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If you’ve noticed fewer customers coming into your local vape shop in 2022, that’s exactly the opposite of what should be happening. The past couple of years have been unbelievably terrible for online vape shops. Between the vape mail ban and the addition of vaping products to the PACT Act, online vape shops have completely lost the price advantage they once had over local stores – and price was the only reason why most people bought vape gear online in the first place. There should be as much foot traffic coming into your vape shop as you can possibly handle.

So, what’s the problem if your vape shop’s business numbers are trending in the wrong direction? With the reduced competition from online vape shops, price most likely isn’t the issue. It’s far more likely that you simply aren’t offering the products your customers want. The vaping industry has always been in a constant state of evolution. Between the FDA’s crusade against flavored e-liquid and the changeover to synthetic nicotine, though, the industry’s rate of transformation has become more rapid than ever.

What are the vaping products that your customers are looking for in 2022? Whether you operate a vape shop in Virginia Beach or another city, we’re going to help you get a handle on what the hot products are right now and what your customers expect to see when they visit your website or walk through your door. These are the hottest products for local vape shops in 2022.

Disposable Vapes

Hot Disposable Vapes 2022

The costs involved with shipping vaping products to consumers has skyrocketed over the past year, but that isn’t just true of business-to-consumer shipments – it’s true of business-to-business shipments as well. There are serious bottlenecks involved with getting goods shipped from China to the United States right now, and there’s no alternative if you’re in the vaping industry because almost all vaping hardware comes from China. The reality is that with today’s shipping costs, you may not have the funds to add several new product categories to your vape shop all at once. If you only have the ability to begin stocking one new type of product, it absolutely must be disposable vapes.

Disposable vapes are so popular that they’ve been solely responsible for the vast majority of the vaping industry’s growth over the past year or two. If you’ve resisted stocking them because you’ve held firm in the belief that people need to buy refillable vaping devices in order to have the best possible experience, you’re missing out on a tremendous growth opportunity because there are now millions of vapers in the United States who use disposable devices exclusively and have no interest in switching to refillable devices.

These days, a disposable vape can be almost like a full-fledged vape mod in terms of performance. They’re available in so many flavors now that bottled e-liquid has actually become somewhat redundant from a flavor standpoint. You’d be hard-pressed to find a flavor profile that isn’t available in a disposable format. You can find disposable vapes these days with more total nicotine than an entire carton of cigarettes, and many new devices even have rechargeable batteries to ensure that not a single drop of vape juice is wasted. For many people, there simply aren’t any compelling reasons to own a refillable device anymore.

Nicotine Pouches

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you’ve probably noticed that the FDA has completely dropped the ball on regulating the vaping industry. Out of the millions upon millions of premarket applications that the FDA has received, absolutely nothing has been approved aside from a few pre-filled devices with “tobacco” in their flavor names. It’s impossible to conclude that this is anything other than a de facto ban on flavored e-liquids.

So far, you’ve probably had little trouble obtaining vape juice from your distributors despite what’s gone on behind the scenes, and that’s because the FDA has enforced the flavor ban only at its own discretion. What would you do, though, if your distributors suddenly had no products to sell to you? How would you keep your doors open, and what would you tell the members of your community who depend on you to supply the products that keep them from wanting to buy cigarettes? It’s a very wise idea to offer an alternative nicotine product in your vape shop that isn’t a vaping product or a tobacco product – and the ideal product to offer is nicotine pouches.

Nicotine pouches are little packages of flavored powdered nicotine that you place between your gum and lip. As with a traditional nicotine replacement product, the nicotine absorbs through your oral mucosa. While the experience isn’t quite as immediately satisfying as vaping, pouches are more satisfying than traditional nicotine replacement products because they’re available in higher nicotine strengths. They also have two benefits that vaping lacks: You can use them anywhere, and the FDA doesn’t seem intent on banning them yet.

Delta-8 Products

Delta 8 Hot Products 2022

With the current uncertainty surrounding the vaping industry, it’s impossible to overstress how important it is for your vape shop to have multiple income streams. A couple of years ago, CBD was the hottest secondary income stream for vape shops. CBD was the supplement that everyone wanted to try, and although it was available at supplement and health food stores, it made complete sense for vape shops to offer it as well because CBD was also available in e-liquid form. Today, though, Delta-8 has taken the crown as the hot hemp product of the day.

Delta-8 THC comes from industrial hemp, just like CBD – so it’s federally legal for the moment, although it has been banned by a few states. In fact, it’s actually made from CBD. When demand for CBD began to slow down, hemp producers found themselves with a bit of an oversupply. They found that they could convert CBD to Delta-8 by mixing it with a solvent and an acid – and at this point, just about every major CBD brand has at least a couple of Delta-8 products available.

Like the better-known cannabinoid Delta-9 THC, Delta-8 is psychoactive – although people typically find that it’s a bit milder. Your distributors probably offer a wide variety of Delta-8 products such as tinctures, gummies and vape juices. The demand for Delta-8 products is through the roof right now, so you’d be wise to add some Delta-8 to your vape shop and see how it performs with your customer base.