Building in a market that rewrites the rules: Marc Pitts of Discount Vape Pen
Most consumer e-commerce founders worry about ads, returns, and whether the next product will sit unsold. Marc Pitts, co-founder of Discount Vape Pen, an online vaping store based in New Jersey, has those problems too. He also has a different one. In his category, the legal perimeter moves. A line that was ordinary last year can become awkward, restricted, or simply not worth the risk. In 2024 he made the decision that now defines the business: exit nicotine in the United States, and rebuild the shop around cannabis accessories, 510-thread batteries and cartridges, dry herb and wax hardware, and hemp-derived THC.
That is an operating choice, not a founding myth. For UK and US small-business readers, it is the more useful story. The question is not how a single listing once took off. It is how you run a lean shop when the rulebook is part of the product brief.
Proof before inventory
Pitts did not own a computer until after high school. In 2007 he enrolled on a marketing degree, then left in the third year. "The college program felt stuck in the past," he has said. Internet marketing and mobile apps were already reshaping retail. The syllabus barely noticed.
In 2010 he taught himself web development from an HTML book and ran small affiliate experiments. The habit that followed matters more than the dropout line. In 2014, with a business partner, he listed a single Ego CE-4 USB-style pen on a personal eBay account. The point was not to launch a brand. It was to see whether anyone would buy. Orders arrived immediately. Those orders funded inventory and a first retail location.
People wanted discreet, affordable devices that did not announce themselves as vapes. The pair were not about to sink cash without proof. That is the lean-validation habit in one paragraph: one product, real orders, then stock. Founders who skip that step tend to discover their catalogue in the warehouse rather than at the till.
Let customers edit the catalogue
The range did not expand because a slide deck said it should. It grew because buyers said what they wanted, on Reddit, at trade shows, and in reviews. Batteries came first, then cartridges, wax pens, and dry herb vaporisers. Later, Delta 8 and other hemp-derived THC products followed the same path. For a stretch the shop carried more than 50 e-liquid brands. That nicotine range was dropped for the US market in 2024, with one account dating the cut-off to June.
"Customer feedback drives it all," Pitts has said. "We listen on Reddit, at expos, and through reviews." Head of Vaping Community James Smith handles Reddit education on device safety and shifting rules, which keeps that channel useful rather than purely promotional. The company also posts educational videos on Rumble under DVP TV (more than 100 of them) and attends events such as the TPE Vape Expo.
For readers outside the category: a 510 battery is the common screw-thread power unit for cartridges, dry herb devices heat plant material, and wax hardware is built for concentrates. Hemp-derived THC sits in a different legal box from nicotine e-liquid in the US. The 2024 reset was a decision about which box the company was prepared to operate in, not a rebrand.
Treat the rulebook as a design constraint
"Regs shift fast in this industry. We're compliant-first," Pitts has said. In practice that means you do not treat legal change as an interruption to merchandising. You treat it as a constraint on what you stock, how you describe it, and which markets you serve.
Nicotine vaping in the US has been a moving target for years, with enforcement, flavour rules, and platform policies arriving faster than many catalogues can be rewritten. Pitts did not try to out-argue the trend. He took nicotine out of the US offer and pointed the shop at accessories and hemp-derived products the team believed they could stand behind.
There is a UK parallel even if the statutes differ. Age checks, advertising limits, flavour restrictions, and platform bans have all hit British vape and CBD sellers. The operators who last are rarely the ones with the loudest homepage. They are the ones who can kill a line without killing the company.
The operational basics sound dull until they fail. The business buys from manufacturers rather than a chain of middlemen, which helps on price and on knowing what is in the box. Qualifying orders go out the same day. Orders over $40 ship free. Packaging is discreet, which matters in a category where customers do not always want the parcel to explain the purchase. That is how a team of about ten in Roselle, New Jersey, stays useful.
Three of the original founders are still in daily operations. Pitts's own advice is short on theatre: keep it lean and customer-obsessed, validate every step, hire for passion, and accept the grind. Hundreds of thousands of customers have come through that model. A small team can only carry so many lines. The ones that remain have to earn their shelf.
What SME operators can take from it
The useful transfer is not "sell vapes." It is how Pitts has kept a consumer brand alive inside a category that will not sit still.
Validate before you stock. The eBay test was crude and it was sufficient. One live listing taught more than a third year of a marketing programme that ignored the internet.
Stay close to customers in the places they already argue. Reddit, expos, and reviews are a product meeting that never ends. "People need to know its safety profile, how devices work, and what's changing with regs," Pitts has said. "Reddit's huge for us." If you will not explain that, someone else will, badly.
Treat regulation as a design constraint, not a surprise. If a line becomes too expensive to defend, drop it. The 2024 nicotine decision looks obvious in hindsight. At the time it meant walking away from a range that had once defined the shop.
Keep the catalogue to what actually sells. Fifty e-liquid brands look like choice until they look like dead stock. Accessories customers already ask for, shipped quickly and without drama, beat a wall of flavours the law may not like next year.
Pitts is still running the same loop he started with: listen, test, stock what clears, cut what does not. The products have changed. The habit has not. In a market that rewrites the rules, that habit is the strategy.
