Need an investor for my E-juice E-cig company
- Thread starter gattaca
- Start date
All roads (as always), lead to Mr. Wonderful. I'll make you an offer.
I'll give you the cash you need, but I want a royalty of $5.00 per bottle you sell until I get my money back. After that, my royalty drops to $4.00 per bottle in perpetuity.
Ignore these other fools, keep your equity - just pay me a royalty and let's make some money.
I'll give you the cash you need, but I want a royalty of $5.00 per bottle you sell until I get my money back. After that, my royalty drops to $4.00 per bottle in perpetuity.
Ignore these other fools, keep your equity - just pay me a royalty and let's make some money.
Depends how much time you spend labelling, I'm not incredibly familiar with labelling processes, but surely with enough care it should be near impossible to tell the difference?
Padded envelope - the more packaging you add, the more shipping costs go up for the consumer. People don't want that, I'd totally agree with you if we were talking about disposables/kits, but these are liquids, the main target is people who are already into vaping, and don't mind getting their hands dirty (filling can be a messy job, you're almost guaranteed to end up with sticky liquid on your hands). Those who don't want padded envelopes and want full literature, boxes, etc, will be buying disposables. It would be another matter if we were talking about a liquid with a new method of filling that appealed to the disposable user, but these seem to be the standard messy ones. Also, if you had the money to spare, I'd understand as well, but splashing out on unnecessary levels of design and then needing to take on investors as a result isn't a sensible move imo.
I mentioned the simple design of liquids earlier, I've just taken a few photos of the main one I was talking about. This is at the higher end of the market, and are among the better designs I've seen (the vast majority have no design at all, and are simply text, could be easily printed on a home printer and created using Word):
Beat that, and I think the chances of kissing repeat customers goodbye based on design/packaging is nil.
RE quality printing, I scouted a few different sites, and that seemed like roughly the going rate, I didn't just pick the cheapest. It's not a large size of sticker that you need.
All that said, I just googled OP's brand, and I think it's safe to reduce the budget for design from $1000 to $20, and labels are of the aforementioned 'home printed, designed in Word' type.
Not trying to be harsh, but doesn't seem like a lot of money was put into R&D either, as the key takeaways from the first review I came across was that it was too sweet, fucked up your ecig, and left you with an aftertaste of not having brushed your teeth.
RE steepers - can you give a link? My understanding was that to steep a liquid, you just leave it in a dark room/closet, maybe shaking occasionally.
1. One cost that I did think of, but didn't look into. Did a quick search, if you're not buying wholesale, and just buying enough to make 50 bottles (so pretty much for home users, if you were buying for production I'd imagine it'd be far cheaper), this was one of the first results: One liter or more || NicVape so $78 for enough for 50 bottles (assuming an average nicotine level of 15mg per ml, although I'm overestimating for ease of calculation there, I'd imagine the average would be more like 12mg), working out as $1.56 a bottle. Admittedly, the most expensive part, but this is low quantity, so can be bought as needed, and these are bottles with a retail price of £15+, so not a huge amount in the scheme of things.
2. And which of those did you do? With the margins you're talking about, the manual labour should be almost nothing, especially with the fact that you don't seem to be professionally labelling them.
3. Can't you do a Dexter and just pick up some plastic sheeting?
4. Ok, but trade shows should be earning more than you're spending, otherwise you're doing it wrong.
5. How much does shipping cost? $5? That's $500, $700 including the product costs.
6. So you needed to buy the camera outright? A quick search online shows you can rent a $1500 Canon EOS 60Da for 7 days for $89, or a $700 60D for $45. Alternatively, there's the option of hiring a professional photographer. Poster pricing etc seems fair, although can't comment without seeing them, and I'm assuming they're designed to a better standard than the website/bottles?
You're focusing too much on the part where I said padded envelope, but boxes and quality labeling aren't unusual. Simply Google image search "e liquid" and the vast majority of the products come in bottles with filler tops or droppers, labelled nicely, often in boxes. If you're building a brand, especially for something the customer is ingesting in this manner, I would much prefer something that looked like some care had been given in the manufacturing process. A luxury product akin to fine cigars or wine would be much more desirable than something that looks like it was cooked up in your mom's basement.
https://fivepawns.com
Another one with a death reference, but the packaging is quite nice. Reminds me of Blair's hot sauces.
So yeah, something better than a label made in Word would be where I would go with this, but then again I'm all about making quality brands that build customer trust and my business model would never be "make as much money as possible before I get sued".
First part: Yeah, filler tops are good, but shouldn't be too much different in price per bottle from the medicine style bottles. Would also be easier to package, as you don't need to worry about foil. For the 100ml bottles though, filler tops hinder more than help, and a pipette is quicker (2 light squeezes, one to fill, one to empty, versus 4 hard squeezes) - but yeah, for the smaller bottles, I'd totally go with filler tops, or give the option of one or the other, to see what people prefer.You're focusing too much on the part where I said padded envelope, but boxes and quality labeling aren't unusual. Simply Google image search "e liquid" and the vast majority of the products come in bottles with filler tops or droppers, labelled nicely, often in boxes. If you're building a brand, especially for something the customer is ingesting in this manner, I would much prefer something that looked like some care had been given in the manufacturing process. A luxury product akin to fine cigars or wine would be much more desirable than something that looks like it was cooked up in your mom's basement.
image1
https://fivepawns.com
image2
image3
image4
Another one with a death reference, but the packaging is quite nice. Reminds me of Blair's hot sauces.
image5
So yeah, something better than a label made in Word would be where I would go with this, but then again I'm all about making quality brands that build customer trust and my business model would never be "make as much money as possible before I get sued".
I agree that good design is nice, but at this stage, I don't think having the absolute best design that you'll be using for years is crucial, as long as it looks decent (like the images I posted). It normally takes a bit of time anyway to figure out your audience, things you and they like/don't like, etc, I can think of countless brands that have rebranded down the line. It's only the first month, so I think at this stage, the product itself is the most important thing. Look at Apple, the G3s were ugly as fuck by modern standards, but it was still a lot better than the competition, and they went on to make lovely looking products.
A new design is also a marketing move in itself, if you go and launch it with the product, it won't have as much impact as if you launch it a bit after the product's first released, as there's nothing to compare it to.
Image1: I think that yeah, a proper lab is important once you're doing 10s of thousands of bottles. At this stage though, when it could all be done by hand, by one person, I think it's an unnecessary expense for someone who then needs to look for investors as a result of spending on it.
I like all the other bottles, and I think they'd be a good move once the brand had developed a bit more. That's with the exception of Image4, that's the one type of packaging I've seen other than a bottle on its own, and when I've received a bottle like that, it's made me far less likely to buy more. It matches exactly the eliquids I find at my local market, and screams 'Chinese shite' to me (I do like how they form a V when rotated, but that's something that would go unnoticed by most I think). Image5 is the kind of look I was thinking for this (if it wasn't a bit gimmicky and brandsquatting) once the brand is a touch more developed, and when the cost won't mean having to seek outside investment.
Last sentence: Completely agreed.
I'll bet those intestines smell just YUMMY, yes? How do they taste?
You fucking dipshit. He's ripping their entire campaign, from comic book to show name- the brand dilution and potential for market confusion is fucking ENORMOUS.
You Fucking Dipshit.
OP do you realize that the walking dead is a graphic novel... not just some slow moving and boring AMC tv show? - the fact that you are making a graphic novel SEEMS like a pretty SIMILAR thing and would LEAVE you open to some litigation... YOU ARE CONFUSING PEOPLE and DILUTING THEIR BRAND...
you are asking for money so I'm going to assume you do not have a lawyer... i wish you success and it sounds like you are doing well... but i'd speak to a lawyer about that name (not wickedfire) - wouldn't it SUCK if you put all this time in and they came along and SHUT YOU DOWN?
you are asking for money so I'm going to assume you do not have a lawyer... i wish you success and it sounds like you are doing well... but i'd speak to a lawyer about that name (not wickedfire) - wouldn't it SUCK if you put all this time in and they came along and SHUT YOU DOWN?
Galacon apologize?
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITcNbEPdpJU]Homer Simpson laughing out loud - YouTube[/ame]
I don't know g1c9 personally (or any1 here for that matter) but when reading his posts he has struck me as one of the more serious guys around here and I think throwing mindless insults at him like that is a bit out of place. Laugh inducing you might say. I don't know what galacon's problem is, maybe his wife ditched him recently or he had the epiphany that he can be wickedfire's superhero, but all this craving for attention is a tad bit distasteful for me (and out of place in this case).
You obviously haven't read his posts if you are saying "one of the more serious guys around here". He is a hillbilly with the brain the size of peanut, whose only joy in life is crassly insulting others.
But in this case he is spot on
Five Pawns - Signature Vapor Liquid
This has been done correctly. Any marketer on this forum who says otherwise please ask for a ban.
They have created the same kind of branding whiskeys and tobacco companies portrayed.
This has been done correctly. Any marketer on this forum who says otherwise please ask for a ban.
They have created the same kind of branding whiskeys and tobacco companies portrayed.
But in this case he is spot on
What's he spot on about? He says there's no problem using "walking dead" as the OP's brand. He's an idiot if he thinks that.
huh? No he's not
He is saying the opposite, and is spot on. There is little to no way that OP isn't going to get sued out of existence.
Proper rookie business move, taking a risk that has very little upside and colossal downside.
Anyone investing in this "venture" under any basis is mental. I mean give him a loan with his home as collateral (doubtful he has a home) by all means, but for equity or even a royalty is just plain suicide for their money.
