Key Insights To Bring Traffic Back To Your Brick And Mortar Smoke Shop This Holiday Season

In a world dominated by A.I. recreations, digital metaverses, and an endless march of depersonalization, we are beginning to see droves of consumers yearn for the days of more analog experiences that contain actual tangible qualities they can interact with.

From vinyl records to infectiously collectible dolls, we are seeing history repeat itself as people end up rediscovering all of the benefits to direct, in person experiences are all the rage these days proving that absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

This increased focus on in real life experiences extends all the way to your brick and mortar smoke shop, as for the first time in a while, it appears that customers are starting to increasingly desire standard retail experiences over internet shopping.

That’s why today Got Vape Wholesale wanted to provide you with key insights to bring traffic back to your brick and mortar smoke shop this holiday season to increase your ROI and ensure your business makes a healthy profit in the next few months.

By the end of this smoke shop business breakdown, you’ll have a much better idea of why customers are attracted to brick and mortar shopping, how you can tap into these sentiments, and what methods you can employ to ensure maximized traffic this holiday season.

Table of Contents:

What Attracts Customers To Brick And Mortar Smoke Shops?
Social Connection
Instant Gratification
Retail Therapy Confidence Boost
Spontaneous Discoveries
How Can I Get Holiday Traffic In My Brick And Mortar Smoke Shop?
Marketing On Indulgence
Have Outside The Box Options
Carry The Latest Releases
Let Your Smile Lead The Way
Make Your Smoke Shop The Best

What Attracts Customers To Brick And Mortar Smoke Shops?

According to a Yale School Of Management study, there are a multitude of different social and psychological goings ons that observers have noticed amongst holiday shoppers when it comes to them spending at brick and mortar retail shops like your smoke shop.

What they ultimately boil down to is an amalgamation of spending tendencies and overall consumer habits that when reviewed will help you provide better information that better targets the specific desires of your customer base.

In order to help you get a better understanding, we went ahead and broke down the major insights that bring traffic into your smoke shop and ensured that they speak directly to the realities of your smoke shop.

This way you can allow yourself to see the forest through the trees and operate this holiday season with the exact type of confidence that leads to monetary success.

Social Connection

Despite A.I. assistants walking and talking like a duck, they may as well be a bathtub toy when compared to the social connection and communal bonding that takes place within brick and mortar businesses.

While it may not seem like much, even the tertiary interactions that occur within the walls of your smoke shop provide shoppers with a much needed dose of social interaction, while also providing them a retail space to browse and connect with each other.

The act of browsing through a store is an age old to spend some time and interact with your loved ones and friends while out. Thus when you make your smoke shop attractive and inviting, you're literally and figuratively opening the door for new customers to come in and browse.

As opposed to the 1s and 0s of internet shopping, when customers are in your store they are able to get instant feedback, as you go about answering all of their questions and even showing them the direct difference between two products in order to help them understand what they're buying.

This way instead of having to scour the internet and rely on potentially dubious facts, you could for example show them both the Wulf Mods Nova Stack Water Filtered Nectar Collector and the Wulf Mods Timber Stack Water Filtered Nectar Collector, to show them the subtle differences in person that may not be quite as apparent online.

This can also help to make your business the best smoke shop for new customers, as the friendly attitudes and inviting nature of your transactions will help ease novice trepidations to encourage first time buyers to finally pull out their wallets.

Instant Gratification

While proponents of online commerce like to talk about the “instant gratification” of clicking on an item and immediately ordering it, the reality is while convenient it is nowhere near the level of actual instant gratification available through brick and mortar purchases.

After all, it is literally instant. And that’s something that Amazon won’t ever be able to recreate, not even with an army of drones behind them.

The reality of being able to see a product in person, without having to buy it is wholly unique to brick and mortar locations including your smoke shop. While the tech giants want us to believe that their grip is immutable, the reality is their hollowed out mass production and conglomeration does in fact have limits.

It’s exactly these  areas that the giants can’t reach that as brick and mortar smoke shops we can exploit in order to retain a competitive advantage and keep the lights on in the face of these commerce goliath.

In reality, this manifests as customers being able to walk into your store, find a brand new device like the Puffco Pivot Mobile Vaporizer Limited Edition Pine, and walk out with it in hand, ready to rip - all within 5 minutes.

For holiday shoppers this is absolutely invaluable, especially when on a time crunch because of hard dates such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, as they can complete their shopping in one fell swoop all with the convenience of brick and mortar locations.

If you want to be the best brick and mortar smoke shop for holiday customers then it’s essential that you understand the motivations of this instant gratification and make sure you lean into it for maximum effect.

Retail Therapy Confidence Boost

It’s no secret that the holiday season can be a tough time for certain shoppers, that’s where your smoke shop comes in to provide a dose of brick and mortar retail therapy to deliver that much needed confidence boost that customers crave.

This is something that can only be delivered from a physical location such as your shop, as nothing can quite beat the feeling of taking that special item off the shelf and walking out with it ready for some imminent enjoyment.

Plus then the customers can take their brand new device like a Storz & Bickel Veazy Portable Dry Herb Vaporizer out with them and show off the cutting edge tech to their friends, to further boost their self esteem for a little holiday pick me up.

Remember this when customers walk through the door this holiday season and don’t lose sight of the benefits that your brick and mortar smoke shop can offer.

At the same time, one must also be cognizant that with heightened emotions, any less than enthusiastic input from yourself or employees can pop that bubble just as soon as it forms, shattering the illusion for the consumer and allowing them to find that same endorphin rush by electing not to spend at your business.

It may stretch you thin, but if you want to maximize the effect of your brick and mortar smoke shop into being the best source of holiday vaporizers, glassware, and more - you are going to have to play by the customers' rules this holiday season.

Spontaneous Discoveries

Another distinct advantage to brick and mortar smoke shops, lies with the potential for customers to come upon spontaneous discovery that they wouldn’t have considered before happening upon it in your shop.

All of this means you should never underestimate the power of impulse connections and the resulting spontaneity they inspire in customers spending. Sometimes all it takes is for the right customer, in the right mood to come across your item like say a Yocan Black Pocket Concentrate Vaporizer, to secure that sale.

Thanks to your brick and mortar selling a wide variety of products, customers are naturally going to peruse through the selection and get exposed to different devices that they otherwise didn’t know existed.

As opposed to online shopping which places a microscope over specific items and funnels customers' view of the playing field, your brick and mortar smoke shop offers them the best possible experience when it comes to understanding the totality of what’s available to them.

For instance if a customer came in wanting to enjoy dabs from a traditional dab rig, you could also let them know about cool options including nectar collectors like the Wulf Mods Nova Water Filtered Nectar Collector which performs the same function, in a different manner.

This is all in service of the spontaneous discovery effect and how we try to make our brick and mortar smoke shops the best location to find new devices and glassware, in order to give our customers just the experience they’re after this holiday season.

How Can I Get Holiday Traffic In My Brick And Mortar Smoke Shop?

Now that you’re aware of these key insights, your smoke shop can make some minor adjustments in order to lean into these and ensure that you're getting the holiday sales bump that your business is looking for.

To do so, we recommend following the tips we laid out in the steps above, as well as utilizing a mixture of methods that we have laid out below. This way you can pick out the areas where your smoke shop is all covered and take the time to build up any areas that need work.

Through the use of targeted initiatives such as these, you can operate with laser focused precision that avoids wasted time and gives your smoke shop a definitive edge on the local competition.

Ultimately the goal of this is to bring traffic back into your brick and mortar smoke shop to provide you with the boosted sales, customer base growth, and insider knowledge that makes navigating this holiday season - and everyone going forward - a total breeze.

Marketing On Indulgence

Starting things off, an excellent method to maximizing your smoke shop profits this holiday season, we wanted to point out the benefits to marking on indulgence and leaning into the feeling of treating oneself and loved ones to the best.

Try out some social media posts with captions like “that feeling when using your brand new E-Nail” or “nothing beats unwrapping a Puffco” in order to emphasize the positive feeling of indulging in the holidays and get shoppers craving that same experience.

By normalizing going all out in your holiday shopping, it further convinces customers that they themselves should get in on the fun and not get left out from experiencing all the sublime power of a brand new rig.

This plays into FOMO (fear of missing out) concerns which are a strong motivator, while also giving many people the excuse they were looking for to spend a little bit extra over the holidays to achieve that ideal sense of retail satisfaction.

Beginning today, try to lean into this type of marketing with your online presence and in the store. You can go about printing out your own signs for the holidays and make sure that you have the right type of messaging inside your store and out.

All of this is to create an overwhelming message to your customers that not only is it okay to treat themselves, but it is actually encouraged! The perfect storm in order to power up your sales and lean into those holiday feelings for better market success.

Have Outside The Box Options

Continue your holiday sales efforts by keeping a stock of outside the box options that have the type of creative appeal to catch the eyes of foot traffic and land you some consistent sales throughout the season.

In practice this can manifest as a wide amount of products, such as with creative vaporizers like the Wulf Mods Zapp Variable Voltage Battery 9pk, all the way to session themed pet toys and vinyl figures to offer a wide range of choices that customers won’t find in any other shop.

These types of unique items are just what holiday shoppers are looking for, as they make for great gifts that both lean into the preferences of smoke shop customers, while also providing a distinct choice the giftee is sure not to already have.

Plus you’ve now got some excellent conversation starters, giving you the opportunity to work your sales magic and engage with the customer to see what they’re after this holiday season in order to make a sale where there otherwise would have been none.

Other great items to have in stock are rolling trays, as with a variety of different designs and incredibly practical applications that make them an excellent gift item, whether the customer is  treating someone else, or themselves.

Carry The Latest Releases

Another excellent application of these insights is to double check your stock and make sure you have a solid variety of the best selling new releases, as many foot traffic shoppers will be stopping in to see if your smoke shop happens to have their “grail” insta buy choices.

A lot of foot traffic customers coming in on the holiday aren’t going to be 100% locked in on spending, but instead just want to take the time to look over your smoke shop and enjoy the social interaction with friends while perusing.

But when you have brand new choices like the Puffco Pivot Mobile Vaporizer Limited Edition Pine and Storz & Bickel Veazy Portable Dry Herb Vaporizer in stock, you're providing the type of big game that these types of customers are on the hunt for.

With cutting edge performances and sleek designs, these brand new vaporizers have the elite capabilities that have the sort of draw required to cash in on this niche. Coming from leading brands, these are the reliable new releases that you're going to want this holiday.

Plus, when you carry the latest products and list them on your website, you're going to boost your overall google search results, which will have you turning up for more customers finding your business in order to create a snowball effect of boosted sales.

Let Your Smile Lead The Way

Rounding out these holiday sales solutions, we wanted to emphasize that one of the simplest, yet most effective methods of capitalizing on your foot traffic is to ensure your smoke shop has a positive attitude and friendly atmosphere that customers are drawn to enter.

This doesn’t just center on yourself, but of course on your employees as well. While you can always emphasize to your team how important it is to have a positive attitude, a more effective solution is to provide them extra support and perks that naturally improve morale.

Simple things such as bringing in some coffee and donuts in the morning, or having a mini cooler filled with drinks on demand for your employees is a great way to ensure that they are in the right holiday spirit to really land sales.

With a little bit of extra effort, you can more than guarantee that your team is ready to put their best self forward and are able to match the energies of the enhanced traffic that you have flooding into your business.

A key component of this is to demonstrate to your employees not only how important they are to your business, but that you appreciate how hectic holiday sales can be - thus providing them with a little boost to show you actually care about the day to day struggles of retail.

The overall effect will be improved morale for your employees, customers, and even yourself as there is no better feeling than doing the right thing. All of this will ultimately result in a solid sales bump and guarantee your smoke shop makes the most out of the 2025 holiday season.

Make Your Smoke Shop The Best

Now is the time to take these key insights to bringing back traffic to your brick and mortar smoke shop this holiday season and practical applications, in order to give yourself the sales boost that closes out Q4 in a strong position.

For more industry news, product highlights, and smoke shop advice, make sure to check out the rest of our postings at the Got Vape Wholesale Smoke Shop Business Blog.

In the past year we’ve covered the top google searches for smoke shops, explored all of the best dabbing accessories for smoke shops, and provided a deep dive into the psychology of Black Friday shoppers in order to give you the inside scoop on what shoppers are after this holiday season!