BEIJING, April 27, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- China Ecig Media Online (CECMOL) will host its fourth China ecig event in Beijing starting October 17, 2016.
CECMOL hosted its first e-cig forum in 2014, the first of its kind ever to be held in China, which was followed by the first CECMOL e-cig tradeshow in China in April 2015.
The CECMOL Beijing trade show will trigger the true market potential of e-cigarettes to make China a major component of the market in Asia Pacific and around the world. As it stands the current value of the e-cig market in China is around $500 million.
Presently, it is estimated that there are between half a million and 1 million conventional e-cigarette users in China, roughly the same amount as there was in the U.S. in 2011.
That China became a major vaping and ecig market happened almost by accident. Throughout the last few months of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, there was a lot of uncertainty regarding regulatory policies on electronic cigarettes in Europe and the U.S., which had a direct negative impact on overseas sales by Chinese electronic manufacturers. The inevitable choice for them was to shift their focus to the domestic market, which was vital if they were to continue to develop and grow. With the joint effort of China e-cig factories, the market boomed.
Existing search engine data from Taobao -- China's largest online shopping website -- show that there was almost no growth in searches for electronic cigarettes throughout 2012 and 2013, yet in the second and third quarters of 2014, there was a huge spike.
E-commerce operators estimate that the gross merchandise volume of electronic cigarettes traded on China's e-commerce platforms reached RMB 2 billion (US$320 million) in 2015, and is expected to double in 2016.
Although electronic cigarettes are associated with accessories for men, the e-cigarettes manufactured in China have taken 5% of the global market share, and it took barely a year for the sales value of Chinese e-cigs to go from nearly zero to that RMB 2 billion mark (excluding offline marketing sales).
As Chinese smokers account for one-third of the global total, the potential of this market is vast. So far there are only 600-1,000 dedicated vapor shops in China, just 5% of that in the U.S.
Truth be told, enthusiasts of e-cigarettes are not the same as ordinary consumers. Only by appropriately arousing the enthusiasm of mainstream Chinese consumers to use tobacco substitutes instead of cigarettes can the market potential be properly tapped. Otherwise, the market of e-cigarettes, with enthusiasts as the principal players, will have less of a future. The China vapor market's true potential has yet to be exploited, but it is believed that it can be triggered easily as the quantity of smokers in China is five times higher than the United States.
However, the only way for international e-cig brands to sell for the time being is to target this group of consumers and local shops.
According to data from China tobacco, it is expected that the market will grow to 3.5 billion USD by 2018, similar to the growth in the U.S. in the past few years.
SOURCE CECMOL
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