Old tobacco playbook gets new use by e-cigarettes

[beevul]

60. Heres the thing.

"on the other hand, if you look at how the market works, that "TONS of vaping companies" will be down to a few within a few years, and they will all be owned by the big tobacco companies."

That is a worry for some of us...but the problem for the tobacco companies, is that while they no doubt understand the nature of their tobacco products, they do not understand vaping. That's why some of them are buying instead of building, and the ones that are building, are building a poor product from the viewpoint of those that use them.

Heres what a vaper knows that tobacco companies don't:

The device I use, for example is this:



That's just the power device - that is, it provides the power to a heating coil to vaporize the juice. This particular one is an anyvape cvi-2, but there are a plethora of them, google up vamo, or smokteck sid, or sigelei zmax, or gripper, or provari. you'll likely get more than you bargained for lol. Those are just a few of many out there.

Inside it uses these batteries:



They're referred to as 18650 format batteries - 18 mm wide, and 65.0 mm tall. There are several others, such as 18350 for example, but the 18650 format is the dominant format.

The juice containing portion of my setup is like this :



That's a tank, inside which fits the cartridge shown. The cart has one to three holes in it which allow the juice to keep the inside of the cart around the coil wet, and provide consistent vapor when heated. the drip tip fits inside the business end of the cart, and the streaded end of the cart threads into the device.

Assembled, with juice in it, and threaded on a device it looks like this:



Now, from the outside, it might look, or even seem, to some people, that using all that is a bit extreme...and that's just one of the mistakes tobacco companies are making.

Heres a pic of a blu ecig vs real:




That blu ecig lasts an 1-3 hours before needing charging, and about the same before the cartridge needs topped off.

The setup I showed you - the device and battery...well, for a heavy vaper like myself, the battery lasts 1-2 days before being swapped to a fully charged one.

The cartridge and tank I showed you - lasts a full day before needing a refill, and the cartridge itself lasts 1-3 weeks before wearing out, and needing to be changed to a new one.

Put simply - the tobacco companies don't have any idea just how inferior no matter the quality, of the product they're working on, but the people that use these things most certainly do.

And that is why they'll fail.

People go into switching thinking they want a "cigalike". My SO and I did. Everyone we know whos made the switch has. And to the last, it only takes a very short time before one realizes that cigalikes just don't cut it. Its much less about the size of the device, and much more about whether the device gives the person what they need to fill the void that smoking took up.

We started the the mystics which are disposable. They flat out suck, they taste terrible, they fall apart, and they have way too short battery capacity.



We moved on to halo - another company and their G6 model:



They are good quality, but they still miss the mark in terms of how long the batteries last, and needing to charge them. They are somewhere along the line of 280mah battery capacity. By way of comparison, the batteries myself and my SO use are 3400 mah.

All of the above "cigalike" batteries also have the downside of giving one different vapor, throat hit, and experience when the battery is fully charged, versus half life, versus almost needing recharge, because the heating coil in the cart makes different heat/vapor/taste differently at different voltages.


Then we moved to "ego style batteries, and variable voltage/variable wattage - which i'll refer to as variable power from here on out/. Variable power allows one to adjust the heat of the heating coil within the cartridge up or down, basically allowing one to adjust the vapor level and throat hit and flavor up or down. Not only that, but it also gives the same heat at any given power level, and therefore the same level of vapor, throat hit, and flavor, whether the battery is fresh, mid level charge, or almost needing a recharge.

I realize I covered a lot there, but these are things that nobody outside of vapers, including the tobacco companies, would have the slightest idea of. They also happen to be the things that make vaping able to fill the void left by smoking when one switches though.

Again, this is why they'll fail. Sure, they'll get some one off sales. Lots of them even. But people do and will move on to devices that better fit a void that only they can understand.


As far as marketing to kids...well, you look up just about any vape shop, and they only sell to adults. After being off the analogues only a month or so, tobacco tasted terrible to us, and we wanted something different - whether it was bakery type flavor, or sweet mixed drink sort of flavor. Anything but tobacco. Most others I talk to share that experience.

Also studies are coming to light, that are calling into question, just how much effect nicotine without the other chemicals and the maoi inhibitors really has on heart disease. I'll see if I can dig them up.

Sorry for the length, but vaping, and e-cigs are a far far more complex thing than most would believe at first glance.