Soooooo.... it's been a long time. In Internet time, it's been like 35 years, give or take. We've had our heads down re-thinking, re-designing and re-developing. This whole process has taken us all the way back to square one. This might not be particularly interesting to everyone reading this, but we thought it'd be fair to finally clear the air about what we've gone through and why we deemed it necessary to, essentially, start over. To cut to the chase, skip ahead to section: The Road Ahead

What Happened?!

Stog's supply chain originated with a Chinese manufacturer that didn't sell to the U.S. Typically, U.S. companies and Chinese manufacturers are in a constant margin dance. In the U.S. we seek to minimize cost and the common misconception that "Chinese products are crap" is caused by this pursuit of the lowest bidder. China actually makes extraordinarily good products if you pay them reasonable prices (we'd like to point to Apple products as an example, but don't want to spark up a labor debate here). So when we chose our manufacturer, we chose one who didn't negotiate with the U.S. at all. That's why our flavors were excellent and our hardware is substantially more durable than average. We paid much, MUCH more in manufacturing than the common competitor for every component/ingredient.

That "Uh-Oh" Feeling

Everything went swimmingly for our first year. Then something changed. The flavors got all out of whack. Our formulas took 6 months to iron out, prior to launching, and there was no reason the flavor should have changed at all unless there was a deviation in manufacturing. After a couple weeks of questioning, the honest answer came. "We're manufacturing for [Big Ecig Company Name] now. They replaced our supply chain and we can't make your formula any more." We pushed harder to get access to the original suppliers, but we were basically told if we wanted to get our flavors back, we'd have to pay a billion dollars (or something equally absurd). Our product was being held as leverage against us.

Why not just reinvent some flavors with their new supply chain? We would essentially be a "me too" company, selling flavors that we were neither happy with nor crafted by us. Ultimately, this was the most devastating point in Stog's life so far because we knew the disappointment we were about to place on our customers, whom we prided ourselves on taking care of.

Game Over: Continue?

Our retail shop was just 3 months old at this point. We seriously considered closing our doors and putting up a "Welp, we tried!" sign. After a lot of debate, we chose to give it one more solid push. We chose to view this as an opportunity to push the envelope just a little further. We started asking questions like, "How can we prevent supply chain issues in the future?" "What if we filled the Stog filters ourselves?" "How many ducks would you need to assemble an 'army'?" "What would the cost look like if we were to bring production to the U.S. and run everything ourselves?"

We're talking about a full-on logistical nightmare that would keep a UPS agent up at night. End result? "Yeah..... yeah let's do that."

The Local Test

The weeks melted off the calendar while we started furious experimentation. We moved to hand-crafting Stog filters with our own custom eliquid blends, using 100% USP food grade PG/VG, 100% USA ingredients and of course 99.9% pure pharmaceutical grade nicotine. Our run capacity in hand-filling accurately was around 20 filters per hour, start to finish, to produce the quality our customers expected (but these were even better, in our humble opinion).

We floated some samples out to our local customers through our retail location. The response was overwhelming. Word-of-mouth blew up. Now we had a different kind of "uh oh feeling". We still had a long ways to go to hammer out our actual manufacturing process, so our supply could barely keep pace with demand locally.

Brief side note: A HUGE thank you to all our local Stogies who were patient (and continue to be) during this transitional period. Your words of encouragement and enthusiam for our product made a huge impact on us. Really, we can't thank you enough.

We were definitely on to something and went full-steam ahead on finalizing our manufacturing process to start mass production, right here in our hometown of Lexington, KY.

The Road Ahead

Let's wrap this story up. Our machines are in and being calibrated right now. We're expecting to be in full production mode next week. Here's a look at what you can anticipate in the coming weeks:

• Four new 100% USA Stog-filled filter flavors
• Eliquids will also be available in 30ml bottles
• More new flavors to be released this year (timeline TBA)
• New package pricing and load-out options for hardware
• [More we're not ready to discuss yet, but it does not involve an army of ducks (yet)]

At this point, we're just checking items off a list and getting ready to re-launch with what we feel is a far superior product, and we hope that you'll agree. We don't want to sit here and wax poetic about all the thought and work that's gone into each process, ingredient, etc.... We're just ready to get it into your hands.

For all of you that have had continued communication with myself and the rest of the Stogie Care Team, we thank you. It is a privilege to serve you and we look forward to your feedback on the new product.

You will see the site changing slowly over the next week. When it is completed and the new products are added, we will publish our next news article here and keep you up to date!

As always, thanks for bein' a Stogie!

Hello Stogies!

Stog has been online for just over a year now. It's been a real whirlwind of fantastic success stories and rapid expansion (and mayyyybe some late nights of hair pulling). The heart of Stog has carried in it a sense of servitude and transparency. Our primary focus is and always will be your happiness. This carries with it a set of challenges whenever the company has to make a pivot, such as the one we're facing now, so we want to share with you some coming changes, what they involve and how it will affect you.

We're not going to sugar-coat this section and get right to the point. Stog's supply chain has been compromised. We did not receive any "heads up" about this. In fact, our supply chain kept operating as if nothing had changed. They took our money and sent us our parts as though we wouldn't notice the quality dropped substantially. Well we did, immediately, and started a dialouge with them that's been continuing on for about two weeks now. So far, we are unable to reach an agreement. Over the weekend we've made some decisions that we believe will promote your happiness and bring Stog some flexibility that has been requested by some Stogies.

We are currently not accepting any new customers. During this transitionary period, we have removed inventory of our Starter Kits from the site. This is so we may focus exclusively on our existing Stogies while we make the following changes:

New Flavors - Here's one of those good news / bad news things. Many of our Stogies joined us and have continued with us because of our flavors. The Bad News: By re-building our supply chain from the ground up while ensuring the absolute best in quality control, we will be forced to change our flavoring options. The names will stay the same, but the content will change. The Good News: We've actually been dabbling with this idea for over two months, and believe our new offerings will knock your socks off. They're really, really good, and will provide more variety for you in quicker fashion. You'll still be enjoying 100% USP food grade kosher PG and pure pharmaceutical grade nicotine; what we stand to gain is finally making the move to offering our liquids in bottles (not just pre-filled filters) as many of you have requested as well as expanding our flavoring line at our leisure as the new supply chain is much more efficient. We hope the added variety and availability will be an acceptable trade-off for the disruption in our flavor offerings.

Freshy-Fresh - Stog pre-filled filters will soon be made-to-order. The shelf life of a properly sealed and stored Stog filter is about 1 year. Our inventory has always been carefully managed to turn over completely in no more than 3 months at a time. Going forward, your orders will be hand-crafted the same day your order is placed. In turn, this may delay shipping times by up to 24 hours, but we are taking extra measures to keep shipping times tight and super-fast as always (no one likes to wait around for their delivery confirmation, we totally get that). The resulting benefit is going to be a fantastically fresh pack of filters giving a strength and aroma to them that is currently unavailable on the market. It's going to be like the farmer's market version of electronic cigarette filters - you just can't get any fresher than that!

These changes are scheduled to take place and go live one week from today, December 17th. Should you have any questions or concerns, we'll be happy to discuss them with you as always either via email or phone. As we mentioned at the beginning of this post, we are making these changes with your ultimate satisfaction in mind.

Growing pains are aptly named, but with your support, Stog will be even more enjoyable, more diverse and most importantly, uncompromising in quality.

We look forward to receiving your thoughts and opinions as we take Stog to a new level for 2013 and beyond!

With Care,

Mark Harper
Stogie Care Agent 

As promised, we're fully stocked again on Bold & Heavy and Mellow & Heavy. Load up on some freshness here: http://www.stog.com/filters/classic-filters-10-pack/

We're also loaded back up on Stog Filter Blanks!

Thanks for bein' a Stogie!

Hello fellow Stogies!

You may notice the Bold & Heavy and Mellow & Heavy blends are temporarily out of stock. Since opening our retail location, we have had current smokers looking to make the transition to vaping sample our blends before purchasing and these two have received the most overwhelming response.

We have taken the necessary steps to increase our inventory levels, especially on these two blends, and we will be good to go this time next week.

We apologize sincerely for this hiccup and appreciate you sticking with us through our growing pains! We appreciate you all. :)

For a while running, our most popular request for a new product has been new flavors. We totally get it, I mean, even if you really love pepperoni pizza, after the fourth day in a row you're going to want to throw some bacon on it for variety.

The time it takes to manufacture an excellent flavor wasn't looking favorable for us to launch more any time soon. And even if we did, it would have been only two at the most. So we asked ourselves, "Who is really, really good at making flavors?" Our search took on a world-wide investigation, many test orders and long days of sampling. Can't say it wasn't an awesome time, but we were having difficulty narrowing the field.

That is, until we came across something truly unique.

DKS eLiquid from Milan, Italy has been able to patent the first 100% natural e-liquid with the intent to create a pure quality alternative to traditional smoking. Their flavors are crisp, the aroma is clean and the overall experience is second to none. We were blown away.

They also touted some other interesting characteristics:

0% Nicotine - DKS states that they have chosen not to include nicotine in their products, nor to use dyes or additives, to guarantee a pure and rewarding eliquid. During our evaluation, we didn't mention the "zero nicotine" part to our testers and once it was revealed, no one seemed to care. It's that good.

200% Flavored - DKS has the foresight to know some people will absolutely want to add their own nicotine content to their flavors, so you are able to do so without diluting the flavor at all. For those who are extra frugal, you can even cut your eliquid up to 50% with the universal base Zero. This can double the life of your flavors at a fraction of the cost.

100% Natural - As we mentioned, what really makes DKS shine is their commitment to purity. Their formula contains only natural flavors, vegetable glycerin, propylene glycol from non-genetically modified corn and distilled water - excellent raw materials and no chemical agents.

100% Made in Italy - An exceptional eliquid requires an exceptional supply chain. DKS has direct command of every ingredient used in their formula making it truly unique and impossible to imitate. It's a difficult thing to convey until you try the liquid for yourself, but each flavor is undeniably authentic.

We're very excited to share this experience with our Stogies and the vaping community at large. We've added all 20 flavors to a new category in our products listing. DKS is a fantastic group of people with an unwavering dedication to the extraordinary. We've thoroughly tested each flavor in our new Filter Blanks and are happy to say each works just as well as the other.

As always, if you have any questions or feel we aren't being clear on any particular matter, feel free to leave a comment below, call or email any time! And of course, thanks for being a Stogie!