IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A basketball icon takes his record-setting game from Cleveland to Los Angeles. A quartet of late-night talk shows transform after-hours comedy with edgy new hosts. America’s eternally spotlit K x K couple tie the knot and now expect their fourth child. And a fledgling, millennial-run company in a highly disruptive industry goes from annual revenues of $1 million to an expected $12 million in just five years.
The 2014 to 2019 glow-up is real.
On February 5, Propaganda Premium E-Liquid celebrates five years as an incorporated business and co-founders Nick Bull and Nicholas DeNuccio are only 27 and 23 years old. Those stats are impressive on their own terms, but are truly remarkable in light of the fact that, according to Forbes, only 50 percent of all small businesses make it to the five-year mark at all.
“At Propaganda, we’re famous for saying the ‘vape fam made me do it’—meaning we wouldn’t be where we are today without the inspiration and support of our thousands of vape shop partners and customers around the world,” says DeNuccio.
“The more our industry grows up, the more we glow up,” adds Bull. “In the U.S. alone, the industry is predicted to reach $61.4 billion by 2025, so there’s still plenty of opportunity for a couple of ambitious 20-something vapreneurs like us.”
To celebrate the milestone with their vape fam, Propaganda has dipped into their vaults in order to add two flavors to their popular Vape Pink brand. This brings their total number of flavors to 25 in six different collections—up from the original four flavors in just one flagship line. The flavors, Melon Blast and Whipp’d, drop this week in 60ML, 100ML and 3x10ML bottles and in nicotine strengths ranging from 0MG to 12MG.
Five years ago, college drop-outs and vapers Bull and DeNuccio launched Propaganda with just one warehouse employee in a drab, 1,200-square-foot building in Santa Ana, CA. Their first order was placed by Empire Vape in Norco, CA for 1,000 units.
Today, the company employs 22 millennials in a 9,000-square-foot state-of-the-art manufacturing facility featuring a shiny new lab. In addition, Propaganda has “glown” from 10,000 to 130,000 units sold per month and from 500 to 5,000+ US retail partners. In addition, the brand’s international reach has expanded from 11 to more than 40 countries, including Canada, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Bull and DeNuccio attribute Propaganda’s success to a mix of strategic moves:
- Investing in hours, weeks, and months of research and flavor-testing prior to launch in DeNuccio’s parent’s kitchen.
- Choosing an edgy name that appeals to conspiracy-loving millennials.
- Developing strong personal and social-media connections with retail partners and vape-loving, Insta-savvy fans.
- Maintaining a carpe-diem, push-the-envelope attitude, which is balanced by the team of lawyers and accountants they’ve wisely hired to tell them “No” when they want to go too far.
- Cultivating a Gen Y-friendly environment where millennials supervise millennials.
- Defying their college dropout persona by teaching themselves everything they need to know to succeed—including the creation of an ISO clean room that can produce up to 30,000 units a day.
And now that a new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week, shows that e-cigarettes are twice as effective as other products at helping smokers quit, the future’s so lit for Propaganda they’ve gotta wear shades.
Propaganda encourages fans to post their own 2014–2019 glow-ups at their Insta, @propagandaeliquid, using the hashtag #propagandaglowup.