Labs
The Pax 2 vaporizer, so sleek and ubiquitous that it’s been
called the “iPhone of vaporizers,” made it classy to get high
in public.
The device has a brushed aluminum body featuring clean lines and
activation sensors in the mouthpiece. It monitors the oven
temperature every 30 seconds, allowing for a smooth hit of
loose-leaf tobacco or marijuana every time.
Now the creator of the device, Pax Labs, hopes to reinvent
the smoking experience for cigarette fans. The startup wants to
dominate over cheap, disposable e-cigarettes with an
attractive and easy-to-use device called the Juul, which Pax Labs
says has the highest repeat buy rate in the e-cigarette market.
On August 22nd, the company announced the appointment of a new
CEO, Tyler Goldman — former CEO of North
America at Deezer, a global digital music streaming service. He
tells Business Insider that Juul could easily outpace the Pax 2’s
one million units sold and generate a bulk of the company’s
revenue next year.
“Topics like marijuana have gotten a lot of coverage, and it’s
sexy,” Goldman says. “… But the evolution of the e-cigarette is
going to have a more profound effect.”
Despite the tobacco market’s huge
size, innovation has lagged in the industry. Most
e-cigarettes come in two varieties. There’s the pen-like device
designed to look like a cigarette, and there’s the clunky, tin
boxes that make you feel like you’re pulling from a Walkman music
player. Neither provides an experience comparable to smoking a
cigarette, according to Goldman.
The Juul is a long, thin rectangular device with a glittering
metallic finish. A diamond-shaped opening at the top reveals the
pack of liquid nicotine inside, which Pax sells in four flavors.
Users need only place their lips on the mouthpiece and inhale to
activate the heat source, whereas some devices require users to
unscrew the cap and fill a chamber with liquid.
The cartridges, or “Juulpods,” set the device apart. While most
e-cigarettes use a form of nicotine called “free-base,” Juulpods
contains a concentrated juice cocktail of salts and organic acids
found in tobacco leaves. This combination more closely
resembles the ingredients in a cigarette, and thus, tastes more
like one, according to Goldman.
Labs
Is it safer? We don’t really know.
Most research suggests e-cigarettes
are less harmful than conventional cigarettes because they
don’t require lighting a material on fire and inhaling the
carcinogens and toxins that go along with it. But
nicotine is still dangerous, and the long-term effects of
e-cigarette use are unknown.
An engineer on the R&D team at Pax Labs told
Engadget in 2015, “anything about health is not on our mind.”
When I asked a company spokesperson to clarify its vision moving
forward, she said that Pax Labs is on a mission to “reinvent the
smoking experience,” not make it safer.
Still, the Juul is selling out at convenience stores even as the
e-cigarette category
has stalled overall. Pax Labs has experienced 94% sales
growth since the start of 2016.
@joerogan listening to your podcast. Try Juul. Best e-cig ever. Hits just like a cigarette.
— gevork (@gev0rk) August 10, 2016
The Juul pen and starter pod retails for $49.99, and a four-pack
of cartridges runs $15.99. Each Juulpod is roughly the equivalent
of a pack of smokes, or 200 puffs.
The same technology used in the Juul might someday be applied to
a marijuana oil vape pen, like the
popular Highlighter vaporizer by Bloom Farms. But Goldman
says we won’t see new products from Pax Labs until the company
has perfected its existing ones.
Goldman says tobacco companies have cleared the way for Pax to
innovate. “I did not expect that the major tobacco companies
would not have been more innovative,” Goldman says. “I don’t
think it’s because they have a secret desire to keep people
smoking cigarettes. I think it has to do with the fact that they
really didn’t have the technical know-how to build a better
experience.”
Read the original article on Business Insider. Copyright 2016. Follow Business Insider on Twitter.
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The company behind the "iPhone of vaporizers" is reinventing the e-cigarette
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