XOLO ~ Low Profile All-In-One Vape Pod?

I’m not sure that you’ll get away with that. The TPD states that a bottle must be at most 10ml but a tank, attached to a device must be no more than 2ml, be completely leak-proof and deliver a consistent amount of nicotine.

You mean, vendors sell liquid for £5-7 for 10ml - the actual cost the liquid is more like £0.30 (probably less, since you’ll be working with bulk pricing) - the atomizers are just as cheap to produce (again bulk pricing). One important point is also, that when you do buy a £3 atomizer, you can run 30-80ml of liquid through them before you need to change them. By design you can’t use your atomizer for more than 10ml, which seems wasteful to me.

I wish you good luck regardless - I wish that we could completely eliminate the terrible cigalikes!

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I love great discussion. :smile: I wish more companies did stuff like this…brought their ideas to the consumers they are hoping will buy their products.

My sister and her hubby (I’ve posted about them before) are the perfect people for the XOLO. She didn’t like the first e-cig I gave her 5 years ago (901!! LOL) because, I’ll admit, it sucked. About 6 months ago I bought her and hubs Ego setups and several bottles of juice and she used it a few times, he didn’t. Not enough kick to get her off cigarettes, I guess. Now, a box mod and something like an atlantis, subtank, or nautilus might work, but those are too expensive for me to buy for her and she can’t afford them either. Heck, I hemmed and hawed for many moons before finally settling on my OWN setup. Also, she’s short tempered and doesn’t like to fiddle with stuff. Enter XOLO…except it’s too rich for my blood (and hers) for me to get to try and kick her off. Plus, I can’t keep her stocked in pods like I was going to keep her in juice and coils. So, not so perfect after all I guess.

Anyone have any data on the income brackets of vapers? Maybe I’m mistaken, but I don’t know many upper middle to upper class people who smoke. I’m probably waaay over-generalizing here, but it seems like smokers (potential vapers) are typically lower to middle class or fringers.

I do think it’s a good idea to consider different variations to maximize the market you’re reaching. Again, I’m generalizing, but people who buy an e-cig in a gas station are wanting to “try it out.” They buy it cuz it’s cheap, disposable, convenient, and requires zero commitment. The people who are serious about using a vaporizer go to a vape shop or do research and purchase online and typically never even try a disposable. I could be talking out my butt here, heaven knows I don’t have a degree in marketing or anything, but it just seems to me that the market you’re going for is pretty small. Those who are trying disposables aren’t going to spend the money on the XOLO just to try it out, and those who are serious about switching typically already have an idea of what they want or they go to their B&M and take whatever the guy behind the counter sells them. THOSE people (the latter) you might be able to get if you put your stuff in B&Ms, but I don’t think you’ll keep them as customers for very long unless you have a cheaper solution to the pods.

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I agree with the TPD it is a big uncertain whether we comply. That said the current wording is based on the current device setups. One of the reasons we are calling the pods, pods, is that they are somewhere between a rank and a bottle. If we want to remain open minded about the motivation behind the 2ml and 10ml legislation and that it is being done for reasons of genuine concern, then having a 10ml pod that doesn’t leak should be compliant. This is what we believe. If it really is a problem we would have to reengineer so that maybe the pod is in 2 parts.

I think the point that an atomiser is likely to last longer than 10ml is true. We were really trying to balance the size of the pod, size of the device vs. wastage. And also have a very easy to use device. Initially we were trying to get 20ml in a pod, but the device ended up just being too big (in our opinion). Also, while it may be a little wasteful of the atomiser, it is worlds better than the level of waste that is occurring with the cigalikes holding 0.5-1ml of liquid.

On the pricing, I’ll comment on the UK as this is the market that I know the best. Online vendors charge £5-7 for good quality eliquid. You can find cheaper but it tends to be rebranded Chinese liquid. And atomisers are £2-3. So the £10/$15 was based on this in terms of being the market rate as opposed to put on some obscene margin.

I’m not sure about the £0.30 that you’re quoting as cost for 10ml. We can’t get anywhere near this cost. We decided to go to existing liquid providers who produce great liquids. We are getting good prices from them, but it’s dramatically higher than what you’re listing. We’re using suppliers with pharma grade facilities, liquids have been thoroughly tested etc. All I’m saying is that where trying to use the best quality and safest liquids and this is not the cheapest option to go for. But we feel that with this type of setup it is likely a pod will last maybe a week and therefore represents decent value (maybe not for the DIY vape enthusiasts) but for the smokers and cigalike users, and delivers to them a much better experience.

At the end of the day we’re not a big corporation, just some people who love vaping and wish more people would make the transition. So hopefully a simple attractive product with some great liquid will help.

I think the general agreement is that there is a market for a simple to use device that delivers good performance is there, the question is how big is it and at what price-point. There will always be cheaper ways of vaping it just depends how involved people want to get. Some people are happy to, for example, by an aspire tank and some pre-built coils and some top quality liquid. Others feel this isn’t good value and make their own coils, some other people prefer to make their own liquids. So there is a massive range of different types of users out there.

There’s also the question of why people are changing their setups. Are they changing to get better performance or are they happy with the performance and changing to achieve a better value equation for them. I guess the answer is all the above for different people.

So while there are cheaper ways to vape than XOLO they are also more involved. Maybe it’s like there are cheaper phones that the iPhone, but for some people the iPhone really appeals.

We could make XOLO out of plastic and reduce the price quite a bit. I suppose as a starting point we really wanted to make a device that we thought was beautiful and easy to use and hoped there were enough people in the market for a product like this. In terms of the demographics of smokers etc., XOLO is still going to be dramatically cheaper than smoking, so they are getting a net saving (and also vs. cigalikes). But clearly they could find a cheaper solution. But I guess that this is always the case whether you’re making a vaping device, mobile phone, car, etc.

I think maybe the key challenge at the moment is that the people that XOLO is targeted at, and the people that it represents a good balance in terms of price and performance, probably aren’t searching the web for vaping information. So maybe what would benefit XOLO is a B&M strategy. But doing this would actually raise costs and prices quite a lot.

I suppose at the end of the day, we’re chatting on the internet as we’re all vapers and would like more people to make the transition to vaping. So I think it’s good if there are different options for different types of people. I do hope XOLO finds it’s place in the market, or that we get enough interest and suggestions from the Indiegogo campaign to help us find this spot.

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The EU TPD article 20, section 3a states:

I’m pretty sure your pods will be viewed as single use cartridges, and therefore will be subject to this, and hence illegal in the EU because it’s 10ml and not 2ml.

It’s completely arbitrary and makes no sense what so ever. I really hope Totally Wicked and others have luck challenging article 20.

Making the pod in 2 parts would be way better in my opinion - then you could re-use the atomizer while it’s still good.

If you use e-liquid-recipes.com, and input the price of your nic, VG, PG and flavorings, ELR will tell you the price of the finished liquid. It varies from recipe to recipe of course, but mine is around £0.30 per 10 ml. And I don’t buy anything in bulk, so I’m sure you can get it cheaper than that. Now, that is just the price of the ingredients themselves. E-liquid manufacturers have to make money, and they invested a lot in creating their recipes, so that’s why they’re sold at a premium price (not all are premium liquids though).

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I definitely think it is that. Make it in green and when I finally have a job I may grab one just cuz its pretty. :wink: I’m glad you guys aren’t going to put out another cheap, plastic piece of garbage. There’s enough of that out there already. This looks like the type of device to rival the iStick for form but with a less customizable (not necessarily a bad thing) function. As far as the device goes, I think it’s pretty and if it works well and lasts a long time, it’d be worth the price. I don’t think it’s a hopeless product by any means, and there’s definitely a market for just about anything nowadays.

Like I said before, imho a couple different pod options or a two piece pod would give users a little more choice. Be prepared for people to try to pull the thing apart and DIY it whether it is meant to or not. Look at Protank, Nautilus. or just about any other coil…they’re technically not meant to be rebuilt, but people do it. If you make a pod that is rebuildable or refillable as well as an ‘all in one’ type, the DIYers can fiddle to their hearts content, and those with the income and the lack of fiddling desire can get the ones that just work.

It is very much like an iPhone or an Apple product. Proprietary and very little customization for a hefty price…but dang if people don’t love em (me included!) So, maybe you’ll have a really big market and I’m just being difficult. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Happy you find XOLO beautiful :slight_smile: We have plans to bring out all kinds of different colours and actually looking at designs that customers can load themselves to really customise their device. But need to get up and walking first.

I think some of the main things that I’ve taken away from the discussions on the web is:

  1. The design is popular
  2. Vape enthusiasts do like it, but want to be able to refill and ideally rebuild. This isn’t surprising. We would like to do this as well, it’s just that our first priority is trying to get non-enthusiasts into vaping. And to be fair, most vape enthusiasts wouldn’t really have any trouble refilling the pods if they wanted to.
  3. We need to get the right balance in terms of price point for the pods. We’re really not trying to charge a crazy price for them. Maybe we need to go back and review the discussions we’ve had with the liquid suppliers and see where we can save a bit of money.
  4. Still some debate about whether the pods are TPD compliant. We do believe they should be, but will start working on contingency plan to re-work them just in case!

I suppose part of the general challenge with a product XOLO this is getting awareness in our target market. As the people that we think could really benefit from XOLO are probably not hanging out in vaping forums or searching for new devices. So we need to work on getting awareness more broadly. That said, we do hope it’s a product that while isn’t actually targeted at the DIY crowd you could see recommending to people who just want to vape and not get into vaping as a hobby.

Thanks for the discussion, we’re found it very helpful and will be updating the Indiegogo page to reflect some of the discussions we’ve had.

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