Need an investor for my E-juice E-cig company

G

gattaca

New member
Jan 8, 2011
305
3
0
Hey guys as some have you read my thread earlier this year i started a brick and mortar E-cig store to try and take advantage of the growing opportunity..

the store is not doing bad.. lots of competition but we did about 24k in gross sales last month with about 13k of that profit..then 3500 in rent and electricity and another 2k in labor im putting a good 6-8 in my pocket every month..

WELL during that time my buddy started a e-juice company that basically makes the juices for the ecigs called high voltage (hes juices have caffeine in them so they give you a kick hense high voltage juice). he actually started that about a year ago and they are in about 120 vape stores now across the country.. him and hes 3 partners are pulling in about 40k a month in re-orders and new orders.. my store alone orders about 1k a month of juice from him so theoretically he could be getting sales of 100k a month but im not sure as i didnt pry to much. just guess work.

long story shorter i started an ejuice brand as well and with my marketing skills we really came up with a great name called WALKING DEAD VAPORS and we have a whole zombie theme and have a legit almost 2k followers on instagram.. these are all vapors and store owners. not fake bot shit..

im having a graphic novel zombie story written for it that comes out in chapters on our website. poeple have loved the story so far. we are shooting a 5 minute zombie movie teaser on a great movie type camera and and it looks awesome. we have zombie posters and the vape community is eating this shit up.. for example we shoot a scene with a zombie for 3 seconds teaser then go " ZOMBIE BLOOD JUICE " and post that shit on isntagram and people eat it up.. within a few hours we have bunch of likes and comments.. our instagram isnt even a few weeks old and has almost approx 2k real followers

Here where its gets great.. the bottles cost us about 1.50 to make and we whole sale them to stores for about 6 dollars.. the profit margins are HUGE. Just to give you guys an idea.. pip a girl in texas started a juice company called suicide bunny.. this girl is raking a 1 million a month in PROFIT.. we have sold 1500 bottles in just 3 weeks.. and have bunch of stores calling me as word is getting out about our juice.. we basically had to stop new sales as we cant fulfill orders.

The question is the store is taking a lot of my time plus i still do a little internet marketing for the clients i still have. i own 100 percent of both the store and juice but iv been thinking about taking on a investor so i can hire people to do the work for the juice company thats needed.

should i do this? iv already done all the hard work right now its just lifting off and i hope to be in a 100 stores by the end of the year if not more.

is it worth it for me to give a percentage of something thats almost already profitable and hasnt even been a month yet on my 10k investment.. i dont want to but at the same time im so overwhelmed. iv had 3-4 days off since dec of 2013. im not exaggerating here.. iv actually gotten physically sick the past week. its just a flu but i feel exausted.

any advice would be appreciated.
 


How much are you looking for?

Why not use your own money and income from the shop?

Why not hire someone to run the shop while you work on the juice?
 
r3p1v said:
How much are you looking for?

Why not use your own money and income from the shop?

Why not hire someone to run the shop while you work on the juice?
Click to expand...

thats what iv been doing. iv invested about 10k into the juice company about 6 weeks ago to set everything up and went live about 3 weeks ago and have sold enough bottles to get more then 50 percent of the 10k back.

i have people who run the shop for me already otherwise i wouldnt be able to do this. but when you own a business i mean im at the shop 7 days a week anyway.. the juice company is its own business basically.

my friend who started high voltage wants me to sell the shop and focus solely on the juice company because you can sell the juice nationally.. and the store is limited to the neighborhoods around you.. but i love my shop i dont want to sell it =(
 
Here's what I got from this:

we basically had to stop new sales as we cant fulfill orders.

The question is the store is taking a lot of my time plus i still do a little internet marketing for the clients < wat? whai? ^

You need a logistics person or someone with expansion experience moreso than just capital to reup imo. Sounds like you're sitting on a winner - focus on it and maximize it bruh.
 
Why did you need to invest 10k in an e-juice company? Propylene glycol & Vegetable glycerine are cheap as fuck, Propylene Glycol is £2.75 a litre when buying 100 litres, vegetable glycerine is £1.66 a litre when buying 240L. Even the largest bottles are only 100ml, so even assuming a 100% PG liquid, it's only £0.27 in costs for the liquid, plus a small amount of flavourings. In reality, I'd guess more like £0.20, with an initial outlay of about £500 (enough for 3400 100ml orders, retail value ~£45,000), although you could do less. Let's say $1000 for web design, and another $1000 for some initial marketing to test the product. That's less than $3000. Obviously a touch more for bottles, shipping, labels, but that shouldn't be a lot, and shipping is only an expense once you've sold them. I don't understand why you've spent so much with those sales numbers?

Also, how do you plan on not getting raped up the arse when the Walking Dead finds out you're squatting their brand?
 
gattaca said:
...<snip>

Here where its gets great.. the bottles cost us about 1.50 to make and we whole sale them to stores for about 6 dollars.. <snip>.. we have sold 1500 bottles in just 3 weeks.. <snip>
Click to expand...

So you made

Revenue
1,500*6 = 9,000
- Cost
1,500*1.5 = 2,250

----------------
6,750 in profit

- in 3 weeks, with people banging on your doors for more?

Nice.

::emp::
 
Last edited:
While this sounds good for any investor, why not invest without giving away anything?

Sounds like you need to look at the process and invest in whatever you need to get things bigger/faster.

bottling machine?
Label printing?

Slave^H^H^H^H^H Student labor?

::emp::
 
-joe- said:
Also, how do you plan on not getting raped up the arse when the Walking Dead finds out you're squatting their brand?
Click to expand...

This is the only question you really need to answer right now.

In what alternate fucking reality do you exist that you can rip off a company like Time-Warner to build your brand around, and think it's going to end well?

Are you fucking twelve?

As an investor, I wouldn't touch you with a 100 ft greasy pole, mate.
 
He's not ripping off the TV show. the phrase "walking dead" probably pre-dates the show, he adds to it, it's a different industry, etc... Time-warner could still sue and cause trouble but I'm pretty sure he's in the clear here.

It's like if they started a show called "Zombies" and then he made an unrelated e-juice brand called "Zombie Vapors". Doesn't matter.
 
Shit like this just makes me scratch me head in wonderment.

You show up on an anonymous message forum, and make a shitty post full of grammar, spelling and punctuation errors, asking us for money? Yet, you don't even take the time to put together a business plan and provide a link to a PDF for us, or anything of that nature? Just a shitty 4th grader quality post?
 
WALKING DEAD VAPORS???

So one of the main selling point of ecigs is that they are safe and you want to go ahead and put the word 'DEAD' in the name.

Genius move right there!
 
nickster said:
WALKING DEAD VAPORS???

So one of the main selling point of ecigs is that they are safe and you want to go ahead and put the word 'DEAD' in the name.

Genius move right there!
Click to expand...

EXACTLY my thoughts when I read the OP. That's about as far away as I would want to be in creating a vape juice brand. Jesus. Not to mention Joe and Galacon's comments about the blatant IP infringement. Of course the term "walking dead" predates the show. It's the title for a series of graphic novels on which the show is based. It doesn't matter if it's a different market, it's still zombies and it's still trademarked and the OP WILL get ass raped for using it.

You think you can just misappropriate a title and characters as long as you use them to sell a different product g1c9? You're a fool if you do.

-joe- said:
Why did you need to invest 10k in an e-juice company? Propylene glycol & Vegetable glycerine are cheap as fuck...
Click to expand...

You don't think there's more to it than mixing up some shit in your kitchen? All those expenses you mention, raw materials, bottles, packaging, printing, promotions, etc. all add up. Designing and printing quality packaging isn't actually cheap.
 
I don't know you so I wouldn't invest, and I wouldn't invest in a heavily trademarked t.v show man. Its like me creating my own BATMAN vapor.


Good luck though man
 
FODktP8.gif
 
After watching way too much shark tank, here are my concerns:

Not proprietary
Walking Dead issue
Who cares about what some girl in Texas is making. What are YOU making?
You have one store and hope to be in 100 by end of the year????
You've only been in business a month.
You should be salivating at any investor being gullible enough to invest this early.

With that said . . .



















[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZMaBQDXOkk]Shark Tank - I`m Out - YouTube[/ame]
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
Shit like this just makes me scratch me head in wonderment.

You show up on an anonymous message forum, and make a shitty post full of grammar, spelling and punctuation errors, asking us for money? Yet, you don't even take the time to put together a business plan and provide a link to a PDF for us, or anything of that nature? Just a shitty 4th grader quality post?
Click to expand...

That's an insult to 4th graders. I was thinking more along 2nd grader quality.

OP, learn subheadings. Learn grammar. Learn outlines. Learn thought organization.
 
Wow, you guys are short-sighted.

PM me on Skype - "NickyFiorentino" I would love to take a look at the deal.
 
Your main focus should be the e-juice company. Like everyone else is saying, you need to change the name. It's still early, so this shouldn't be a huge issue. Also, SELL YOUR STORE. It appears to be a huge time waster and has small margins. Not worth the headache.

If you can truly make those margins, you should invest all your time and effort into marketing an e-juice brand that isn't TRADEMARKED.

If you do both of these things, I'd consider investing.
 
Fatbat said:
You don't think there's more to it than mixing up some shit in your kitchen? All those expenses you mention, raw materials, bottles, packaging, printing, promotions, etc. all add up. Designing and printing quality packaging isn't actually cheap.
Click to expand...
Plenty of people in the e-liquid market who do just that. One of my favourites, that's become pretty successful: Hello and welcome to | Grant's Vanilla Custard

Raw materials I've already added up. Bottles, just had a look on ebay, £250 for 1000 100ml ones. Packaging, generally not a lot. I've yet to receive an eliquid that's been anything other than the bottle in a padded envelope.

Design doesn't need to be much, again, haven't seen much in this regard, all very very simple, could be done by an amateur in 5 minutes in photoshop. If you wanted something that would kick everyone else's asses, an extra $200 on top of the web design, plus maybe some very minor edits in photoshop would be fine. Printing, just measured the label on a nearby 100ml bottle, 160mm x 50mm, so ~£40 for 1000 labels.

Promotions, sure, I understand you can't put a static value on those, but overall, all those costs added up are somewhere around $2800 (guesstimating currency conversion roughly), which leaves $7.2k for promotions and miscellaneous expenses in the space of the first three weeks. Bottling shouldn't be too much of a problem at this stage and with those margins. All costs for anything physical are based on the cost of buying from eBay, if you went through the normal channels, obviously they'd be lower.

It shouldn't take more than 2 minutes to fill and label a bottle, perhaps a little more if you're adding foil (not sure what the process is for that).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom