Why Some Smoke Shops Fail In The First Year

Grab your helmet, sketch “born to fail” on the side, and get ready to drop head first into the chaotic graveyard of broken dreams, dashed hopes, and for sale signs that are the legion of smoke shops who close within their first year of opening.

What may have started as an exciting venture can very quickly become a nightmare of missed bills, languishing stock, and eventually scrapping the entire thing at a loss. Despite the best of intentions, running a smoke shop is an incredibly hard tightrope to walk.

As a result of this reality, Got Vape Wholesale is here to break down the most common reasons why some smoke shops fail in the first year. By taking a microscope to the issues of others, this will produce the type of consistent results that keep your smoke shop open far past the first year.

Whether you’re thinking about starting a smoke shop, currently in your first year, or have been successfully in operation for a while, knowing why some smoke shops fail within their first year provides a wide swath of insights that will help you avoid seeing your smoke shop close.

Keep reading this Got Vape Wholesale smoke shop help exclusive and ensure that you don’t watch your smoke shop close and instead ride a wave of continuous profits all the way to the bank.

Table of Contents:

Why Some Smoke Shops Fail In The First Year
Inexperience Mixed With Lack Of Knowledge
Underwhelming Marketing
Poor Preparation
Not Enough Effort
Lack Of Working Capital
Don’t Let Your Smoke Shop Close

Why Some Smoke Shops Fail In The First Year

Even with the best of circumstances, running a smoke shop successfully though its first year is an incredibly daunting task, with a host of small business failures ever present that force you to watch your smoke shop close.

While it can feel like the odds are stacked against the success of your business, when you have the proper knowledge behind you, avoiding these errors can become less a stroke of luck and more the result of your own foresight.

That’s why in the helpful breakdown below we’ve laid out the main reasons why some smoke shops fail in the first year including lack of knowledge, underwhelming marketing, poor preparation, not enough effort, and lack of working capital.

Inexperience Mixed With Lack Of Knowledge

While appearing to be easy, many uninitiated owners have found out the hard way that running a smoke shop is no cake walk. In fact it’s closer to running barefoot through a room of broken glass, notice we didn’t say exactly, but just closer so don’t worry if you're not John McClain…

This leads us to the first reason why some smoke shops fail in the first year, which is an overall lack of knowledge and inexperience forming a one-two-punch that can take the wind out of even the most enthusiast sails quickly.

Due to the strict laws surrounding retailing the wide variety of vaporizer, glassware, and accessories products we sell, in order to legally run a smoke shop you’ll be required to jump through an entire circus worth of hoops to stay in the good graces of johnny law and the vampires running city council.

Thus you must and we cannot emphasize this strongly enough, must take the time to ensure your following all local and state regulations, paying the correct taxes, and not running afoul with any of the federal agencies circling around smoke shops like hawks waiting for road kill.

In order to not watch your smoke shop close before it really gets started, you’re going to want to also extensively research the subject including detailed information about your market, location, and of course past, current, and expected industry trends.

Pour over as many statistics you can get your hands on, speak with other smoke shop owners, and check out detailed help resources like those available right here at our Got Vape Wholesale Smoke Shop Owners Guide.

In addition to researching the ins and outs of smoke shops, you should also spend an equal amount of time studying the basics of running a small business in order to know what basics you should expect to encounter.

By utilizing these resources and standing on the shoulders of giants, you’ll have the foresight to avoid common errors that lead to disastrous show ending results aka having to sit idle as you see your smoke shop close before your very own eyes.

Underwhelming Marketing

Another common reason why some smoke shops fail in the first year is because they have insufficient underwhelming marketing, leading the general public to be completely and utterly unaware that their business is even open.

Seeing your smoke shop close is devastating, but seeing your business fail without anyone ever noticing is even worse. Especially when you run into people after the fact and they say they would have shopped if only they had known you were open.

Despite being a massive deal for you when you open a shop, it’s just another day in cheeseburger paradise for your customers, as with so many different businesses opening and closing around them it’s hard to break into the algorithm that is their attention span.

Even if you have the greatest smoke shop with the best inventory and prices, if no one is aware that you're in town then it’s not going to amount to anything. Unlike Vincent van Gogh, no one is going to appreciate the genius of your smoke shop once it’s shut.

This means that it’s absolutely essential to put your all into marketing during your first year of operating a smoke shop, as this is the time to make a move or get off the pot. To actually survive you’ll have to get out there and put outreach at the forefront of your efforts.

Thus marketing is absolutely essential to the success of your smoke shop in the first year of operation and something that cannot be ignored.

Poor Preparation

Another unfortunate error that causes some smoke shops to fail in the first year is when business owners don’t prepare enough beforehand and rush into opening before they are ready to do so successfully.

A myriad of different reasons can make people feel like they have to open at a certain time and that therefore proper preparation is out of hand, the reality is that when you rush in your setting yourself up for failure.

Poor preparation can inflame each and every one of the other common issues listed in this breakdown, which begins an unstoppable domino effect where avoiding closure can become all but impossible.

This is why it’s so essential to have all of your paperwork, business plans, and distribution contacts in place before you ever sign the deed to a smoke shop. While it can seem like an arms race where you have to get it immediately, this is quite simply not the truth.

As the old saying goes, check twice and cut once, and this holds true a million times over when it comes to first opening up your smoke shop. Biding your time and finding that perfect moment to insert yourself into the equation will make the difference between staying open and watching your smoke shop close in disappointment.

Not Enough Effort

While it may not be the most pleasant of realizations, another reason some smoke shops fail in the first year is because owners think the business will run itself and don’t put in enough effort while starting out.

The stark reality is that not all smoke shop owners are created equally and there’s a host of people out there who are quite simply not putting in the hours and dedication required to properly see the business through to success.

This can be especially problematic in the first year, as without having the hard work of yesteryear to lay back on, you’ve got to put up or shut up. There’s no room in between working hard and taking the easy way out, with the result being living to fight another day or closing up in defeat.

So what can be done about this lack of effort? Well at the end of the day, this comes down solely on the shoulders of yourself and your business partners. Which means that while you're the only one who can save yourself, the power is in your hands to do so.

Go the extra mile, interact with your customers to build a rapport, head to worthwhile B2B trade shows to make exclusive connections, and put yourself out there in order to fully invest yourself in the going ons of your smoke shop on an intimate level.

From first hand experience, the smoke shop owners that can step up to the plate and rise to this occasion are hands down the ones who don’t just make it past year one, but continue to thrive for decades on end.

Thus if you want to keep your smoke shop doors open, then make sure you keep that fire lit underneath yourself and strive every single day of your first year to make your business a success.

Lack Of Working Capital

Rounding things out with the be all and end all of keeping your smoke shop open, we have the reality that many smoke shops fail in the first year because of a lack of working capital required to sustain business.

This can be particularly devastating when your smoke shop is trending upwards into profitability, but you just don’t have enough fuel to put into the tank. Instead of being able to continue onto success, your smoke shop is prematurely halted before it reaches its full potential.

Business expenses can come hard and fast, quickly piling up and eating away at your working capital in ways that you couldn’t have possibly imagined, especially when within the first year of your smoke shop being in operation.

Now there’s no other way to avoid this than working to accumulate as much working capital as possible before opening, as you’ll want to have several times more than the amount you think in order to adequately prepare for the unexpected.

Should you fall short, it’s better to not bet the house on things and instead just continue to wait and seek new sources to accumulate enough working capital. While hard, it makes the difference between you finding success or bitter disappointment.

Don’t Let Your Smoke Shop Close

By taking all of these reasons why some smoke shops fail in the first year, you can now more adeptly navigate the coming months to maximum effect and avoid the mistakes that other owners have made in the past.

This way when it comes to charting a successful path with your smoke shop, the sailing will be smooth and steady. Ignore what’s out of your control and focus on what you can change, thus maximizing your efforts to improve your business outlook.

Thanks for stopping in with the Got Vape Wholesale Crew and make sure to check out the rest of our helpful guides over at the Got Vape Wholesale Smoke Shop Blog. In past weeks we’ve explored popular March vapes, how to buy better glassware, and investigated the types of customers that come to your smoke shop.