Late August Update! - Recent Changes & Forecast August 31 2015

It's been a while since I've written a new blog post! Things have been quite busy around here lately. We've been running at maximum capacity the last two months and it's been exhausting! With the changes we're currently undergoing we are hoping to have turnaround to a 2-3 day average by the end of September, just in time for the Holiday season rush! 

So we've added some new things to the website - 

  • New Logo has been tossed up. We love our new logo! We hope you all like it too :)
  • Detailed Lab Results have been added on each of our product pages. You'll find the button in the bottom left on each juice's product page. We're going to make sure that all new flavors undergo testing prior to release, that way we can have the lab results ready on launch. 
  • Bitcoin is now an available payment method! We've gotten a few emails lately, and we're happy to support the currency. Now if only I could find my old bitcoin wallet from 2011 -_- 
  • Product Pages have been reformatted to make more sense. We moved some stuff around to make things easier for first-time customers. Everything from before is still there, just shifted.

Now here's some stuff coming soon - 

  • New labels! This has been long overdue, but we're almost ready! Our main goals on these were to increase waterproofing, eliminate wrinkling, improve readability, and of course a cleaner/slicker overall design. We are going to be using a much better material for these, and also a different method for marking nicotine & pg/vg levels which will be easier to read. Plus the new marking method will save a lot of time in order fulfillment allowing us to get more orders out.
  • New promotional material! After the new labels are in production we'll be releasing new business cards, juice menu cards, stickers, t-shirts, and hats. The menu cards, business cards, and stickers will be sent with every order. Our top 50 customers over the last year will be receiving a free t-shirt on us, we'll email you guys & gals when those are ready to get your preferred size. Don't worry, we'll make sure the t-shirts are something you can wear in public, we won't be plastering "voop life" all over them lol. 
  • Sample packs! We're working on launching these right after the new labels are put into production. The sample packs will need to be pre-mixed in order to provide a much lower price per bottle discount. This means we'll only be offering a couple pg/vg concentrations, however all nicotine concentrations will be available. 
  • Better phone-support! So currently we don't have anyone dedicated to answering phones, which means it's usually me answering when I'm not in the production area which is pretty rare during business hours. We're adding some new hires soon and plan to have a dedicated customer-service member strictly answering emails/phone-calls/texts/etc. In the interim if we don't answer the phone just leave a voicemail or send a quick text, we'll always get back to you. We get a lot of telemarketers on the number currently, so if you don't leave a message we have no way of knowing you're a customer. The new phone # will fix this issue, but sadly the original number is too far gone to fix the telemarketing lol. 
  • FAQ Page! We want to make things easier for first-timers or new vapers, we're planning to have this added as soon as next week. We'll cover a bunch of basic e-liquid topics alongside questions about our operation specifically. 
  • New "Testers" Area! So we've hit a bit of a lull in our closed tester group, as such we're going to be opening up a new section on the site to everyone where we'll have our latest new recipes that we're working on. Our hope is that those who are brave enough try the new recipes before they become part of our "signature" line will provide feedback on them so that we can get them in the best shape possible for release. We're planning on offering a bit of a discount on testers. 
  • New Facebook Group / Opening Subreddit! We're looking for dedicated supporters to help us run our new facebook group we're planning on opening soon. If you're interested shoot me an email. We'll be opening the /r/tbdliquids subreddit as well when the new Facebook group is up and going. We plan on doing weekly giveaways on both Facebook & the subreddit, and sharing updates/news there as well. We'll make an announcement when those are both open. 
  • New Website (Coming January 2016)! We're planning on sticking with Shopify, but looking to hire a designer & developer to build us a new Shopify store from the ground up. We're wanting to improve a bunch of stuff on our site which is quite basic at the moment. Mainly we want to improve order status tracking, account management, add categorized sections (Fruit, Dessert, Koolada, etc.), rewards program, and better flow/speed overall for the site. 
  • Apple Pay Support! We're working on adding support for Apple Pay soon, ideally by the end of next month. We think Apple Pay is a very secure way to pay online and would love to support the payment method. 
  • More Hardware & Supplies! We're going to continue adding new atomizers, and also plan to bring in some high quality regulated mods. We want to keep the prices on these at-cost to support our awesome community. We would add cotton/wire, but honestly it's readily available at a very low price on Amazon :p We will also be bringing in some new DIY Supplies that are hard to find on the main DIY shops. 
  • Changing to a US Nicotine Source! Currently our nicotine is sourced from a US company (Vaperstek) generally regarded as having one of the smoothest nicotine bases by the DIY Community. Their nicotine is EU sourced and works great, but we're always on the look out for a smooth nicotine base made with US grown tobacco. We're currently testing some new suppliers, one of which is Ameri-Nic recently founded by Universal Group (Largest tobacco supplier in US). We are going to try a few others as well and decide who has a smoother base than our current source. Should none of them be an in improvement we'll continue our search until we find the perfect nicotine base from US grown tobacco. As always we want to make sure we have the best quality ingredients at a fair price. 

Hope you all have a great September! Be sure to let us know what you think of our recent changes :) 

- John Fitch

john@tbdliquids.com