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If you have a vape shop or are planning to open one, you have a Natural Market. You may not know that, realize that or tap into it, but in a few minutes it will all make sense.

WHO opens a Vape Store and why? Generational (age specific) differences are significant and here are the categories:

  • Gen Y (Millennials)
  • Gen X
  • Baby Boomers

The Millennials, who are in their twenties to very early thirties, have been and will be dissected for generations to come. More numerous than the Boomers, 80M vs. 72M, they/you have a lot of talent, skill, initiative, great adaptability and show a strong desire for Social Responsibility and Cause Marketing.

Great technical and social media skills come easily but do not always transmit into the business world. Because you’re all over Twitter and Instagram does not mean you understand how to apply that outside your personal life. And when you do focus on business it must be with some thought and strategy and you don’t want your drunken bachelor party pictures up there on your company site.

The Gen X folks are in mid race right now, between young thirties and about fifty. They may be married, even divorced by now, probably have kids and depending upon when they started, the kids could be out of the house already. They are also facing realities of aging and may see less hair, more fat, more wrinkles, more pain and soreness, diminishing eyesight and lesser manual dexterity skills and all that comes with the aging process. If you are young and laughing, just wait; your time will come.

The Boomers are fifty plus to late sixties. Imagine former (or still) hippies, thinking they will stay young and live forever but are continuously getting shocked by reading obituaries of those the same age or even younger.

Depending upon which one of these categories you fit in to will have a big effect on your Natural Market. Mind you, that does not exclude the others, it just brings some things into easy focus and some things less easy to understand.

There are also subsets of these folks, including:

  • Goths
  • Tech geeks
  • Social cause and charity junkies
  • Sports freaks and lovers
  • Natural food and health conscious people
  • Bikers
  • Military
  • Gym rats
  • Gays of both sexes
  • Foreigners from any land you can imagine
  • Former and recovering persons with addictions

These are just some of the major categories of Natural Markets. What others come to mind?

Your relate-ability for those you are close to and understand will give you a natural edge over your competition. Case in point.

Let’s say you’re a Boomer, age 55, former jock, and former Harley Davidson rider. That is you and many of your friends and those you hang with are you as well. If you open a vape shop, doesn’t it make sense to create an environment that is comfortable for those cohorts?

That does not mean you create a clique and exclude everyone else; we’re talking about Competitive Positioning and identifying you from all the rest.

When you open your shop you should understand these things beforehand. There are three steps I employ with every business and project I undertake:

  1. Develop strategies
  2. Implement systems and processes
  3. Go get and keep customers

Most new business owners want to go right to stage three before they understand themselves and have a chance to share that and before they put procedural processes into place.

Maybe this makes sense, maybe it doesn’t. If it doesn’t you will be starting off in a weak position so I encourage you to look into yourself, your lifestyle, and your market and be sure everything you do represents that.

What are the top questions you wished you asked or what do you wish you knew then that you know now? Can you avoid learning “the hard way?”