One of the largest independent vaping businesses in the United States is selling off assets and closing the vape shops it hasn’t already sold.
AVAIL Vapor, based in Richmond, VA, at one time owned over 100 branded vape shops, a regulatory compliance and consulting business, and a major wholesale distribution company.
The company’s founder and CEO blames the FDA’s chaotic attempt to regulate the vaping industry, along with the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s completely just a mess with FDA policy making and policy strategy,” AVAIL CEO James Xu told Richmond BizSense. “It just did not make any sense from day one.”
AVAIL began in 2013 with a few vape shops and an e-liquid manufacturing business in Richmond, but Xu had big plans for the modest vape business. And even after the FDA laid out its blueprint in 2014 to cripple the independent industry by imposing burdensome and expensive requirements for market authorization, Xu and AVAIL expanded rapidly, apparently trusting that the FDA would reverse course.
Jim McDonald – Vaping360.com – 2021-12-17.
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