By Mladen Barbaric, Founder of NO SAINT
Why would a product designer, who’s always focussed on healthcare – someone who’s passionate about fitness; a former elite swimmer; turn to the world of nicotine vaping?
After all, isn’t it kind of a grubby category? And hasn’t the innovation already happened?
All reasonable questions. But actually, they answer each-other.
As someone who cares deeply about health, I got into this category because it’s kind of a grubby one; it seemed to me that it didn’t need to be. Likewise, as a product guy I spotted a space wide open for improvement. Because the innovation that’s happened so-far in vaping has created a product that works – but not necessarily one that works best for the user.
Let’s address the candy-coloured elephant in the room first. I’m not here to tear anyone down. The original ethos of the vaping industry was praiseworthy. It *is* unequivocally, better for you than smoking. The fewer people putting sticks of dried, chemical-infused leaves between their lips and incinerating them the better.
But with every innovation comes a business opportunity. And every opportunity attracts people ready to exploit it – and in business, profit comes first. Cue a flood of brightly coloured, youth-oriented devices and flavors, mass-manufactured to maximise margin above all else.
Little wonder there’s a perception of lack of integrity in the vaping industry, when a category that has grown exponentially on the back of very obviously youth-focussed marketing tries to gaslight us into believing that isn’t what it’s doing.
In this disposable world of “blue razz ice” and bubblegum, where is the space for the adult nicotine user who has transitioned away from smoking for the sake of their health and who wants to do the best for their body? Where is the product for the discerning individual who just wants a well-crafted experience that treats them like a grown up?
This is the person we created NO SAINT for. Adults who understand what they’re consuming and are looking for a product that respects their intelligence and their autonomy. The absolute last thing we want to do – and we really mean this – is to recruit new nicotine users. We want to offer those people who have made the choice to keep consuming (for now) the most responsibly produced, least harmful path to satisfaction.
That means prioritising harm reduction in every decision we make – not least in the formulation of the vapor itself. We’ve made stringent efforts to strip out the harmful additives and secondary compounds present in most nicotine vapes, from heavy metals to Diacetyl to microplastics. We can say with confidence to our competitors – and we do in our advertising: ‘Your vape is full of sh*t. Ours isn’t’. And we can prove it.
But vapor isn’t just about what it contains. It’s about how it tastes. And that’s where we’ve really gone above and beyond with NO SAINT. Our view was, why would adults who enjoy sophisticated, subtle flavours in every other aspect of their life, want their nicotine packaged in sugary, candy flavors last encountered in a sweet shop?
We invested years in perfecting our formulations so that our honeydew melon, jasmine iced tea, limoncello, and dozens of other flavours actually taste like the real thing. Subtle, complex, rewarding, and above all — grown up.
The first time people try NO SAINT, they invariably tell us it’s like nothing else they’ve ever tasted. People are passionate about our flavours in a way it’s just not possible to be about a super sugary “cherry cola ice”.
For me, that has to be the most exciting and rewarding part of the process of developing NO SAINT. It’s been a long time in the making, but seeing peoples’ reactions to the flavors, the feel of the device in their hand – and most importantly, the sense of reassurance they get from inhaling vapor they know has been formulated with harm reduction as the first priority, makes it all worthwhile.
This level of trust is invaluable to us, now and into the future. That’s why we publish all our test results in full, for our consumers, and our competitors to see. Being transparent isn’t a PR ploy. It’s part of the positive change we’re seeking to make. There have been enough claims and counter-claims, massaged or misrepresented information, that the category has lost all claim to credibility.
NO SAINT is seeking to carve out a corner of transparency, because when it comes to vapor, I for one have had enough of the smokescreen.
