62 / 65
Shared Enhancements
Mr. Vapor has also benefitted from the addition of three
area managers, bringing the count up to seven total for
the company. Each area manager has his or her own
weekly and bi-weekly checklist to ensure that stores
are properly staffed, internal and external theft is min-
imized, and inventory is up to snuff. “We added more
overhead to corporate, but in the long run we’re going to
make sure our stores are being run properly with more
eyes and ears out in the field,” says Samona. The area
managers oversee both the vape and tobacco stores, each
with its own cluster.
Wild Bill’s/Mr. Vapor is also being enhanced by a new
60,000-square-foot warehouse in Troy, Michigan. Re-
garding the vapor stores, “in the past, we’d order liquids
from boutique suppliers or other wholesalers; now we or-
der everything in-house,” says Samona. “Also, our POS
[point-of-sale] system communicates with all the stores,
so we know exactly what’s selling on a day-to-day basis.”
Mr. Vapor stores also enhanced sales recently with
special holiday flavors including cocoa mix, cappuccino
and French vanilla around Christmastime, and pumpkin
spice during Halloween/Thanksgiving. “The margins
are appealing, and we were able to take requests from
customers and work with juice makers to tweak them,”
relays Samona.
Like many vapor stores, Mr. Vapor is in a cautious-
ly optimistic holding pattern. “We’ll keep what we’ve
got now and put our expansion efforts into Wild Bill’s,”
Samona concludes.
TB
Our competitors
won’t blow it out
and take a loss,
but we’ve learned
that it’s OK to take
a loss for newer,
fresh items that
customers are
asking for.
[ 62 ]
TOBACCO BUSINESS
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