They say if you want to throw away money, then buy a boat. Apparently “they” don’t know anything about owning a vape website.
I owe the community a little bit of back ground, and explanation of what motivates me to show up here and keep feeding the wild animals instead of just letting nature take its course. And, I am on vacation right now, and that makes me want to rant, so stand by for a wall of text….
Here it is: I got into vape 2011/2012 by observing some friends use it to quit smoking. I was an officer in the US Marine Corps at the time and started handing out ciga-like devices and hangsen type juice to some colleagues who smoked. Was like magic for them.
Got out of the Corps (I joined later in life after already having worked and started several successful businesses and was never interested in a military career), and was dead set on starting something in Vape. Started visiting shops, testing hardware and juices…
“Double bottom line” was a popular business buzz word back then where you have 1) your financial bottom line, and 2) the social benefit/good that you do for the world, and helping people quit smoking was so obvious and ideal blend of these two. My grandfather died of lung cancer after picking up a cigarette habit in the Army occupying Germany following the War. All the shops I visited were purely marketing to adults helping them quit cigs.
Loyalty programs for turning in your analog, and customer quit counseling was standard. It was great and everyone was so excited about this super accessable and straight forward technology that could help you do things 90% of people failed at over and over.
After visiting about 100 small local vape shops (2012-2013 US Vape shops were essentially a DIYers Mixing room with a bunch of high ohm hardware for sale on a glass table) I realized that nobody was making Flavoring from the ground up for use in vape. It was all repurposed with existing consumer flavors from DIY beverage (Eg, Capellas coffee drops), Candy (Eg Flavor West hard candy supplies), Air freshner/perfume (eg TPA), and baking (Eg, Flavor Art) flavors. As I dug into the “competition” I realized that these companies really didn’t know anything about vape, except that they were the ones buying….
Funny thing, It turns out at the time a good friend was the owner of a third generation Family flavoring house based in the USA and he did extensive work for the big tobacco companies (spray flavoring loose tobacco)… Meaning his chemists knew all of the inhalation toxicology and suitable ingredients for making flavors in a vape as well.
We set out to make a new line of flavors that eliminated as many of the the hazardous inhalation compounds possible that we thought would help us pass over the regulatory hurdles FDA would eventually create. I launched the brand with 20 flavors for feedback to the reddit DIY_ejuice mods, and they let me post on the sub and hand out some samples without getting harassed. And that is how Flavorah was born.
The first golden Era of vape was from 2014-2017. That’s when I really fell in love with the vape community. Everyone was a flavor chaser. Everyone was excited to try the newest juice, and its what helped people break the chains of their tobacco habits. Got a new tank or coil- how does it taste? Got a new VV/VW chip-How does it taste? Got a new drip tip or squonk- How does it taste? Got a new crazy caterpillar basket fusion fishnet coil- How does it taste?
Flavoring was everything, and we (Flavorah) became the secret weapon of thousands of juice brands when everything else tasted like the same cap/fa/tfa. We were hoping that our prior work behind the compounding would result in our customers’ continued success since we were not going to need reformulations and V2/V3 flavors once things started getting regulated.
In 2017/18 salt nic became mainstream and people stopped caring as much about their flavors. 50mg salt nic in the US opened the door to younger people vaping, and its was what started to give vape a bad name (plus a heavy bolus of propaganda). The OGs still chased flavors or quit, but the newbies had a hard time navigating escaping the salt mines out there.
Since the beginning, my own journey and Flavorah’s has been rooted in DIY. Of course when I say that to this audience you know I mean vape, but after our Government decided in 2016 that there was too much tax and control to lose if they let vape progress and become mainstream, we have had to pivot our brand. No longer using the tag line, “Flavorah, the flavoring for Vape,” We now consider every kind of DIY as an in road to where the real money is for a flavoring company (commercial/trade accounts making millions of units of consumer products).
So, it’s the big brands buying our products by gallons and totes that keeps the lights on, but it’s the DIYers who mix stuff, criticize, and complain about everything that makes it better and keeps me motivated. DIYers remind me of the good old days. Most of us/them have not changed really. We are still flavor chasers. Freebase nicotine, or none at all.
I am sad when I think of all DIY resellers who seem to come and go so frequently. I am frustrated by my colleagues in the space who push out the sub-brand flavor lines based on something from a Chinese alibaba-lab or another rebottle of TFA or FA, or V5 inawera…. Whatever. Sadly, they are mostly in it for a quick buck and the tide is falling, not rising so it doesn’t last long. I hope someone committed survives long enough who can be relied on for UK resale of DIY flavoring. And I hope we all survive the race-to-the-bottom that is bar juice.
Notice how everything is always on sale? That means its about to go away… Get some if you want a memento or a collectible. Unfortunately, the culture of producing quality products for the long run is not very strong any more in this space (puff-bar anyone?). And since people have decided that cheap is better than good, that’s just what they prefer now, and its what they will get going forward.
I didn’t think I would ever have to say something like this, but I am actually worried now that some of the device makers (Vaporesso, Oxva, Uwell, etc.) could end up struggling since they are bundling cheap Chinese juice with their quality Chinese hardware. Snakes eating their own tails. What they should have been up to is partnering with indigenous brands and promoting the national ecosystem of craft, artisan and quality local juices to match up with their best new coils and pods. What an old Scot named Adam Smith called specialization, division of labor and opportunity cost.
If it wasn’t for the food and beverage industry anchoring our trade (flavoring), there would not be talented flavor chemists to refine and perfect the products.
And if it were not for national brands taking pride in their recipes and UK based production (think Dinner Lady, Mirage, Flooid, Aromaxy etc.) then there would not be flavor manufacturers like Flavorah offering to distract themselves for a small hostel full of deviants and bottle up their products in itsy bitsy droppers.
Us cheapskate DIYers are the guys who used to rescue half smoked cigs from ash trays. You won’t find a better group of neurotic, obsessive and thrifty scavengers. In fact, that’s exactly how I ended up owning this website and the other one (alltheflavors) … Abandoned early in life, still intact, still smoking, and worth risking a couple drags.
SO, here is what I’d like you all to think about in return for me footing the bills on this site:
• Buy your national brands with proper quality ingredients if you are going to buy commercial ejuice. If the Chinese won’t let their own people buy the latest bar salt, you think they will look out for you when they dump them all on the shops for free sale?
• Pay full price for your diy flavorings because the guy selling them is not making much, if anything hawking them to you. And it is YOU who will drive him out of business with your constant deal/discount shopping and customer service complaints. I miss Chefs Flavors, and they tried.
• Throw every disposable in the trash where it belongs and never stoop to that level again.
• Post your recipes. All of them. Help newbs mix them, and share extra juice you make with the ingredients printed on the label. You think something is so special that it needs to be a secret? Probably not that good then.
• Don’t be a jerk, and don’t get offended. This community has a future if it welcomes and teaches people about how to quit smoking and enjoy their vapes.
Seems like its been doing a pretty good job of keeping this website well run, long before I showed up. Lets make sure together that continues, so don’t be the guy/gal who messes it up. A wise Chinese proverb once said, “even the smallest fart can foul the largest elevator.”
TLDR: Have some respect and start at the top. There’s no shortcuts to a good vape. F-disposables!
And, thanks for telling us all a bit about yourself. With your credentials in the vape industry, it’s comforting to know that you didn’t take this place on just for the money…hehe. 
