From 21st Century E-liquid to KIAN Series, Love Vape enters the China electronic cigarette market as a veteran
With the emergence of many electronic cigarette brands with Internet genes in the market, electronic cigarette has become one of the hot field of capital concern in 2019. And the electronic cigarette products themselves have begun to emphasize not only the characteristics of replacing cigarette, but also Bluetooth, smoke-free technology, new e-liquid and so on, which have become new concepts for different brands to pursue differentiated competition.
In addition to new tobacco movement, local e-cigarette teams that once sold their products abroad and branded them also began to bring more mature products back to China. Love Vape e-cigarettes, which we recently contacted, are not among the “new tobacco” categories. The next generation of brand-name tobacco KIAN and pod system KIAN 2 began to “return” to the Chinese market on a large scale only in the second half of 2019.
Love Vape brand registered in 2014, founder and CEO Yuan Jia told 36 krypton, “The core team of Love Vape worked in Boton Group (the largest electronic cigarette flavor provider in China) around 2011, and I myself also did the flavoring work. A junior flavor maker needs 10 years of training to qualify, which is also the threshold of the electronic cigarette industry. In 2012, we began to serve the e-cigarette company Smoore and the brand of “21st Century e-cigarette”. In the 21st century, the long-term sales of electronic cigarettes in convenience stores ranked among the top three in the U.S. market. In 2016, we established Vapin Plus brand, in August 2017, we established KIAN (the first batch of ceramic atomizing core pods) brand in the U.S. market, and entered the convenience store system in the United States.
Due to the excellent performance of e-liquid in the United States market in the 21st Century (mainly for mod appliances), and the immature technology of pod, Yuan Jia was not eager to launch pod products. In 2017, the team returned home to make the first pod system and began to sell in August of that year, which was also one of the early domestic market pod products using ceramic atomizing core.
Yuan Jia admitted that when the first product was launched in 2017, the market was focused on overseas, and the team was not very optimistic about ceramic atomizing core technology, which led to the loss of domestic industry outlets to some extent. “During this period, we have been iterating products and doing a lot of innovative structural design, including the popular Bluetooth technology on the market. But since the early days of the brand, Love Vape has paid more attention to smoking itself, so our investment has also focused more on taste, which is slightly different from most Internet Genetics e-cigarette brands.
After nearly two years of accumulation, Love Vape has obtained a number of national research and development, appearance and usability patents, and relying on different technologies and experience, has launched six KIAN series of pod products in various markets; in the Chinese market, Love Vape first selected two models suitable for local users from the product library, and matched more than ten tastes. It is worth mentioning that in order to satisfy the user’s demand of “smoking without disturbing others”, Love Vape also launched a smokeless version like SnowPlus for some flavors.
According to Love Vape’s plan, more products with different positioning will be listed one after another. At this stage, we will continue to optimize the listed KIAN and KIAN 2 according to user feedback.
Yuan Jia said that the team is also synchronizing its e-liquid-related business in the United States, and after experiencing the rise of the U.S. market, Love Vape has a better understanding of how to spend the initial stage of market education in the country. “The user’s demand will change according to the region, culture, habits and other factors, so we are not anxious to push all series of products to the market.”
“Love Vape is not an e-cigarette brand that needs a lot of money. The team hopes to achieve profitable and sustainable re-purchase in the short term. “Our start-up capital in the domestic market is about 5 million, thanks to the team’s previous accumulation and the participation of senior market partners in the tobacco and alcohol industry and retail industry, thousands of retail outlets have been laid nationwide in the short term. Financing is one of our future plans. We hope to speed up the distribution of our products in the sales channels, including the national convenience store system, gas stations, e-cigarette stores and other scenarios, to serve more users who want to replace or reduce the harm. “Yuan Jia said.
