By Marc Andry (Original article published on Medium.com)
One man and his three companies have truly made a difference to many vape enthusiasts in the past few years.
What would make a successful general manager working in commercial real estate quit their job and start an e-cigarette store? The answer is a desperate need for quality customer service within an industry according to owner of Derb E Cigarettes Troy LeBlanc. LeBlanc has spent the last five years growing his business as well as revolutionizing the vapor industry all for his customers.
LeBlanc began his own company after seeing a gap in the market at other e-cigarette stores. He claims that the employees at these stores were stuck up, rude, or ignorant towards customers. He knew he could make a company with better customer service than those other ones and so he did.
Back in 2013 he worked as a coaching general manager at Regus, a commercial real estate agency with over 2600 locations worldwide. During his time there, Leblanc was the youngest person to have his position in the company out of over 1,000 other employees.
The skills he learned at that job have helped him to expand his company greatly over the past five years.
LeBlanc believes in the old saying, “You get what you pay for,” which applies to everything including real estate. According to him the amount of rent he pays for each location directly correlates with the rankings of his stores in terms of income.
Expanding the company didn’t originally come as easy as it does now. LeBlanc admits that out of the eight stores he has opened, the second one on Poplar Level Road was the most difficult.
“We thought we could do everything we did in the first store all over again and we found that we couldn’t,” he said.
Opening the second shop turned out to be harder than anyone had originally thought. Even though LeBlanc’s commercial real estate skills landed Derb a great location, the land lord was very wary about renting it to him. He suspected that LeBlanc and his company sold marijuana and even went as far as to mystery shop the store and ask for it just to be sure they didn’t sell it.
Even after that there were still problems with the new store despite its high traffic location. For quite a while the store was failing so badly that LeBlanc thought he would have to close it. However, since then the second store has seen tremendous growth and is now the second most profitable shop right behind the company’s third location in Clarksville, Indiana.
The Clarksville store opened in December of 2014 and was the company’s first shop in Indiana. While it may be the most profitable store nowadays, there was a time when this store was also in danger of failing.
Back in 2016, Director of the Indiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission, David Cook, signed the Vapor Pen and E Liquid Act into effect in Indiana.
Audio Essay The fight against The Vapor Pen and E Liquid Act
In short, this law put so many regulations for e liquid manufacturers into place that only six companies were granted permission to sell in Indiana. To put that into perspective, there are thousands of e liquid manufacturers across the globe and virtually none of them could meet Indiana’s criteria. Several in-state manufacturers and retailers were forced to shut down causing hundreds to lose their jobs.
During an interview with WDRB at the time, LeBlanc stated, “It bothered us at first and we really didn’t understand the full effect of it.” At this time the Clarksville store could only sell about 30 flavors compared to the 100 plus available at their locations across the bridge.
This bill was a major problem for Leblanc and the e liquid manufacturer he owns, Legato Vapors. Refusing to let Indiana cripple the industry as a whole, he partnered with two other e liquid manufacturers and filed a lawsuit against Cook.
A lawsuit of this proportion is not a cheap endeavor though as according to Clarksville Derb manager, Chase Fergusson, Leblanc spent “nearly $30,000” just to meet with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul to discuss what could be done about the new law.
The lawsuit ended in January of 2017 when the U.S. seventh circuit court of appeals declared Legato Vapors was the victor. The bill was amended accordingly and several of the outrageous regulations were simplified or removed entirely. Since then, more than 30 companies have been approved to sell in Indiana again and the stores have regained a tremendous amount of inventory.
During the lawsuit, LeBlanc purchased OPMHProject.com in hopes of starting another business within the vapor industry. He cofounded the business with his brother, Eddy LeBlanc, when they noticed a shipping problem within the market. Vapor retailers around the world have difficulties getting the juices that they need to sell on time. Due to this fact, Eddy and Troy decided to start their own distribution company called The OPMH Project.
Since then, Troy and his team have worked vigorously transforming a website into an international e liquid distributor that ships to over 50 countries.
Eddy and Troy run the business together with Eddy handling most of the traveling and international affairs and Troy keeping the operation running smoothly at the company’s headquarters in Louisville.
Warehouse manager at OPMH, Cam Chase, says that he’s “excited about the company’s rapid growth” and hopes to see it continue in the future.
While LeBlanc’s companies are doing good work within the industry and the vaping community, there are other companies whose work isn’t exactly considered “good.”
Controversies concerning vaping have been frequently present in the media over the past few years. The most notable recent dispute has been regarding the company Juul Labs and their product’s popularity among the youth. Over the last couple of years, Juul has made a big name for itself and risen to the top ranks of the e-cigarette market, but that’s not necessarily a good thing.
The Juul has become so popular that a large amount of those under 18 have taken a liking to it. Reports across the web have shown that kids in recent years have been known to bring them to school and secretly use them throughout the day. It would be far more difficult to get away with this with a regular sized vaporizer which is normally larger and louder than a Juul. The product’s small and sleek design make it only slightly larger than the standard flash drive and using it is almost completely silent.
LeBlanc is not the biggest fan of Juul and does not market or sell any of their products in any of his stores. He believes that their business model is counterproductive to the overall goal of e-cigarettes.
“Most e-cigarette juices give the option for different nicotine strengths which allows the user to gradually quit it altogether,” Leblanc said. “Juul only markets one level of nicotine strength and that doesn’t help people quit.”
To put this into perspective, the majority of e liquids range from 0mg of nicotine up to 18mg. A person who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day may want to start off with an 18 mg since they are used to so much nicotine and a person who smokes a pack a week may want to start around 6 mg. Either way, the user has the option to wean themselves off of nicotine gradually using lower mg juices. Juul does not offer this feature as all of its E liquid products are marketed at 50 mg which is more than twice the max strength competing brands offer.
Juul contains so much nicotine that one refill pod contains the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes and many users go through more than one pod in a day. This can quickly lead to nicotine addiction especially among the impressionable youth.
The following charts contain data from the national youth tobacco survey and show how minors are exposed to e-cigarette marketing by ethnicity, age and gender.
The data not only suggests that minors are exposed to e-cigarette’s more and more as they get older, but also that the number one place minors are exposed to them are in retail stores. Additionally, LeBlanc claims that the main places that minors are acquiring Juuls from are, “Gas stations and convenient stores.”
According to LeBlanc all his staff are committed to keeping e-cigarettes away from anyone under 18 by checking any customer’s I.D. if they appear underage. The staff at Derb work hard at their jobs and many are rewarded for their efforts.
“There’s always potential for advancement in a big big way at this company,” said Co-owner of Derb Rachael Patterson. Patterson handles a lot of the hiring at Derb and she only hires the best to ensure the safety of the company and secure its future.
If the last five years of growth are any indication of Derb’s future, then it looks like it’s going to be a bright one. LeBlanc and his team have worked hard to build the company into what it is today, and he hopes to continue providing excellent customer service and truly making a difference in the world in the future.