Archive for November, 2009

Do you dance? I’m not a good dancer, and usually feel too embarrassed to ever dance in public, but sometimes I hear the music and it carries me along and I have to dance just to keep up with it.
I am proud, happy, and very excited, to announce that this last week I’ve joined the Vapor4Life Team as Steve’s new Vice President of Product Development.
This arose out of my growing friendship with, respect for, and trust of Steve, the President of V4L; out of how well I like the product, yet how much room for improvement I see; and most of all, from my experience working with Steve on developing The Leaford Lanyard.
Steve and I first got to know each other on the Electronic Cigarette Forum, before he started Vapor4Life. He credited me with introducing him to e-cigs, and thanked me for helping him quit after decades of trying. When he got into retail, he often sent me samples for my opinion, and never asked for a review.
He also often asked me to come work for him, not in promotions or sales (I had been turning down offers like that from other people ever since I started), but on production, helping him make his product better.
All those other offers I declined started out saying they didn’t want to use me as a shill, either, though. So I turned him down. Repeatedly.
But that was OK with him; he didn’t disappear like all the “users” did when they realized I wouldn’t be used. He still sought my opinion, still valued my input. He stayed in touch, even when I withdrew into depression. And he still never asked for a review. The only thing he ever asked me for was for me to feel better and for the old Leaford to come back to the boards.
So, I came to trust him, and respect him, and consider him a friend.
But, working with Steve on the Leaford Lanyard, was the tipping point. The point where he proved himself to me, just as much as I was proving my capabilities to him. I was ready to come on board; the rest was just a matter of time and of details.

Meanwhile, the second factor in my decision, his product, had gone through its ups and downs.
The first batch he received was really, truly, outstanding. And if the manufacturer had kept up that same level of quality, it could have easily been the Number One pick in all my next 5 Favorites lists since.
Great batteries, with perfect switch performance, smooth airflow, and at penstyle length, the longest lasting charge of any disposable cartomizer design on the market. And superb cartomizer performance, too, with vapor levels just a bit shy of the number one vapor producer, the LTv9.
And best of all, it had strong, wonderful flavors that just seemed to burst in your mouth for the first few puffs before settling down to a level still stronger than most other liquids . Oh, and LOTS more throat kick than the LTv9/E9.
After a few manufacturing and customs delays, when he got his next batch of product, it just wasn’t the same. Batteries were just as good for the most part, but the airflow was harder. Cartomizers didn’t produce as much vapor anymore; in fact some of them are downright wimpy. And most of them had to go through a LOT of low vapor puffs before “breaking in” and starting to produce at least as much vapor as they could. And while the throat kick was the same, the flavors weren’t as strong, and they had lost that sudden burst of extra flavor in the first few puffs.
Later shipments saw small steady improvements like more options in the batteries, and stronger flavors, (not to mention Steve coming up with a seemingly endless flow of new flavor ideas), but vapor levels and airlfow were never as good again as that first batch. Still excellent, don’t get me wrong. That’s why I rated it #3 in my latest Top 5 video. But not as outstanding as that first batch.
That sounds like a harsh evaluation, right? But I don’t see it as the final judgment on the Vapor King. I see it as just the starting point. Fixing all that is now MY job, my challenge. My first job is to get back to the quality the first batch had, and then my second job is to exceed THAT!

And the final factor in my decision, which I’ve already mentioned was also the tipping point in my relationship with Steve, was my experience developing the Leaford Lanyard.
When Steve approached me, wanting to carry the original lanyard Nui had made for me, I initially was just basically brokering the deal. Helping my friend Nui get some work, and my friend Steve stock a simple basic accessory. But then Steve went and decided to call it The Leaford Lanyard, and suddenly things changed for me.
The original was a great piece of craftsmanship, and perfectly adequate to do a lanyard’s basic job, to hold an e-cig, but really it was just a sleeve, and left a few things to be desired for e-cig use, like access to manual buttons, and to the LED. In my own use, I had already thought of changes I wanted Nui to make for me the next time I made it out to Thailand, and if I was going to allow my name to be used, I wanted those lanyards to be at least as good as what I wanted for myself.
I told Steve what I wanted to do, and that the only way to get it done right without spending days or weeks sending battery samples to Nui, and more waiting to receive prototypes from Nui, would be to go and work with him directly. He just said, “Whatever it takes.”
I won’t lie, a 10 day trip to my favorite vacation playground, a chance to see and party with friends I hadn’t expected to see until next tax refund (if then), and a break from the depression I had been in for a few months, was a HUGE bonus, too!
But in all honesty, I was soo excited about the real purpose of the trip that all the usual reasons to look forward to Thailand were virtually afterthoughts.
I knew my idea was good. My lanyard would be more functional, more durable, more secure, and better optimized for e-cigs than anything else on the market, and beautiful too, without crossing the line to showy or gaudy.
And I knew that working directly with Nui, I could get that idea translated into the final product much better than it could ever be communicated over e-mail. Not to mention the great opportunity to incorporate “making of” footage into my video promoting the Leaford Lanyard.
And when I returned, making the video was nearly as exciting again. It was a much more challenging effort than any of my videos before, and required me to use several new techniques, both in shooting and editing, and the challenge was a blast!
But probably the biggest thrill of it all was after I finally completed and posted the video, and the positive comments, and sales, began to flow in. A thrill I’ve relived whenever someone posts that they’ve received theirs, and how much they love it!
The whole process is exhilarating. It’s intoxicating! And I want more of it!
I’ve loved my position as a reviewer. I’ve cherished the trust, respect, and credibility this community has given me. I have never done anything to violate that. And I never will. I also cherish my place in e-cig history, as one of many driving forces behind the growth of the e-cig user community.
But ultimately, the role of a reviewer is that of a “back seat” driving force at best. And I wanted my hands on the wheel. No, better metaphor, I wanted to get beneath the hood!

SO, they say every man has his price. I found mine, Steve matched it, and it wasn’t money. Boy, it sure wasn’t money!
As the VP of Product Development, I won’t be doing sales or marketing, and no promotional work (beyond making a video here or there about a product I want to brag about (I really wouldn’t be able to resist, after all )) I’ll be having the opportunity to do for all the V4L products what I did for The Leaford Lanyard. Take what’s there, identify the strengths and weaknesses, and work directly with the manufacturers to make it better.
I will be travelling to China several times a year for 2 or 3 weeks at a time, maybe longer if needed. I will be touring the factories and learning the manufacturing process. I will be working directly with the factories, making whatever improvements or changes need to be made, testing prototypes and samples on the spot, and repeating until the product is what we want it to be, BEFORE producing a whole order of thousands of units. THEN performing quality control on the completed order before it gets accepted and shipped.
I will also be working with the manufacturers on developing my own line of Leaford-branded products, likely starting with a line of Leaford’s Liquids, a low throat-kick alternative to some of V4L’s favorite flavors, as well as a few unique flavor ideas of my own.
In the meantime I am doing some amateur research and experiments of my own. My top immediate priorities are improving cartridge performance, particularly vapor production, and I already have a few ideas which seem to work in my own testing, and which I hope may pan out at the manufacturing level.

This is an exciting new challenge for me, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity. But it does have a bittersweet aspect to it as well. Obviously, for one thing, although Steve agree on maintaining a wall of separation between my work on product development for V4L on the one side, and my role here as author and reviewer for E-Smoker-Forever , It’s still true that I will no longer be a truly independent and unbiased consumer.
So, what will be the future of this blog, and my reviews? Can I really keep on doing reviews, even with the objective standards I have always used? But on the other hand, I’ll never stop trying other products, so could I really resist sharing the ones I like, and what I like about them?
I’m not sure what will come next for this blog, but I am sure it’s not over, and I do have a few thoughts on the matter, which I’ll talk more about soon.

So, that’s the direction my footsteps are turning. It is an unexpected direction, and at least to some extent I am having to leave some things behind. But I hear the music playing, and sometimes in life, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett, a far more talented writer than I, “some stores end, but others go on, and you gotta dance to the music if you want to stay ahead.” I hope we can keep dancing a few more steps together.

Until next time, this is Daniel Henschel, Vice President of Product Development, Vapor4Life.
But you can still call me Leaford.