A Quick Update On Order Volumes (And 2 Products)

Dear DarkStar Customers,

Another short one from me, this time about how busy things are.

If you've read the recent updates, you'll know why: the vape tax arrives on 1 October, everything made before that date is tax-free stock, and a very large number of you have done the maths. Every day right now is running at more than double a normal day. We hadn’t seen as many customers stocking up as expected in the first half of this year, and it looks as though the majority have waited to put their large orders in this month.

First, the practical stuff:

What this means for your order

Not much, honestly. We're talking about a day or two extra at most, not weeks. Most orders are still going out on time, and we've brought in extra hands and extra hours to keep it that way.

Two products are the exception: 

• 100% PG Nic Shots.
• 70/30 Nic Salt Nic Shots

Demand for these outran even our stock build, and they're temporarily out while we wait on production. More are being produced as I write this. If your order includes one of these, allow perhaps one further day or two on top.

Every other product is stocked, and stocked deliberately deep. Building a mountain of pre-tax stock has been the plan for months, and that mountain is why we can keep taking orders with confidence.

How orders are being handled

In the order they arrive. No queue-jumping and no favourites. The only exception will be on those two products.

If your order is waiting on one of the two products above, it holds its place, and the moment stock lands, those orders go out in sequence, oldest first. Nobody who ordered early gets leapfrogged by somebody who ordered late.

Which leads to the obvious point: the earlier your order is in, the earlier in the queue it sits. That's true for the affected nic shots and it's true for everything else, because at these volumes the queue is the only thing that decides who gets what first. Stock that's here today is allocated to orders as they come in, and September has four more weeks of this pace to run.

Will everything get filled?

Yes. That's the one thing I want to be completely clear about. We planned for this period for the better part of a year: stock built ahead, extra storage taken, extra people trained. Orders placed with us will be honoured and shipped, in order, every time. A busy warehouse is a solvable problem.

If anything ever did change on an order of yours, you'd hear it from us directly and in a timely manner.

The Bigger Picture

The window for pre-tax prices closes on 30 September. After that, every new litre of vaping liquid made in the UK carries duty, and prices across the whole industry change permanently, and that’s why order volumes look the way they do. Our stocking-up guide covers what to prioritise if you're still planning yours.

I'd rather you ordered this week than in the last week of September. Partly because your order sits earlier in the queue, and partly because the final days before the deadline will be the busiest this company has ever seen, and I'd like your delivery to be on time!

The response since the last update has been extraordinary, and the patience people have shown on the odd delayed parcel even more so. We've got a warehouse full of stock, a team working flat out, and four weeks to get as much of it into your cupboards as we can.

Get your order in, and leave the rest to us.

Rob Scammell - Managing Director

DarkStar