drdave

Good evening everyone,
Has anybody run into stock and availability problems with the smaller state side etailers? I have been doing quite a bit of business with a couple of them, (no names), and have noticed a trend. It seems that some of the smaller guys are having problems anticipating customer demand and are just getting swamped. I am sure that some problems are being generated by customs confiscating product and so forth. A few of these sites have over half their product in backorderd delays. I would never expect a startup to be 500 units deep in one product line but running out of spare parts seems a bit unacceptable. I am pretty new to the whole e-cig thing, is this how it normally works? Do ecig companies wait until they are critically short on product before placing an order? I'm not talking about the custom work stuff, a delay there is anticipated. Input on this would be appreicated.

godling

Shipping from China will often take a week even with no issues through customs. A week is a long time on the internet, a lot can happen. Someone new to eCigs will read about the FDA and stuff and panic ... you're inventory is looking just fine when all of the sudden they buy you out of atomizers. Of course, the last two weeks were really slow, so you already tied up all your cash in a new product to try and build up sales. So now, you're out of cash, out of atomizers, and have 3 different customers asking why you don't have the soanso accessory for the new product.

Or, there's that other option ... they are spending all their spare cash on the new collectible whatchamajig and should be paying better attention to the business they are trying to run.

VaporFiend

I think one of the problems that USA dealers are running into is, trying to get a large order through customs. ($2500 or so). When we are talking about a small Mom and Pop operation and customs keeps your $2500, you may be SOL.
It's one thing to open a website and say,"we're open!" but absorbing thousands of dollars lost, because of a side business, can really hurt.
One way to avoid it is to make multiple small orders, but your profits get chewed up in shipping and the higher costs associated with a small quantity.

Lazarus

A buddy of mine opened up a e-cig shop with some real $$ backing.

Half of his first orders (almost $5k worth) from China got snagged by US Customs in Chicago, that was over a month ago.

Lucky him though, he just got word yesterday that they were being released.

If you decide to open shop, you will need multiple locations to ship to in the US. Customs varys widely from city to city in the US. My friend found out the hard way.

Rocketman

Laz, size matters.
Shipping is where I think a lot of profit is taken from our friendlily sellers here. Even for small orders. I was pricing something from one of the foreign guys I buy from and EMS jumped from $12 to $20 as I crossed $100. I played with the weight and it didn't affect it. is 12% reasonable for a larger order? We calculated one suppliers shipping at 7 per kit for 12 kits and I think it was higher than that, maybe 20%? I've also heard that combination orders of kits and juice get hit hard. And kits with "books". I feel for anyone that losses money because of our bureaucrats. I never send anything back for replacement unless I really, really feel it wasn't my fault. Kept a few failures because I knew it was a 'newbie doobie'
Rocket

TrueSmoker

Customs in Chicago got a ton of my stuff awhile back who did he hear from that his stuff will be released? Any info is appreciated cause my stuff been there for 2+ months already