vape practitioners stay or leave

After the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration issued the "Notice on Further Protecting Minors from Vape" (hereinafter referred to as the "New Deal"), the vape industry committee of the China Electronic Chamber of Commerce A survey of "layoffs and losses of vape companies" was conducted. The survey yielded three results: severe losses in the entire industry, a sharp decline in industry employees, and excessive law enforcement.

Online bans, factory layoffs, over-enforcement, brand presses, etc. The bad news is endless like dominoes. So far, China, South America, Thailand, Canada and other countries have introduced restrictions on vape.

In the industry storm, some people left the field, and some people continued to adhere to it. The entrepreneurs were anxious and lingering, but also hoped to get out of the predicament.

In the first interview with reporters in early March last year, Linda was still introducing her second-generation product with great interest. On January 2nd, when he exchanged again, he had transformed and turned to cross-border e-commerce.

Linda said that her mentality before the transformation was difficult to choose from. After getting out of the predicament, she has reopened a new course.

Due to her busy career after the transition, Linda hasn't talked to vape topics with her friends for a long time. The last exchange was not long after the promulgation of the New Deal. The focus of the topic is: can I be an vape in the future? What if I do n’t do vape?

Linda, who entered the pit in 2012, is a veteran of the vape industry. He experienced making vape cross-border retail business to make a lot of money; he opened a foundry factory in Shajing with like-minded friends, but the factory closed due to product homogeneity and price war; he created his own after the player-level big smoke box came out Vape brands made dozens of times of retail profits; foreign governments suppressed the vape industry and fell to the bottom; when the vape pen was about to become popular, it started its own design and transformed its R & D and independent brands; Field and other stages.

2019 is the fourth year that Linda has been a brand. He does not have a professional operation team, no venture capital, and his operations are all supported by his own funds. After four years, I spent a lot of money for wrongdoing. If I persist, I can only embark on the road of debt. But he has real distress: "The actual situation of the family does not allow me to be in debt. I have elderly people to support and I plan to have children in the near future."

What really made Linda determined to "get out of the pit" were some things during 3.15 last year. The 6 minutes at the party made him foresee that the exposure was just a prologue, and there will be policy constraints in the future. During the same period, the second-generation products produced by its crowdfunding just happened to go online, and sales were severely affected. The platform was forced to go offline in the last few days.

After that, Linda began to gradually reduce capital investment and promotion. At the end of June, after the finished product inventory was almost cleared, it officially withdrew.

"If I didn't make a mistake and withdraw early, I would definitely have millions of stocks for Double Eleven at the end of the year, and it will be very miserable now." Linda said, looking back over the past 7 years, he went from curiosity, participation, obsession, delusion, Persist, doubt, deny, recognize, and finally leave the field, and figured out a truth: vape has passed the stage of making fast money, and the threshold for future employment will be high, and small self-funded entrepreneurial teams can hardly win.

As a veteran of vape foundry, lanbo is the same as Linda before the transformation-anxiety. The difference is that he is still insisting and does not have the initiative to leave the industry. Currently, in order to survive, he has to develop a "sideline" and become a practitioner with multiple occupations and identities.

In 2013, lanbo resigned from the research and development of Heyuan, an vape production plant, and rented a 300-square-meter factory building in Shajing with a friend, hired a dozen workers, and became the boss. According to him, the threshold for the vape foundry was very low at that time, and they had resources in hand, and they could start construction as soon as the factory was rented. "As long as you produce it, someone will definitely want it, and you don't need to run the market yourself." In Lanbo's memory, around 2013 was the best time for the vape pen business, and many of my colleagues came out of big factories such as Heyuan at that time Independent portal.

This "making money" didn't last long. Around 2014, Great Smoke overtook vape pen and became a fashion product. The performance of lanbo, which has been producing vape pen, has been impacted. "But this situation did not last long. Over the past five or six years, Da Yan and vape pen have been playing in turns. In exchange for popularity, our business has been stable and stable."

Relying on the rapid and strong vape demand in Europe and the United States, lanbo's foundry has developed step by step, and the number of employees has grown from a dozen to hundreds. The main business is still foreign trade.

But this year, Lanbo has felt the difficulties he has never experienced since he started his business. In his words, "You can't use a roller coaster to describe it, business will not be better after the Spring Festival in 2019, and it will decline like a cliff."

In June last year, Lanbo's vape manufacturer  began to lay off workers, cutting nearly a hundred employees in half a year. In July, when the capital market wind of the vape industry was the strongest, it did not come to the foundry of lanbo. In September, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement to strengthen the supervision of vape.

Restricted by European and American market policies, Lanbo wanted to expand other markets. Southeast Asia, the Middle East, South Korea, and Japan were all his considerations, but because of the lack of layout before, it was not easy to squeeze in for a while.

"My factory needs to survive. I have to survive. I do n’t talk about making money, but at least I want to keep the factory running. So I have to find a way to make money flow. I talked with friends a while ago and said that the hair removal instrument is good. Currently we are working on it. Develop this one. "Now, in order to survive, lanbo temporarily suspends the vape business and also serves as other businesses.

Lanbo told reporters that the current development of hair removal device business is only a temporary method, he did not want to leave the vape industry. "Unless the industry is completely gone."

On November 1, last year, Ou Junbiao and all vape entrepreneurs experienced an emotional roller coaster. "The newly emerging vape brand, they rely on online sales, more than 70% of vape sales in the domestic market are completed online." Jun-Biao Ou said that the new policy may be devastating for most vape brands, It is undoubtedly a major earthquake in the industry.

Ou Junbiao's business is mainly in overseas markets, and its products are sold to 68 countries. In 2019, under the call of "Fengkou", Ou Junbiao set out to expand the domestic market, doing promotion, recruiting teams, renting office space, and spent millions of dollars. As soon as it was ready, before the time came for production, it was caught off guard by the New Deal, and the backlog of inventory has not yet been cleared.

Recently, Ou Junbiao submitted a survey report to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, hoping that the decision-making level can truly understand the current situation and dilemma of the vape industry. At the same time, he is also trying to find a way for his brand.

"I will definitely continue to do vape to the end. At present, I can only refocus my business abroad and come back when the policy is clear." Ou Junbiao told reporters that it is difficult now, and tomorrow will be more difficult, but The day after tomorrow will be beautiful, depending on whether we can persist.