The Vape Industry has been feeling the heat of the growing COVID-19 epidemic. With most Chinese cities in a complete shutdown, almost all major e-cigarette manufacturers (Aspire, UWELL, etc.) are offline. It’s estimated that there will be a 9-week backlog, with no shipments coming from China for resupply until possibly the end of April.
Let us provide some insight into the issue.
Shenzhen, a city located in Hong Kong, produces roughly 90% of the worlds e-cigarette hardware. This is where the first working prototype e-cigarette was created in the early 2000s and became the hub for all major brands you see today. During the 2-week February holiday in China, the COVID-19 virus jumped, and cases of infection began to spread like wildfire. During this 2-week holiday, most of the workers left Shenzhen to visit family. Now, since the cases began to increase, and the state of China began to worsen, made it extremely difficult for workers to get back to their jobs in the city once the holiday ended and thus leading to an entire shutdown for all factories.
With no manufacturing currently online, the industry is starting to run out of product. E-liquid is no issue, as close to 100% of those products are manufactured outside of China and in places like the UK and North America. The most pressing issue now is proving to be coils. Coils are the most sold products in the industry, as they are the part that needs to be constantly replaced. We’ve heard rumors that Australia is entirely out of coils. Also, that BC is starting to run dangerously low as well. Ontario doesn’t seem to be as bad, as this is where most of Canada’s major importers and wholesalers are located, but products are starting to run out here too.
Thankfully, we have been able to actively pick up stock of important products from all over the country. We’ll be doing our absolute best to keep the hardware you need in stock, but there’s only so much left in Canada. We’ll keep updating you as the situation progresses.
To end on a good note, as of today (March 5th) Xinhua Net, a Chinese news outlet reported that 523 workers were able to return to Shenzhen via a custom-built train. Looks like the issue of workers is being addressed. Good stuff.
The most important thing we’d like to stress is to not panic. This is not a reason to start buying 20 packs of coils, as it’s becoming more and more clear that the problem is being solved. For the time being, we’ve put caps on the max number of products you can buy for certain sought-after parts. Everyone needs coils, and no one wants to resort to smoking. We want to keep the product as spread out and fair as possible.
As always if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.