Developing a marketing strategy

Promoting Storz & Bickel's affordable vaporizer lines to take advantage of an emerging market explosion.

Storz & Bickel is a German-based electrical engineering firm founded by Markus Storz and Jurgen Bickel, who remain in charge of the firm; Storz is director of technology and design, and Bickel is the managing director. Storz & Bickel are basically known for four signature product lines -- the Crafty, Mighty, Plenty, and Volcano model vaporizers. Of these, the Volcano is perhaps the best known, and is Storz & Bickel's best-seller: technology review website Gizmodo refers to the Volcano Vaporizer as "king of all paraphernalia" and notes that "if spending $700 on something to smoke with seems a ludicrous and insane thing to do on your budget…not everyone can afford a Porsche, either" (Frucci 2009). Like Porsche, Storz & Bickel has established its core competency as precision mechanics coupled with attractive design, while both have proved near-impossible for rival firms to imitate. In this sense, Storz & Bickel is essentially a luxury goods manufacturer: it is the high end of a rapidly emerging market.

That market is the market for vaping. Vaping is a process whereby materials that can be smoked are subjected to a heating process which lures the chemicals out into vapor, without any combustion or smoke. This can be done with ordinary tobacco, and it can also be done with cannabis. The fact is that most American consumers are not actually using tobacco in Storz & Bickel vaporizer -- the vape market for nicotine in America is already vast and growing rapidly every day, but largely depends upon liquid nicotine solutions (often flavored) that are sold to go with the vaping device. Storz & Bickel's Volcano has a patented system in which the vapor is collected in a large balloon, and inhaled from there. Most consumers who own a Volcano use it for cannabis.

This is crucial for understanding Storz & Bickel's customer-orientation strategy. Vaping has exploded in popularity in America in the past several years: Wal-Mart, Costco, and Target stores all sell e-cigarettes, while "vape shops" have begun opening everywhere. The difference lies in location: in Denver, CO for example, Storz & Bickel equipment can be sold openly for the purpose that most consumers purchase it, which is recreational consumption of cannabis. In Los Angeles, cannabis requires a medical prescription However, in New York City, Storz & Bickel equipment is legal to sell, but not to promote as a cannabis-consumption device.