Small Business Mistakes and Failures for Vape Shops [Tips & Tricks to Combat Them]

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Author: Simon CartagenaDecember 14, 2022

Small businesses like your brand new vape shop could be significantly harmed by small mistakes you didn’t even know before taking your first steps in the industry. Fortunately, we’ve been through the process ourselves and can take you through a list of the five most common small business mistakes that are waiting to happen.

Five Most Common Small Business Mistakes
Preparing for Out of Stock Items
Tips & Tricks for a Successful Online Vape Shop

Five Most Common Small Business Mistakes

Vaping seems like a simple, straightforward business. People want to vape for whatever reason, and you supply them with the products they need. Because vaping looks like it’s trendy, opening a vape shop is a gold mine waiting to be mined.

But this perception is far from true.

Sure, vaping sales are on the rise, and the business is booming. But selling vape products isn’t as simple as it would appear.

Regardless of whether it’s an online vape shop or a brick-and-mortar store, a vape shop is still a small business with mistakes waiting to happen. The fact that your vape shop is a part of the vape industry adds a layer of difficulty.

Five Most Common Small Business Mistakes | VapeRanger

You’ll find the usual small business obstacles like getting the inventory right and dealing with competition taking your clients away. But the industry itself will also add a degree of difficulty and an additional risk of failure with impending bans, regulations, and advertising decrees that you might not expect beforehand.
These are the five most common small business mistakes that vape shops make:

1. Overstocking Inventory

Depending on your inventory strategy, the cost to stock a vape shop properly for launch could oscillate anywhere between $7,000 and $30,000. The higher end of that range might be too much. It depends on what you're stocking and the type of products you're planning to provide to your customers.

Keep in mind that the best way to attract customers is to offer updated products and a mixture of different types of devices, flavors, accessories, and consumables.

These updates allow you to meet the product expectations of any customer that visits your site, helping you keep a wide variety of customers happy.

You will also want to concentrate on a single target audience the most. Diversifying your product portfolio could turn out to be counterproductive if you don't do it strategically.

Having too much of a product that your target market's core doesn't consume might result in loss or debt. Overstocking on inventory is a critical mistake and has been the demise of many small businesses that can't bear the impending debt.

Another way you might be thrust into overstocking inventory is if your supplier sells you on buying high minimum orders on the next big thing' in vaping or any other product you don't need.

Not to say that minimum orders for some items might not be worth it. But without feeling out the market and knowing your customers will buy it makes it a risky affair.

For one, you might find that your customers aren't interested in buying this new piece of equipment and get stuck with the inventory. You could also be purchasing a defective product without even knowing it, or even worse, if you don't entirely trust your supplier, you may again be running the risk of purchasing vape clones.

Inventory management strategies will determine how you purchase the products you offer, so the amount of risk you take could be calculated even if it is higher than that of other competitors. In the vaping industry, the next hot mod' comes along quite often, so there is a built-in risk to the industry in general.

2. Ignoring the Competition

Ignoring what the competition is doing means that your neglecting relevant information on your target market. Understanding your competitor’s business plan could give you valuable insight into the market, where you fit in, and who your customers are.

That said:

Not understanding who your customer is could lead you in the wrong direction when structuring your business plan. You could end up doing things that drive your customers away instead of luring them in.

On the other hand:

Doing what the competition is doing might also be a grave mistake. It’s important to assess who the competitor’s sub-niche market is and if that market is saturated or not. In some cases, having a similar product and service offering might make sense, but it could be your downfall in other cases.

Ignoring the Competition | VapeRanger

The product you offer will also determine who you’re purchasing your inventory from. The brand lineup your vape store carries is a crucial aspect of your business plan.

Not only because it will satisfy your clientele, but because you want to make sure you choose trustworthy suppliers. Companies that can provide products consistently with stable pricing and delivery dates may be more important than companies that deliver innovative products but are unreliable when it comes to giving.

3. Weak Customer Service

Most of the business-to-customer communication your vape shop will be doing passes through customer service.

If you run a brick & mortar vape shop, this implies training staff appropriately. Having a professional onsite team that knows their products ‘to the T’ could make the difference between a customer buying from you on the spot and even play a role in whether or not that consumer will come back to your store.

You need staff that understands the customer’s needs and knows which product will fulfill those needs well. It’s not always about selling the product that generates the most revenue because even if you do that, the customer might not be satisfied with it if it wasn’t what they were looking for.

An unsatisfied customer means one that won’t ever come back. The last thing you need is employees that don’t know the target market just as well as you do.

This requires training staff with standard procedures but also on proper sales techniques.

In the case of online vape shops, training staff is just as important. While direct contact with customers will not be as frequent, it is perhaps one of the essential variables to make a returning customer out of a potentially unhappy one.

4. Overlooking Social Media

It’s doubtful that you don’t include social media as part of your business plan. If you’re already employing the services of a marketing agency or advertising agency, or even if you’re doing both of these jobs in-house, having a social media presence ticks many essential boxes.

As the world becomes more social media aware, this platform is an essential part of any marketing and advertising strategy.

But more than just advertising your brand or vape store, more and more customers expect to be able to contact companies directly through social media. So, not having a social media presence and a team to manage it could imply you’re losing potential customers or making existing customers unhappy.

5. Disregarding Vape Industry Regulations

As briefly mentioned above, the vaping industry would be a gold mine for the taking if one of the significant entry obstacles weren’t so complex to understand.

Attorneys are not cheap, but disregarding vape industry regulations could mean violating the law and running into unnecessary fines that could harm a small business.

Disregarding Vape Industry Regulations | VapeRanger

Advertising regulations are continually changing and incredibly strict. This means that the primary way to get your name out there and have people know you may not be as easy as you first assumed it would be.

This is a common obstacle encountered by many new vape shop owners that initially thought about online advertising as the primary tool to attract customers. But then suddenly found themselves facing tons of Google Ad Keyword bans and other unexpected restrictions.

Not to say that you can’t advertise online. You can, but vape industry advertising regulations are many and continually changing, so it would be best to be aware of this beforehand.

Preparing for Out of Stock Items

Overstocking on inventory is a major ‘no-no.’ But not preparing for out-of-stock best-sellers could also be a hindering factor to your monthly revenue.

Although not as harmful as an over-sized inventory, it could mean that you lose a few customers than expected to find their favorite product in your store.

Tips & Tricks for a Successful Online Vape Shop

These are 15 of the most common tips and tricks you can apply to ensure your run a successful online vape shop. Sure, there is much more to it than a simple list of 15 items, but a nice summary couldn’t hurt.