Tag: retail

ElF Bar Pulled From UK Shelves for E-Liquid Volumes

Elf Bar vapes are being sold with e-liquid volumes more than 50 percent over the UK’s legal limit, an investigation has found, according to reporting in Metro.
The Chinese vaping giant admitted “inadvertently” breaking the law and ‘wholeheartedly apologized’ following lab tests of its 600 brand of disposable vape pens.
E-cigarettes bought at branches of Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons contained between 3ml and 3.2ml of e-liquid, when the legal limit is 2ml (the article states the liquids were over nicotine limits, but there is no evidence of that. The UK limits nicotine strength to no more than 20mg/ml).
The brand, which only launched in 2021, sells 2.5 million Elf Bar 600s in the UK every week, accounting for two in three of all disposable vapes. The devices cost £5.99 each.
An Elf Bar spokesperson insisted the “highly regrettable situation” did not affect the safety of its vapes.
Mark Oates, director of the consumer advocacy group We Vape, said, “The Mail’s findings on Elf Bars are deeply worrying, and it is clear there have been failings on multiple levels.
“Not only are the levels of e-liquid too high, but checks to make sure these guidelines are adhered to either haven’t occurred or are insufficient. Anyone supplying vapes in the U.K. market should be following the legislation.
“It is incredibly frustrating when major players in this sector appear to behave in a way that damages the reputation of something as beneficial as vaping, and we expect the matter to be fully investigated by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).”
February 6, 2023
Milwaukee, Wisc. Wants to Ban New Vape Shops

Credit: FellowNeko
Leaders in the U.S. city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, debated a proposal for an ordinance Tuesday that would prevent some electronic cigarette sales across the city in the future.
“The explosion of vape shops, particularly when concentrated in a small geographic area, may have harmful impacts on the public health, safety, and welfare of our residents,” said Milwaukee’s District 3 Alderman Jonathan Brostoff, according to CBS58.
Part of the Milwaukee Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee meeting Tuesday morning discussed a plan to prevent new vape shops from doing business in the city.
The proposal would prevent new shops from selling e-cigarettes for six months.
During this trial period, officials would also prevent other businesses from opening if they plan on selling e-cigs.
“Part of the goal of this is going to be, ultimately, to look at both concentration and location–for example, proximity to schools, things of that nature,” added an Alderman.
Neighborhood Services Commissioner Erica Roberts said this request would be complicated for a number of reasons.
“There are many different types of uses that would sell this type of product, everything from grocery stores to gas stations, convenience stores…” Roberts expressed.
February 1, 2023
Juul2 Wins UK Retailer’s Product of the Year Award

Taking Retail’s Product of the Year 2023 for the Vaping and Heated Tobacco Products category has been awarded to Juul Labs’ new Juul2 system following an independent nationwide survey of 8,000 adult consumers.
Juul2 was launched in April 2022 following a successful pilot launch on the brand’s website, according to Talking Retail. The rechargeable pod-based system was updated from previous versions with new technologies and features, which the brand said includes the capability to combat potentially harmful and compatible pods.
“We are extremely proud that our commitment to product quality and innovation has been recognized by the voters who awarded Juul2 this accolade,” said Efe Abebe-Heywood, senior director of communications and brand at Juul Labs UK. “Our new Juul2 system has marked a step change in vapor technology, providing adult smokers with a product that more closely resembles the consistency and experience of combustible cigarettes to support them on their switching journey.
“Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the UK, and we remain committed to our mission at Juul Labs to transition even more adult smokers from cigarettes, while combating underage use.”
The award also coincides with the launch of a new Juul2 Blackcurrant Tobacco variant – a classic tobacco flavor with ripe blackcurrant notes, which further extends the Juul2 portfolio in the UK.
The new Blackcurrant Tobacco Juul pods launched on the brand’s website in January and will be rolled out across all major retailers nationally from early February.
In the U.S., Juul2 is under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
January 27, 2023
New Chicago Vape Shops will Need Permit From City

Credit: Stephen VanHorn
New businesses in the U.S. city of Chicago that get 20 percent of their income from the sale of vaping products will now be required to obtain a special city license. There is no moratorium clause.
The ordinance from 41st Ward Ald. Anthony Napolitano, which passed by voice vote Wednesday, also restricts how closely such shops can operate from each other.
“The devil is always in the details, but a model that permits new stores to open appears more consumer-friendly than the possibility of moratoriums,” said Gregory Conley, director of legislative and external affairs for the American Vapor Manufacturers Association.
Napolitano’s original proposal would have given the City Council authority to place moratoriums in specified areas on future tobacco retail licenses, which are required in Chicago to sell cigarettes, vapes and other smoke products.
The newest legislation, which exempts existing vape shops, comes as the city has moved to crack down on electronic cigarettes, which have lately been a target of a broad coalition of aldermen and Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
But those working in vape shops have countered that their products have helped many adults quit traditional cigarettes, and existing constraints have failed to keep the electronic ones out of children’s hands. They worry the legislation would further hurt small businesses without making a dent in preventing youth addiction.
January 21, 2023
Report Finds Vape Sector Boosts UK Economy

Photo: VPZ
The vape industry has had a considerable positive impact on the UK economy, according to a new report compiled by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) on behalf of the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA).
Valued at £2.8 billion ($3.36 billion) in 2021, the UK vape sectors supports almost 18,000 full time-equivalent jobs in retail, manufacturing and supply chain. What’s more, smokers abandoning cigarettes in favor of less-harmful e-cigarettes has saved the National Health Service (NHS) more than £300 million in 2019 alone, according to the report.
Even as many businesses suffered in recent years, vape retail stores have bucked the trend and represent one of the biggest growing sectors since the first decade of the 21st century when they started to appear for the first time.
From 2017 to 2021, the UK vape sector’s turnover grew by 23.4 percent to £1.33 billion last year alone. When indirect economic benefits such as supply chain support and the spending power of vape sector workers is factored in the economic impact more than doubles.
In 2021, the vaping industry paid £310 million in taxes to the British exchequer.
CEBR estimates that the vaping sector saved the UK £322 million in smoking-related healthcare costs in 2019. The research organization reckons that if 50 percent of smokers switched to vaping, the potential healthcare savings would have been £698 million in 2020.
Meanwhile, the gain in economic productivity associated with smokers switching to using vaping products was estimated to be £1.3 billion in 2019. If 50 percent of remaining UK smokers switched to vaping, this would increase to £3.33 billion, according to the study,

In little over a decade vaping in the U.K. has grown from very much a ‘cottage industry’ to one of the fastest growing sectors in not just retail, but the whole economy.
John Dunne, director general, UKVIA
“The findings of the vaping industry’s first ever economic impact report demonstrates its significant success as a fast-growing disruptive sector,” says Owen Good, head of economic advisory at CEBR.
“Whilst many high street retailers have suffered in recent years, the vaping sector has bucked the trend, with significant growth both in-store and online. Even the effects of the pandemic have not significantly hampered the sector’s growth.
“The sector’s growth has been hugely beneficial to the U.K. economy; businesses and their employees directly involved in the industry and those running operations across the wider supply chain; and the NHS which has seen a massive cost saving with increasing numbers of smokers switching to vaping in order to quit their habits.”
“In little over a decade vaping in the U.K. has grown from very much a ‘cottage industry’ to one of the fastest growing sectors in not just retail, but the whole economy,” said UKVIA Director General John Dunne in a statement.
“More people than ever are vaping and by all measures this is a true British success story, creating employment and wealth, generating precious revenue for the government through taxation while at the same time saving the NHS more than £300 million a year through people switching from smoking to vaping.
November 29, 2022
New York Issues First Retail Licenses for Marijuana
Credit: Spyrakot
New York regulators last week issued the first 36 marijuana retail licenses for an adult-use market that officials insist will open by year’s end.
That timeline took a positive turn when the state’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) announced it would allow qualifying businesses to launch delivery services before opening their retail stores, a significant change from other recreational markets, according to MJBizDaily.
“This will help jumpstart sales and enable these small business owners to generate capital and scale their operations,” the regulatory agency tweeted Monday.
New York adult-use retailers are projected to generate $1 billion-$1.2 billion in sales next year, growing to $2.2 billion-$2.7 billion by 2026, according to the 2022 MJBiz Factbook.
Regulators said 28 of the retail license winners went to individuals with marijuana convictions or family members who’d been arrested for cannabis.
The other eight licenses went to nonprofits.
The first group of Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary (CAURD) license winners include:
Capital District Cannabis & Wellness.
Essential Flowers.
Kush and Kemet.
Gotham CUARD.
NYCCABUDS.
The agency is reviewing 903 CAURD applicants, the state’s version of social equity, to issue the first 150 adult-use licenses, as well as helping them lease and fund operations through a proposed $200 million social equity cannabis fund.
November 26, 2022
FTC Report Shows Surge in Sales of Disposable Vapes
Credit: Andriy Blokhin
The Federal Trade Commission’s second report on e-cigarette sales and advertising across the U.S. shows sales of flavored disposable e-cigarettes and menthol e-cigarette cartridges surging dramatically in 2020.
The coincides with a federal ban on the flavored cartridges for closed systems. Regulators state that closed systems were popular with youth, so the FTC report suggests that youth e-cigarette use has shifted to disposable flavored products rather than declined.
The report also found that the distribution of free and discounted e-cigarettes reached record highs.
“This report shows that youth are still at risk from flavored or deeply discounted e-cigarettes,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Marketers of e-cigarettes have proven skillful at evading FDA regulation and hooking youth on addictive products.”
The FTC has been reporting on tobacco sales annually since 1967 and smokeless tobacco sales since 1987. Last year, the agency expanded its studies of industry and published its first-ever report on e-cigarettes.
This year’s e-cigarette report covers sales and advertising data from 2019 and 2020, a period in which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration published an enforcement policy banning the sale of flavored e-cigarette cartridges other than menthol.
Overall, the report found that total e-cigarette sales, which had increased from $304.2 million in 2015 to $2.046 billion in 2018, grew to $2.703 billion in 2019, but then declined to $2.24 billion in 2020. The FTC report notes that the 2020 decline may not represent the market given major industry shifts. Key findings in the report include:
Significant shift to flavored disposable e-cigarettes: Publicly available sources indicate that the sale of disposable e-cigarettes – which are exempt from the FDA’s 2020 policy – increased substantially, with “other” flavored disposable products making up 77.6 percent of all disposables sold in December 2020. The FTC’s data did not show an increase in disposable sales. However, FTC’s data likely does not represent an accurate picture of the market for disposable e-cigarettes. Only two of the five companies submitting data for 2019-20 continued to market disposable e-cigarettes in 2020, and those that did provided more limited offerings. In order to improve the representativeness of its industry sales data for future FTC reports, the FTC recently sent orders to four additional e-cigarette companies.
Major increase in menthol cartridge sales: Similarly, the report found that the sale of the remaining non-FDA-banned flavored cartridge, menthol, increased significantly, to 63.5 percent of all cartridges sold in 2020.
Record high e-cigarette discounting: The data also reveal that price discounting for e-cigarettes reached a record high of $182.3 million in 2019, and, although it decreased slightly in 2020, such discounting still represented the largest category of ad expenditures by e-cigarette manufacturers.
Doubling of nearly free e-cigarette samples: The data collected for 2019-20 suggest that spending on the sampling and distribution of free and deeply price-discounted e-cigarettes more than doubled in just two years, making it the second-largest spending category in 2020. This occurred because, after the FDA banned tobacco product sampling in 2016 to limit youth access, some companies began offering e-cigarettes for $1 (or even less) in an apparent attempt to get around the ban.
“This report shows that partial bans on certain types of flavors for certain types of e-cigarettes are unlikely to be successful in achieving a reduction in youth addiction to nicotine via e-cigarette usage,” the FTC wrote in statement.
The Commission vote approving the FTC’s E-Cigarette Report and related data tables for 2019-20 was 5-0.
August 31, 2022
Global Disposable Vape Market to Reach $6.3 Billion in 2022

Credit: Adobe Stock
The global disposable e-cigarettes market size is expected to be valued at $6.34 billion in 2022, according to new research.
With growing demand for non-tobacco products owing to rising health concerns among others, the overall demand for disposable e-cigarettes is projected to grow at a CAGR of 11.2 percent between 2022 and 2032, totaling around $18.32 billion by 2032, according to a report from Future Market Insights (FMI).
The rising traction of using disposable e-cigarettes among consumers is expected to accelerate the market in the forthcoming years, according to FMI.
New and innovative products to comply with the growing demand for these products among consumers are being launched by many market players.
In January 2021, Dinner Lady, a U.K.-based vape brand launched a disposable vape pen, for example.
North America dominated the disposable e-cigarettes market and accounted for the maximum revenue share of 49.8 percent in 2021.
The increasing popularity of flavored disposable e-cigarettes offered by brands such as Puff Bar, Vuse, and Suorin, is one of the major factors that is expected to drive the growth of the industry in the region.
August 10, 2022
New York State Eyes Facial Recognition for Vapor Sales
Credit: America_stock
The New York State Senate is moving forward with proposed legislation that would allow bars and restaurants to use facial recognition or fingerprint scanners to verify someone’s age before they buy alcohol, tobacco or electronic cigarettes, according to the New York Post.
“This is the new frontier of age verification,” said state Sen. James Skoufis, who is sponsoring the biometrics bill. “It does advance the interests of convenience.”
Skoufis envisions that bars and restaurants could scan fingerprints, faces or retinas of customers who want to be spared the trouble of showing an ID when they return to an establishment in the future. The proposed legislation requires all data to be encrypted and prohibits businesses from selling biometric data to third parties.
“No one’s forced into engaging with this technology, but they would have the choice,” Skoufis said. “There’s no big brother involved.”
April 25, 2022
More Jamaicans Embracing Vaping to Quit Combustibles
Credit: Luzitanija
Jamaica has seen a rise in e-cigarette sales. In a recent interview with the owner of local vape shops, a story in the Jamaica Observer states that increasing number of Jamaicans are turning to vape retail outlets across the island to curtail their smoking habit.
Ravn Rae, the owner the Mez Vape & Smoke Shop, which has been in operation since 2013, says they have received countless testimonials from its local and international customers, who have used Rae’s vaping products to help them successfully quit tobacco smoking.
The shop has locations in Kingston and Montego Bay and Rae told the newspaper that she prides herself on only selling “authentic, certified, quality-assured and proven products to buyers” that are over 18 years of age.
“I have even been visited by parents on numerous occasions seeking safer vape products to help their adult children quit smoking,” she attests. “The good thing about vape products is that they have been proven to be much safer alternatives to combustible cigarettes and the level of nicotine in vape products can be determined by the buyer.”
Flavors other than tobacco are also popular with adult Jamaican consumers, according to Rae. She revealed that some flavor profiles are also more effective than others “as these are not the generic flavors that smokers typically associate with traditional tobacco cigarettes.”
April 11, 2022