Vape and white snuff are big business in London. And in the heart of the city's most central neighbourhood, Soho, is the Soho Vapes store, where actors, musicians and film people queue with restaurant workers and tourists to buy e-cigarettes, juices and chat with the store's charismatic owner Thuy Nguyen.
Soho is a neighbourhood in the 'West End' of central London, originally short for 'South of Horton'. The West End is often considered perhaps the most central area of the city and certainly the most visited - with its huge range of restaurants, theatres, musicals and more. Soho, in turn, is the beating heart of the West End, located between Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the west, Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square to the south, and Charing Cross Road to the east.
To conclude the geography lesson, Thuy Nguyen's vejp shop is in the middle of the Soho muck, and she suggests that the rent there is as brutal as you can imagine, but worth it.
Soho Vapes boasts the highest average rating in all of London on Google review - with a whooping 4.9 out of 5. On top of that, it has a flair of celebrity as all sorts of celebrities from the cultural scene in the area shop here.
A Londoner from Vietnam
Thuy herself has become something of a household name, having appeared in all sorts of media coverage of vejp. Nowadays she usually says no to such things due to lack of time, and she does, sort of, when Swedish Vejpkollen drops by. But, despite the stress, she starts answering some questions in parallel with a lot of store business and after a while she becomes more compliant and it becomes a long conversation about both the store, vejp in general in London and Swedish snus.
- I moved into this space just before COVID, so I've been in Soho for about five years now. In total, I've been here for nine years now and I've seen all the trends come and go," says Thuy.
From the pharmaceutical industry
The name is pronounced roughly 'twee' and is Vietnamese. She was born there, but grew up in Edinburgh and the family moved to London when she was eight.
- So, yes, I guess I am a "Londoner" in every way as I have lived here most of my life.
Thuy has a background in medical biochemistry and previously worked for various pharmaceutical companies. Vejp came to her simply as a good business idea.
- The main reason was that I wanted to get people to quit cigarettes. And vejp actually works, unlike most other things. I myself neither smoke nor vejpar, but I know everything that has to do with vejp as it is my "business". And I tight people and know a large proportion of my customers.
That's where the high rating comes back, Thyu himself guesses.
- I've been here a long time and the vejp world is very much a community. I really have two types of customers. One is everyone who works around here, in film, theatre, music but also in all the restaurants and shops. There's a huge amount of people moving around Soho every day. Then you've got the tourists, and they're kind of the icing on the cake.
Could have been open 24 hours a day
If Thyu Nguyen's story about starting the vejp shop to help people quit smoking is a bit of a cop-out (a quick Google search shows she's told it before), she's at least brutally honest about what keeps customers coming back.
- Weaving is an addiction, that's all. And there's always a market for what people need. This location is so good that we could be open 24/7 and still sell disposable vejps to passers-by.
Nicotine pouches sell well
In London in general and Soho in particular, vejpning is enormously larger than in any Swedish city. And probably most other cities too.
- This is because it has become trendy. It's fashion! In Sweden, you have nicotine pouches, which are big - and it's becoming big here too now.
She's talking about snus, of course, but the white stuff - nicotine pouches. Traditional Swedish snus has been banned in the UK since 1992, but nicotine pouches have come on in leaps and bounds and can now be seen in every little neighbourhood shop. Soho Vapes has a whole wall of them.
- We're selling a huge amount of them now, and it's happened in the last year alone. But I knew straight away it was going to happen. I know so many people in the industry who said I'm going to want to invest in pouches because they're going to be super trendy. People don't want to smoke anymore and for many people it's very convenient to get nicotine through a little pouch you put under your lip.
Banning single-use vejps means nothing
Thuy and her employees in the shop try to get all their customers on "real" vejp machines as much as possible. But of course they also have all kinds of disposable vejps. Thuy's attitude is the same as many in Sweden - that it might be a good place to start, but move on as soon as possible. In the UK, the government has just decided that disposables will be banned in June 2025. But Thuy says that decision won't matter.
- Only the small ones are to be banned, those with the least tanks and 600 puffs. But the Chinese, who make almost all of them, are working hard on loopholes. There are loopholes for everything. And the U.K. will never ban vejp completely because there are too many people using it and people would never agree to it.
Authorities hand out vejps
In the UK, there are also programmes like 'Swap to stop' that encourage vejp as a way to quit smoking. They have asked Thuy to be one of the faces and spokespersons, but she has even less time for that, she says.
Although she doesn't think the ban will have much impact on vejpning in general, she welcomes the fact that trends are moving in a different direction. She shows off a range of new variants already on the market where, instead of throwing away the battery and everything, you just swap pods, ready with juice.
Hate the small corner shops
In London, it is extremely clear that there are two very different types of places to buy vejp and nicotine pouches. There are speciality shops like Soho Vapes, but they're pretty rare compared to the kiosks that sell tons of disposables. They really are on every corner and every street. They both think, and actually hope, Thuy will be affected by the ban.
- They're called corner shops and they're making big money on vejp now. But they shouldn't be allowed to sell - because they're doing it to minors and they're polluting the whole industry. They don't know anything about vejp and have created all the problems and talk of bans in the industry. It was when they started that school children started getting hold of e-cigarettes. In real vejp shops, under-18s don't cross the threshold, because nothing we sell is for them. If they could find a way to regulate that, all real vejp shops would be very happy.
