Store location focus: Seaside towns

Vince Malone owns and runs Premier Tenby Stores and Post Office in Pembrokeshire. He explains how vape retailing can be managed in a seaside setting

Recovering sales post-lockdown

Our vape sales had been growing steadily until March and then fell off a cliff during lockdown. We became reliant on home delivery and as we didn’t have a website – people emailed or Facebook messaged us with their shopping list – I think they started using online retailers for vape. Things have got better since then: during August we were busier than I have ever seen Tenby – other businesses were saying it was like the 1970s or 1980s.

Looking for assistance

We moved into a new, bigger site in July and, while the rest of our categories are up by an average of three times, our vape sales are still slightly down on last year. We had a meeting about this yesterday and vaping is an area we have agreed to focus on in the weeks ahead. I think we will relaunch our range by working with a company to manage our range, probably with a brand such as Vapestation.

Focusing on the biggest brands

We stock Blu, Logic, Edge and we sell a few HEETs each week though I think you need to be able to educate customers about these products if you want to see good sales. Up until now it hasn’t been on our priority list as we have focused on the community during lockdown.