CHICAGO – As the second quarter brings a mounting number of new-product announcements, recent trends in other tobacco products (OTP) have manifested themselves in items breaking onto retailer shelves.
Limited-time offers and ancillary tobacco products emerged as talking points at the NACS Show last fall, as well as the Tobacco Plus Expo (TPE) earlier this year in Las Vegas.
Similarly, during the SOI Summit this month in Rosemont, Ill., retailer Alan Beach of 7-Eleven addressed one such trend from the main stage: closed-system, pod-based vaping devices. Beach, senior vice president of merchandising for 7-Eleven, Irving, Texas, said e-cigarettes as a general subcategory rose 51.1% in sales and 21.7% in unit throughput, far surpassing competing subcategories within OTP.
“E-cigarettes are off the charts,” Beach said. “Huge growth.”
Here are some new products reflecting these larger tobacco trends ...