You’ve spent hours—weeks—finding the perfect balance of flavors and ingredients. But crafting the perfect e-juice recipe is just half the battle. Choosing the right e-juice bottle and label is a vital step to ensuring your e-liquid stands out to consumers on vape store shelves.
It’s all about finding the perfect marriage of functionality, legality, and presentation—not easy in a young industry with unestablished players peddling all types of unregulated wares. To help you navigate the muddy waters, we’ve compiled six characteristics and features you should look for when shopping for the ideal vessel for your recipe.
1. Transparency
One can debate the value and benefit of tinted bottles to protect e-juice from UV damage. But at the end of the day, a more transparent color lays all your cards on the table. Transparency signals to consumers that you stand by the ingredients and integrity of your e-liquid (and that you’re not hiding some off-colored mystery liquid).
2. Creative Presentation
Some e-juice manufacturers go a bit crazy with their bottle designs. And while you don’t need to pony up for glass skulls, it’s important to not undercut the quality of your e-juice with an underwhelming, cheap presentation. Be thoughtful with the custom design of your label, and choose bottles that convey the spirit of your brand. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but don’t just slap some clip art on a plastic eye drop bottle.
3. Functional Dropper
It’s not always easy to fill a vape pen with e-juice. Choose a bottle that features either a needle tip or a long, thin dropper pipette that can easily fill a pen cartridge. The frustration of spilled e-juice is not something you want consumers associating with your product.
4. 10 or 15ml Size
10-15ml is the sweet spot for e-juice bottles – and you’ll notice that most e-juice bottles found in retail shops are about this size. Consumers are always looking to mix up and rotate flavors, so trying to get through a 30ml or larger bottle of a single flavor is not exactly ideal. Keeping the bottles smaller also gives you an opportunity to bundle flavors.
5. Child Resistant
Though the e-juice industry is still relatively young, many states have already implemented packaging regulations that require child-resistant mechanisms on all e-liquid bottles. Though there are currently no such requirements on the federal level, don’t bet against it. Legislation is likely on its way. There’s no good reason to avoid it: invest in child-proof bottles.
6. Glass or High-Quality (Read: No BPA) Plastic
Glass or plastic? There’s no right answer, and both have pros and cons. Glass offers a premium look and heavier feel that many brands prefer, while higher-quality plastics (think LDPE, HDPE, or PET… not PVC or polycarbonate plastics, which contain BPA) are more affordable and durable if dropped. At the end of the day, you simply want to avoid the cheap plastic “gas station e-juice” look—and both glass and plastic have options that will get you there.
To learn more tips of the bottle trade, check out this E-Juice Bottle Guide from Freund Container. What bottle features and characteristics do you care most about? Leave us a comment below to keep the conversation going—and happy vaping!
