the majority of the UK market. It has,
however, found great success across the
Atlantic, and its best days are yet to come.
The Vaper Expo in May was a turning
point Dr Salt.
“Go back nine months, and nobody had
really heard of salt-based nicotine. When
we launched, nobody knew us or our
product and the UK market at the time
probably wasn’t ready for it, whereas it
was massive in America. As the saying
goes, what happens in the USA happens
here eventually and salt-based nicotine
was no different. We were confident that
good marketing and persistence would
get the message out; the benefits were
obvious to anyone who tried it. And at the
last Expo, which was only six months ago,
we did extremely well; we had new shops
and new distributors on board and it’s
been a snowball effect since then.”
With a new audience and wider
distribution network assured, Dr Salt did
a rebranding of their product. “It was a bit
bland and lacking appeal, and everything
in vaping is in bright colours these days.
We adopted a new image and haven’t
looked back since. though we currently
work with four main distributors, we feel
that we shouldn’t saturate the market,
working closely with those distributors and
supporting them as they support us. But
we’re on board with an awful lot of shops
now, so it’s growing all over the country.
The awareness of salt-based nicotine,
through reviews and marketing has risen
massively.”
Sometimes the switch to vaping can
come with a brief transitional period of
getting used to the new sensation; using
the device properly, adjusting to a throat
hit. Bypassing the harsher throat hits can
cut that step out and immediately initiate
people into vaping with no obstacles.
Darren put this to the test with a personal
trial run involving smokers who had
backslidden out of vaping.
“On our database, we had a lot of vapers
that we marked off as having gone back
to smoking, so we didn’t email market to
them. I contacted them and brought them
into the shop, sat them down and offered
them a salt-based juice. They all agreed
that it was a much better starting point for
quitting smoking. We set them all up with
brand new starter kits and enough liquid to
last a month. Every single one returned to
vaping and haven’t smoked since. They’re
known to us as regulars now, coming back
in to refill their salt-based liquid supplies.
It works.”
A market for salt-based nicotine is now all
but assured, in the UK and beyond.
“It’s unique, and it’s going to become more
and more popular. There are still only two
companies in the UK specialising in this
kind of nicotine, and we were the first.
We’re going from strength to strength at
the moment.”
“The major complaint about
freebase nicotine is that in
high amounts it can be harsh
on the back of the throat,
and we wanted to find a
way to produce a liquid with
high nicotine content and a
smoother throat hit”
Whether salt-based nicotine will make
significant in-roads into the wider vaping
community remains to be seen, but it’s a
strong niche nonetheless.
“We’re not even going to impact on the
mainstream market because that’s not our
target audience. The audience we care for
is anyone who wants to switch to vaping
or needs a higher nicotine level with a
smoother hit. It could be a light smoker, it
could be a five-a-day smoker, it could be
a forty-a-day smoker, we can adjust the
levels like any other liquid company.”
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