Price and fancy packaging. Honestly, I tried some new juices in a vape shop recently, it had been a while [since before I started DIY] - and was shocked at how bad they were. All I could taste was sucralose, and feint hints of what they were supposed to be besides. I had to read the flavor profile on most of them before I could guess what they were supposed to be. “premium” liquids use the same concentrates all of us here use, only they load them up with sweeteners, and of course, they are all well pre-steeped by the time they get to the B&M stores. Throw any few concentrates plus about 5% sweetener with your usual VG/PG/nic, together in a glass dripper bottle, let it steep a couple of weeks, stick a fancy label on it - voila - “premium juice”
And this sucrolose is expensive …
lol not at all… its pretty cheap actually
It’s all down to marketing and fancy packaging which obviously reflects on the inflated price.
There are a few nice flavoured juices out there but in all honesty it’s not something you can’t get from here at a fraction of the cost!
You summed it up perfectly! It’s all just bullshit really and a form of marketing. There is no difference between the juices we make and the “premium” juices companies sell, meaning, they all have the same ingredients we use…PG,VG, NIC and flavorings.
In my opinion and in my mind, premium is the quality of the nicotine I use and the flavoring companies. We all know company X has better flavors than company Y, but, again, they don’t have access to a super duper premium flavoring company that we don’t.
To give you some insight on what the companies themselves qualify as “premium” (being on both sides of the ejuice business) is rather simple and has been touched on in this thread.
Basically a companies “standard” line is just that, pretty standard, a strawberry, peach, menthol, etc… a one dimensional flavor. Their top shelf juices or “premium” juices are more complex juices, or more flavor ingredients, so that you’re getting all the different flavors on your palette as you inhale and exhale.
Again there isn’t anything premium about it, they just have more going on then your standard strawberry flavored liquids.
So I really wouldn’t get all caught up in this marketing and labels, our DIY juices are typically more premium than the majority of the ejuice companies out there.
This all being my opinion of course 
i completely agree that diy juices are far more premium than anything on the shelves well said
That’s the truth. I feel like I’ve still barely got my feet wet at this mixing thing, and I’ll find myself making something that’s just ok that I probably wouldn’t make again. But then I think about it and realize it’s still better than probably 75% of the store bought stuff I used to vape.
Bang on, like I said before, I went to Vape fest in Shrewsbury a few months back, it was an awesome gig don’t get me wrong but obviously the main thing people were touting were liquids, I mean they were all there, all the big hitters throwing there juice at you to try out, I must of tried…I dunno…30 maybe?..towards the end of the day one guy stopped me and asked me to come into their tent where they were selling some…ice cream something, I can’t remember…anyway, I just said to him, listen mate I’ve tried a bunch and so far I haven’t tasted anything as good as the stuff I make myself but ok fine one more won’t hurt, he stood there next to me with a smile on his face as if i was going to say OMG THAT’S UNBELIEVABLE…I tried 3 of their flavours…shook my head and walked out, seriously I had tried the same flavours ALL day, absolute garbage, in fact the nicest liquid I tried all day was a freebie Hangsen fruit doughnut, and that was …ok?
I get that they are there to make money, they’re business’s, I understand, 95% are just cashing in on the vape boom, but the only thing I could figure out was that they were all just using cheaper flavourings and more of them, I didn’t taste anything that I had anyway, they lace them with sweetener, stick a pretty label on it, probably with a half naked woman holding 2 ice creams over her boobs and think you will fall for it, The market is saturated with muted sweet bullshit marketed towards hormonal teenagers with a sweet tooth. The nicest tasting liquids I have ever had have ALL come from DIY mixers. I’ll take ‘hand crafted’ over ‘premium’ all day along.
Hey sh!t That reminds me …
it’s my day off tomorrow, I’m gonna crack open that juice you sent me !
WOOP !
ooft!..be reet now 
hope you like it man 
If you like it put a comment up on the recipe, if you don’t then…shut it… 
lmao
You’re absolutely right there, Pugs, it’s really kind of sad the lack of complexity and richness in many “premium” juices. This fact was hit home for me today in a very real way. I’ve been mixing for a fair amount of time, although only crafting my own recipes for a year or so. I’ve lately started supplying some of my co-workers that I converted to vaping with e-liquid. Last week the lady who delivers parts between our stores asked if I could make her some e-liquid, I made her up a french toast with berries vape as well as a pumpkin pie. After I gave it to her, she came back an hour or so later and told me that the french toast one was one of the smoothest most complex vapes she ever had (even though I told her that they really should sit and blend together for a week to really come together).
While it was really flattering, it’s kind of disheartening as well. I make decent liquid, but I’m no master mixologist by any stretch of the imagination. There’s still so much I have to learn, and my mixes really need to develop more nuancing before it’s what I would consider top tier. I’m just grateful that we have this community who shares their ideas and allows all of us to make that next step to nirvana mixing!
The other thing I failed to mention is, surprisingly, we have more access to the flavors than the ejuice companies do. I learned this the hard way when working with my company, that places like Inawera and FlavourArt, do not have a large majority of their flavors to buy in bulk. Sure you can buy a 3 Liter of some Inawera flavors, but that’s it. 3 liters isn’t shit when we are talking about mass producing drums full of juice for mass distribution. So the ejuice companies are stuck with a very limited amount of companies to chose from.
TFA, Capella and LorAnn is about it.(Flavorah is now one too but they are relatively new)
Then there’s a bunch of lower quality flavoring companies that offer flavors in bulk, but they are horrible.
This is why we as DIYers have such better tasting juices. We have the luxury of cherry picking our companies and flavors, using only the best ones out there.
I could go into greater detail about the hell I went through trying to get 50 gallon drums of various flavors, but I’m sure you get the point 
This I didn’t know. Since my early days of mixing, almost three years ago, I focused exclusively on TFA flavors. Most of those flavors are available in large quantities, and I just figured that all the flavoring companies were much the same way. Since vaping (compared to baking and everything else these flavors/aromas are used for) is such a niche industry, I assumed that most revenue for the flavoring companies would have been to large wholesale accounts. I learn something new everyday!
I know I should probably know this, but I guess I missed it somewhere…but which e-liquid company is yours? if you don’t mind me asking?
I’v always assumed it percentage and variation of flavor. I feel like the house juices have a flavoring percentage of 10 or less while the “premium” is between 15 and 20% never over or else shit gets weird. Being one of those "cloning nut jobs i can tell you in my persuit to clone “marshmellow man” all the omes that have come close are right around 17% flavoring ( fun fact the closest one I ever got was only 4% marshmellow, mostly bavarian cream and a biy of cheesecake but that’s neither here or there) i do feel how ever it’s mostly a marketing tactic. Also depending on the company it could be cheaper nic and flavoring. That’s just my two cents on the subject.
Ingesting! I would have never realized that but it makes a lot of sense. So DIY really has much more potential to be “premium” juice.