Tag: e-cigarettes

  • Pop star invests in NJOY

    Music star and 13-time Grammy Award nominee Bruno Mars has joined NJOY as an investor. While the terms of the investment were not disclosed, Mars stated that he often uses NJOY’s King product in place of traditional cigarettes and is convinced that it is a revolutionary alternative to cigarettes.

    “I’ve been using NJOY Kings instead of cigarettes these days and I’m sticking to it,” said Mars. “I believe in the product and the company’s mission.”

    “Bruno Mars is an exciting addition to NJOY and we are pleased to have him on board,” said Craig Weiss, CEO of NJOY. “Adding Bruno to our team expands our reach, raising further awareness of the NJOY brand and our company mission to obsolete cigarettes.”

    NJOY King was developed by an award-winning master tobacco flavorist. With a look, feel and flavor that closely mimics a traditional cigarette, it has become the bestselling e-cigarette in the United States.

  • E-cigarette firm FIN appoints sales VP

    The e-cigarette company, FIN Branding Group, has appointed Rick Torgalski as vice president of sales, a role in which he will be responsible for “leading, developing, and growing” the company’s national sales, distribution and promotional efforts.
    Before joining FIN, Torgalski served as director of convenience channels at Hostess Brands.

    And prior to that he spent 10 years with The Hershey Company, where he held a number of positions, including national account manager and marketing manager.

    “Rick’s varied experiences working on national account development is very important for our organization at this juncture,” said FIN chairman and CEO Elliot B. Maisel.

  • RAI expanding e-cig operations

    Reynolds American Inc.’s experiment with making e-cigarettes is about to move to a larger distribution scale, the company said Thursday at its annual shareholders meeting.

    The company provided several strategic updates during formal remarks by Daan Delen, its CEO and president, and during a question-and-answer session that wasn’t consumed by farm-worker issues, according to the website equities.com.

    Reynolds also said it has placed links on its website — www.reynoldsamerican.com — under the corporate governance header where its 2012 political-oriented contributions are listed. Delen said the company opted for more disclosure after getting requests from various stakeholder groups.

    R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co. remains in test markets with its internally developed Vuse e-cigs with no reported sales numbers. Vuse is being sold at Tarheel Tobacco stores at 6311 Stadium Drive in Clemmons, 3193 Peters Creek Parkway in Winston-Salem and in Danville, Va.

  • E-cigarette firm appoints supply-chain VP

    The e-cigarette company FIN Branding Group has appointed Joe Cipolla as its vice president of its supply chain.

    The company said that Cipolla would oversee the “end-to-end supply chain with responsibility for procurement through distribution and warehousing, and maintain relationships with FIN’s internal partners and vendors.”

    Before joining FIN, Cipolla served as the senior director of business strategy and supply chain for Campbell Soup Foodservice. And prior to that, he spent 13 years with Kraft Foods where he served as director of global supply chain strategy, finance and capital.

    “As we move components for our brand globally, having someone of Joe’s caliber on our team is an important part of our growth strategy,” said FIN chairman and CEO Elliot B. Maisel.

    “He understands the critical nature of an effective and efficient supply chain, and we are excited to have him on our team.”

  • New president for Lorillard’s blu eCigs

    The e-cigarette company, blu eCigs, acquired by Lorillard last year, has appointed Jim Raporte as its new president.

    The company said that, with more than 30 years of experience across tobacco, food and business services industries, Raporte was set to lead blu eCigs’ “functional operations” and help drive its transition from an emerging startup to a large scale second-generation company.

    Raporte will work closely with blu eCigs founder and previous president, Jason Healy.

    Healy is said to have chosen to step down as president and hand over the reins of the company he created in 2009 to Raporte so as to focus on the company’s creative marketing and product development efforts.

  • Imperial latest to hop aboard e-cig train

    Imperial Tobacco, the world’s fourth-largest cigarette group by market share, said it had set up a venture to develop e-cigarettes, as it battles an increasingly tough consumer environment in Europe.

    The company said Fontem Ventures would look into areas such as e-vapor cigarettes, according to a story published by Reuters.

    “We’re looking at opportunities and we’re actively developing in that area at the moment,” CEO Alison Cooper said on Tuesday, adding that the company would be “open-minded” to making acquisitions.

    E-cigarettes –battery-powered metal tubes that turn nicotine-laced liquid into vapor– are gaining popularity among smokers trying to quit. Rival British American Tobacco set up Nicoventures, in 2011 to develop such products.

    Imperial has been combating falling smoker numbers in developed countries and rising black market trade in countries such as Spain and France by raising prices, cutting costs and focusing on emerging markets, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

    The company said full-year earnings per share growth would be at the lower end of its 4–8 percent target range due to such challenges. Analysts had been expecting Imperial to post a 5.6 percent rise, Reuters data showed.

  • Altria plans e-cig sales, Marlboro demand falls

    Altria Group, the largest seller of tobacco in the U.S., plans to introduce an e-cigarette this year, chasing smaller rivals as demand for traditional smokes declines.

    The e-cigarette will be sold in an undisclosed market starting in the second half of 2013, Richmond, Virginia-based Altria said today in a statement. The company declined to provide additional information until a conference call with analysts today, according to a story in Bloomburg News.

    CEO Martin Barrington is trying to catch up to smaller rivals such as closely held NJOY and Lorillard Inc., which says its Blu e-cigs brand controls more than 40 percent of the U.S. market. Reynolds American Inc. said this week it plans to expand its Vuse e-cigarette this year.

    First-quarter cigarette shipments fell at Altria, Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based Reynolds and Greensboro, North Carolina-based Lorillard. Altria’s U.S. volume tumbled 5.2 percent, with top-selling Marlboro slipping 5.5 percent.

    Lorillard CEO Murray Kessler told analysts yesterday the company estimates that e-cigarette sales displaced consumption of about 600 million cigarettes in the first quarter. That translates to an annual rate of about 2.4 billion cigarettes, accounting for about 1 percent of the U.S. market, according to Kenneth Shea, a Bloomberg Industries analyst in Skillman, New Jersey.

  • E-cigarettes could turn kids into smokers, health department says

    The Philippine health department warned the public on April 12 against e-cigarettes, saying the tobacco substitute could turn children into smokers.

    E-cigarettes have been gaining favor among Filipinos as higher tobacco taxes make smoking more expensive, according to a story in the Manila Times.

    Food and Drug Administration director-general Kenneth Hartigan-Go disputed what he said were claims by vendors that e-cigarettes helped smokers kick the habit.

    “Wittingly or unwittingly, the electronic cigarette promotes smoking among children and the youth. It makes them less fearful of hazards and risks of smoking,” he said in a health advisory posted on its website. “The public is advised not to smoke at all and not to use cigarettes, cigars, or e-cigarettes,” added Hartigan-Go.

    Nearly one in five Filipinos smokes, according to the health department.

    A law that came in effect this year will gradually raise the tax on cigarettes over five years, which would roughly double the price per pack to about PHP52 ($1.27) by 2017.

    A basic e-cigarette kit in the Philippines costs as little as $24, featuring a battery-powered vaporiser that delivers a nicotine-laced mist.

  • E-cig company gets green certification

    ProSmoke is the now the only company in its industry to be certified by the Green Business Bureau. This award is only given to companies that are both environmentally responsible and commercially beneficial to the environment and society, according to a story on PRNewswire.com.

    The Green Business Bureau certifies businesses as environmentally friendly organizations in order to increase the credibility and visibility of that company and to foster environmental awareness. The green practices that ProSmoke has implemented over the years have earned the company the classification of being a certified business by the Green Business Bureau. The businesses that are certified by the Green Business Bureau also save on energy and material costs, in addition to being environmentally friendly.

    In addition to already preventing millions of cigarette butts from polluting the environment, ProSmoke has implemented practices such as minimizing product packaging, offering environmentally friendly shipping materials, using green approved PET recycled materials with their disposable e-cigarettes and including a page on the website for green advocacy, education, information, and other resources. The company states it is dedicated to providing customers, and the rest of the industry, with an environmentally friendly option for manufacturing and using tobacco alternatives.

  • Retailers say PM still on top, e-cigs will continue to grow

    The first quarter of 2013 has come and gone, and with it, a UBS-CSP survey of a variety of convenience store operators–whose sizes ranged from one store location to more than five hundred—on a range of tobacco-related issues. The exclusive study brought good news for industry leader Philip Morris and even better news for the growing e-cigarette segment.

    When asked which of the Big Three premium cigarette brands would gain the most market share in 2013, the majority (54 percent) of retailers surveyed named Marlboro; By comparison, 27 percent picked Camel and 18 percent picked Newport, according to a story on CSPnet.com

    The majority of survey respondents expected only modest market share for Philip Morris’ new offerings: 60 percent anticipate Marlboro NXT (the company’s capsule cigarette) to have a .25-.5 percent market share by the end of 2013; 71 percent believe Marlboro Southern Cut will have a .25-.5 percent share.

    E-Cigarettes

    The news was even more positive for e-cigarettes: more than three quarters of surveyed retailers are carrying at least one e-cigarette in their stores and over half are carrying more than one brand. The study results showed retailers are trying a multitude of e-cigarette brands, although blu and NJOY are leading the way.

    “Blu is going like gangbusters right now,” said one retailer. Another said he liked the Lorillard-owned company’s “combination of good merchandising and marketing.”

    Meanwhile, retailers like the wide availability and distribution of NJOY, along with the fact that the new NJOY Kings product “feels and looks like a real cigarette.”

    While retailers were somewhat mixed on which brand will lead the pack, they largely agreed that the segment is here to stay: 95 percent said they believe electronic cigarettes will continue to grow as a category. When asked to explain their opinion, respondents cited the high cost of cigarettes, smoking bans and health concerns as reasons for continued growth.