Vape chain opens 100 stores: Shosha becomes one of NZ’s largest retailers in 10 years

Vape chain Shosha has opened yet another retail store – taking its store footprint to 100 and making the business among the country’s largest retail businesses.

The Auckland-based retailer which sells vape, sheesha and smoking accessories is popping up in the most unlikely of suburbs, setting up shop in shopfronts once left empty as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic shaking business.

Shosha has 36 stores in Auckland, and over 60 located in Wellington, Christchurch, Tauranga, Gore, Nelson, New Plymouth, Queenstown, Hamilton, among other cities and towns, and Masterton, where it opened its most recent store this month.

Over the past two years as Covid-19 has ravaged retail businesses, Shosha has seemingly been thriving. Since the onset of the pandemic, the private company started by Indian migrant Himanshu Mittal has opened 46 stores.

Retail insiders tell the Herald the company had expanded quickly in recent years hoping to cash in on anticipation of the CBB cannabis market opening up, however, following a referendum in 2020 cannabis was not legalised after falling shy to a majority vote.

Shosha director of operations Nabhik Gupta told the Herald the company had ambitions to expand to have at least one store in every suburb across both the North and South Islands.

He said Shosha harboured no guilt for growing its business at any potential risk of public health. The business targeted smokers and aimed to convert them to vaping to reduce their nicotine intake.

Gupta said the industry had grown rapidly in the last five years, and Shosha had plans to open another 10 stores this year alone.

“It’s all about the demographics of the suburb, if a suburb has a good number of smokers … that leads us to do some R&D research to see if we can open a new store [there].”

Shosha was founded in 2012 with a single store on Hobson St in Auckland CBD, back when there were few vaping products available in New Zealand. It originally sold tobacco before moving away from that to focus solely on vape products and sheesha in 2016. Since then it has grown into a multimillion retail chain employing more than 680 staff.

Gupta said the business spends on average $250,000 to open a single store. He could not comment on how long it took for a store to give a return on investment.

“The industry started expanding in 2016, from 2016 until now, the industry has increased rapidly and there has been substantial growth,” he said, adding that in 2021 approximately 45 per cent of smokers had switched from cigarettes to vaping.

Gupta claims research shows vaping is 90 per cent “safer” than smoking cigarettes. “If you’re not a smoker Shosha wouldn’t encourage you to vape at all, but if you are vaping is a good tool that helps you to quit cigarettes and eventually vaping as well.

“It motivates us when smokers are quitting cigarettes and moving to good alternatives.

“We don’t [feel] guilty of any public health [risks], but it just encourages us to help the smokers switching from cigarettes.”

According to the Ministry of Health, vaping and e-cigarettes are not harmless and the long-term health effects of vaping are unknown.

Vaping products contain nicotine, like cigarettes, which is highly addictive. Vaping devices work by using heat to aerosolise a liquid – typically consisting of propylene glycol, glycerol, flavourings and nicotine – that’s then inhaled and puffed out.

Worldwide sales of e-cigarettes have boomed around the globe over the past decade, and today an estimated three in 100 Kiwis use them at least once a day.

New Zealand has plans to become smokefree by 2025, and vaping devices are widely being promoted as a tool to reach that target.

The University of Auckland’s Dr Kelly Burrowes last year told the Herald that there was mounting evidence that there were indeed risks of vaping.

One recent animal study showed an increase in lung cancer development as a result of exposure to nicotine containing e-cigarette aerosol, while another pointed to emphysema-like changes in lungs after use.

The chemicals used in vaping liquid were generally regarded as safe for oral ingestion, but their impact on the lungs, and the rest of the body, when inhaled was unknown, she said.

Robert Beaglehole, chair of Action for Smokefree 2025 (ASH) board, said he believed chains like Shosha had “a bright future”.

“To reach the 2025 target of 95 per cent of the population being smoke free, we need to help about 200,000 smokers quit, i.e about 50,000 a year. Vaping has a key role to play in increasing quit rates, so I guess vape shops are onto a good thing,” he said.

Despite the risks of vaping unknown, Beaglehole said even if e-cigarettes were 50 per cent less harmful than cigarettes that was still an advantage.

The downside risk to widespread vaping, however, he said was that young non-smokers would take up vaping and then move onto cigarette smoking.

Gupta said operating a retail business amid the coronavirus pandemic had been tough and Shosha had faced multiple international shipping delays in recent years.

Shosha imports product from China, the United States, Britain, Germany and Malaysia.

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