goWholesale

I'm in the process of starting my own smoke shop, but I'm having promblems finding a wholesaler or distributors in the Gary, Indiana area. Could someone please help me.

Dianna, I forwarn you to look at what you are getting into. I work for a 65 unit C-store chain. We have 3 Tobacco Outlets as well, none of which are in anywhere close to Gary, so this is not an attempt to scare off competition.

Smoke shops are a low profit enterprise. You will also have to deal with big tobbacco in order to get buydowns, etc. which can be a pain because they are very demanding and extremely unreasonable. Our company gave up its contract recently with one of them due to unreasonable demands.

My advice is if you do go that route, find a lot of other items such as novelties, figurines, etc. to help improve the profit. The internet will probably not be a large source of profit either. High tobacco tax states along with the National Association of Convenience Stores are aggessivly seeking to end internet sales from US based distributors. The last article I read is they are getting closer to legislation that while would not make it illegal would make it overly burdensome to sell due to age verification requirements and also would cut out the only advantage you would have because you would also be forced to pay excise taxes for the state of the consumer you sell to.

If you are still interested after all that, the sources already listed are a good start. You can also get import cigars, specialty tobacco from Kaiser Wholesale, I believe they are located in New Albany. Sources for Smoke Shops are a dime a dozen. I wish I could say the same for DVD sources.

Good Luck.