10 million fake Juul pods per month are produced by underground factories 

More and more Juul users are getting scammed by the fake Juul pods especially in the gas station. And the mango flavors occur more fake ones.

Previous e-cigarette companies reported by us are well-known, and their valuations are not low. For example, RELX’s new round of financing valuation has been 2.4 billion USD, the supply chain company Smoore valuation is also around $20 billion yuan, while almost all other e-cigarette brands are also valued at about $100 million yuan to $300 million yuan.

Do you think the valuations of these companies are so high that they should be very profitable? But they really are not. Except RELX and Smoore, most of the other e-cigarette brands and supply chains are not making money.

The financed fund has been used to produce products and develop offline sales channels. It has earned at most a GMV, and then tells stories for the next round of financing. Supply chain earns sweat money, but also endure the brand account period, and their valuation of capital is not high. 10 times PE makes it regarded a high quality supply chain already.

A case in point is that ALD sold 10% of its shares to Veken, a listed company in A shares on June 5, at a price of 100 million yuan, net profit of 100 million yuan in 2018, valuation of 1 billion yuan, 10 times of PE.

Therefore, from the current point of view, most e-cigarette practitioners, whether brand or supply chain, are in a loss state, away from the envy of the outside world for being too profitable.

Is there a company that makes a lot of money in vape industry, but you don’t even know about it?

Yes, indeed. At first, we didn’t believe it, but when we did some visits and understanding, we found that this kind of enterprise really made a lot of money, and they don’t need any brand and popularity at all. They make huge money.

We’ll show two examples to open up your eyes.

The domestic e-cigarette market is growing. Similarly, the Southeast Asian market is also growing rapidly. Many cross-border traders place orders to factories and send them to Vietnam, Indonesia and other countries.

Factory A specializes in the production of electronic cigarette and pods. Its main sales channel lie in the overseas market.

According to people familiar with the situation, most of the electronic cigarettes exported to Southeast Asia are on the low-cost route. And both Europe and the United States are in great demand for orders, but the goods flow to Southeast Asia finally.

Southeast Asia, which is close to us, is closer to China in a physical location, but closer to Europe and America in language exchange and currency settlement. Therefore, many European and American companies are developing the Southeast Asian market.

But they are not going to be a local popular vape brand. What they have to do is to produce universal pods according to some famous vape brand device like Juul. What is more, they even produce infinitely refillable universal pods.

Simply put, Juul and RELX are doing well in Southeast Asia, but the consumption level in Southeast Asia is not high, so these foreign trade companies sniffed the smell of money by making cheaper counterfeit or unbranded pods.

For example, they went to Shenzhen to find factories to produce pods that could be adapted to Juul, RELX and other big brands, and then sent them to Southeast Asia. Users can also use those pod on famous brands devices after purchase, which is equivalent to intercepting the supply of Juul and RELX pods in the middle.

Compared with the official pods, these non-brand pods are often cheaper and refillable, and the price of each use is lower. In Southeast Asia, where the consumption level is not high, many people will choose this kind of pod really.

Therefore, the well-known brand of electronic cigarettes is equivalent to selling the device only, but the subsequent pod sales amount were stolen by foreign traders.

It’s an absolute robbery. What’s worse, some traders branded it as Juul and RELX like OEM, then sold it to USA or Europe for higher profits.

Then what do those universal pods look like?

These pods are produced in small factories without any certificate. They are then distributed to European and American foreign traders, making a detour before entering the Southeast Asian market. They are sold to local users at low prices, which seriously damages the sales of electronic cigarette brands. However, they make a gigantic profit.

But the situation may be getting worse and worse for the counterfeiter. RELX and Smoore have recently joined forces with the police to crack down on counterfeiting.

RELX said on August 6 that in the past three months, the company cooperated with the East and South China police to crack a number of cases of electronic cigarette counterfeiting. It has arrested several counterfeiters and seized the inventory and sales records of all counterfeit stores.

Smoore also recently announced that the joint police launched anti-counterfeiting operations to safeguard his rights, removing many counterfeiting and selling sites in Shenzhen and its surrounding areas, and seizing tens of thousands of sets of VAPORESSO products and related production equipment under the counterfeiting company.

Smoore denoted that these counterfeiting sites use inferior materials to manufacture products in manufacturing workshops that do not meet hygienic standards and technical specifications, selling substandard products as authentic ones.

The results of composition and toxicological analysis of the fake goods seized by the police by RELX R&D Laboratory show that the fake products and some universal pods generally have safety problems such as inconsistency with the composition label and over formaldehyde.

If the manufacturers of the pods that adapt to domestic brands are arrested, they still have a way out – Go faking Juul.

Let’s show you another vape factory B.

Factory B has a large area. It started to do the electronic cigarette pod business from last year. It is familiar with Juul’s products and brands. And it rents factory buildings then buys machines for production. At present, it only makes Juul’s universal pods.

Observing from the device on the desk of a female worker, it’s Juul. Although Juul has earned both fame and fortune, the factory relies on Juul’s devices, and its peak monthly pod shipment volume reaches 10 million, which is equivalent to the domestic first-line e-cigarette brand RELX’s one-month pod shipment.

Guess how do they make money with the neglectable and unknown factory?

According to people familiar with the matter, such a pod makes a net profit of about 0.2 yuan for the OEM factory. The factory delivers 10 million pods per month, which means a net profit of 2 million yuan per month at ease.

It is still a time of desolation and chaos when men are competing for positions. Cats have cat paths, dogs have dog paths.

The world is like this, there is sunshine on the water, there are underwater undercurrent surging. You earn visibility and capital imagination, but they actually earn cash flow.

We haven’t tried and can’t judge the quality of this kind of pods, but from the point of view of the silent practice, it should be their only principle to save as much cost as possible, so the quality may not be guaranteed.

Related： How to identify fake Juul pods.