage are a bunch of super premium brands being offered for a whole lot less than I could buy them anywhere else. After 10 minutes of browsing I realize I discovered a gold mine. Now, when I want to look for a new and interesting eliquid I know exactly where to go first. Mission accomplished.
Juice Broker Is The Real Deal
I love the idea of Juice Broker, and I know most vapers will as well. This company is helping vape shops recover from purchasing mistakes and helping vapers discover great eliquids that are normally out of many people’s vape budget. It’s a simple idea, but a great one, and I have to wonder why it hasn’t been done before.
Bottom Line
If you own a vape shop and once and a while suffer from an overstock problem I urge you to contact Juice Broker before deciding to do anything else. See what they can do for you, you might be surprised.
If you are passionate about vaping and want to try out some very expensive brands at a major discount, then you should point your browser at juicebroker.com. Check out their FAQ and read how Juice Broker works, and how it can save you a lot of money as you explore some of the most high-end brands on the market.
You know, I always wanted to try some Cuttwood ejuice, as well as Drake’s Vape and Jimmy The Juice Man, but never wanted to pull that $30 trigger. Now I don’t have to. And neither do you. Cool, right?
John Manzione
