Is your favorite ejuice out of stock at Vape Juice? Rest assured that we’re doing everything we can to replenish our shelves and ensure that the most popular vape juices are always available for you to buy. In the meantime, though, your favorite flavor might not always be here. In this article, we’re going to suggest some things that you can do when you can’t find the e-liquid you want. Before we get into that, however, let’s discuss what might be the biggest question on your mind.
Why are some vape juices so hard to find right now?
COVID-19 and Its Effect on Online Retail
The COVID-19 pandemic has stretched the supply chains for all industries to their absolute limit. Months into the outbreak, many people are still having trouble finding common household essentials like milk and toilet paper consistently. The problem isn’t always production capacity; it’s often a combination of hoarding behavior and shipping lines being stretched to their limits that has caused the shortages.
At the moment, online sellers in every industry are facing unprecedented order volumes. Though many of those sellers have plenty of products in stock, they often lack the manpower – especially with social distancing rules in place – to fulfill orders efficiently.
When orders finally reach the shipping lines, they’re often held up even further – again, due to social distancing rules and increased package volume. The extreme volume of packages has caused bottlenecks for all of the major shipping companies. UPS and FedEx have temporarily suspended refunds for late deliveries due to the increased volume.
How COVID-19 Has Caused E-Liquid Shortages
The worldwide supply chain issues have caused shortages in the vaping industry as well. It was always obvious that COVID-19 would cause shortages of some vaping hardware. Virtually all vaping devices, tanks, coils and pods come from factories in Shenzhen, China. The coronavirus outbreak really started to become serious in China around the time of the Chinese New Year, a two-week period in which many factory workers go home for some rest and relaxation. This year, many of those workers went home only to find that they couldn’t return to work because they were sick or under mandatory quarantine. It took the factories a long time to ramp back up. Some coils and pods are still a bit difficult to find.
What almost no one predicted, though, was that the supply chain issues would also affect the e-liquid segment of the vaping industry. Most people buy domestic e-liquid rather than vape juice that’s made in China. Why would it ever become difficult to find e-liquid made in the United States? Can’t the e-liquid companies just make more?
COVID-19 Has Taxed the Entire Vape Juice Supply Chain
These are the reasons why some of your favorite e-liquids have suddenly become difficult to find.
- Many brick-and-mortar vape shops are currently shuttered due to citywide shutdowns across the country. At those shops, there are collectively many thousands of bottles of e-liquid – maybe millions – that are sitting around and aren’t being sold.
- The online vape shops, meanwhile, are experiencing their highest order volumes ever and are placing huge orders with their distributors to try and keep up with the demand.
- E-liquid distributors have low stocks and are placing huge orders with the vape juice manufacturers.
- The e-liquid manufacturers have never handled such high order volumes before and are fulfilling those orders as quickly as they can. The manufacturers are at the peak of their production capacity, though, and they can only fill so many bottles per day. In addition, many e-liquid brands outsource their production to larger factories, and since all of the e-liquid brands are ordering from their suppliers simultaneously, that’s caused another bottleneck.
In short, the e-liquid industry has never handled orders from so many consumers and businesses – nor has it handled such large orders – all at once. Combine that issue with the fact that the shipping companies are already overtaxed, and you’ve got a perfect recipe for product shortages.
So, some e-liquids are a little hard to find right now. There’s plenty of vape juice to buy – you just might not always be able to find your favorite brand and flavor when you want it. This is the point where we’re going to give you some actionable advice. What can you do when your favorite e-liquid is out of stock? These four tips can help.
Sign Up for Stock Alerts
Have you seen the “Notify me when this product is available box” when viewing an e-liquid that’s out of stock? Here at Vape Juice, we receive massive shipments of vape juice almost every day. Popular e-liquids, though, may sometimes sell out almost as quickly as they come in. How is it possible that products could disappear so quickly? It’s because people are signing up to receive stock alert notifications for their favorite vape juices.
If you’re having trouble finding a favorite e-liquid, take a moment to enter your email address in the box on that e-liquid’s product page and click the “Send” button. When that e-liquid is back in stock, we’ll send an automatic email to let you know. Signing up to receive stock alert notifications also helps us to know which e-liquids are most important to our customers.
Buy a Different Nicotine Strength
One of the things that makes buying vape juice so difficult during the COVID-19 pandemic is the fact that most people who buy freebase nicotine e-liquids use the same nicotine strength: 3 mg. Therefore, that’s always the nicotine strength that sells out first. Nicotine-free e-liquid, on the other hand, tends to last on the shelves a bit longer because most people who vape use nicotine. If you use nicotine, you might think the fact that you can buy your favorite vape juice – but only if you buy it without nicotine – doesn’t do you any good. What’s the use of buying e-liquid if you can’t get it with nicotine, right?
Actually, there is an option that you might not have considered. Have you noticed that the 6 mg nicotine strength of a given vape juice also tends to stick around for a while after the 3 mg version has sold out? Well, here’s an easy solution that can make it possible for you to have exactly the vape juice that you want. Buy the same e-liquid in nicotine strengths of 0 mg and 6 mg, and then mix the two together in equal parts. Now, you have your favorite e-liquid in your preferred nicotine strength of 3 mg.
You might want to keep an empty e-liquid bottle handy to make the mixing process easier. Just pry the top of the bottle off with a butter knife, and then you’ve got a perfect vessel for combining your e-liquids. If you have a kitchen scale, you can use it to make sure that you’ve got a perfect half-and-half ratio. Replace the bottle’s top, close the bottle and give it a good shake before filling your tank.
Try a Different Brand With a Similar Flavor Profile
We sort our e-juice flavors carefully for a reason; it’s to help you discover e-liquids that you’ll like. That’s a useful feature even when your favorite vape juices are in stock, because everyone loves experiencing new things. When your favorite e-liquid isn’t in stock, though, our flavor finder can be a vital tool that connects you easily to another vape juice you’ll love just as much.
Taste is subjective, of course, but it might surprise you to learn how similar e-liquids can taste even when they’re sold under different brand names. One reason for the similarity is that e-liquid makers all flavor their products with the same compounds, and there are only so many possible combinations of those compounds. Another reason is the production outsourcing that we described earlier in the article. Some e-liquid laboratories produce vape juices with very similar flavor profiles for multiple brands.
Try a Completely New Vape Juice
Elsewhere in our blog, we have an entire article dedicated to new e-liquid flavors to try while you’re stuck at home during the coronavirus lockdown. If you haven’t read it yet, we recommend taking a moment to do so because it could be the beginning of a great new flavor adventure for you.
There are two kinds of vapers in the world. There’s the kind who only vapes e-liquid with a specific flavor profile and is happy to try something else with that same flavor when it’s necessary. If you’re the other type of vaper, though, you love a single e-liquid so much that you can taste the minute differences when you try similar vape juices from other companies.
If you’re certain that no e-liquid with a given flavor profile – apart from your usual favorite – can truly satisfy you, then your next best bet is to try something completely different. Live a little! If you try something with a completely different flavor profile, you might just discover a new favorite vape juice.