The words on a wholesale invoice, defined.
Ordering vape wholesale has its own vocabulary, and most of it is used without being explained. These are the terms that decide what you pay and what you receive — with our own figures where a term is a policy rather than a definition.
Terms
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Case | The unit a distributor sells in: a fixed count of the same product, packed by the manufacturer. A case is not a pallet and not a single unit. |
| MOQ | Minimum order quantity — the smallest amount a supplier will sell. Here that is a $500 opening order; after it there is no minimum. |
| Mixed case | One case built from several flavours within a single product line. Allowed here, but it does not reach the deepest price tier. |
| Freight-free threshold | The order value at which shipping stops being charged. Here it is $1,500 to a business address in the contiguous 48 states; below it, freight is a flat $29.99. |
| Price break / tier | A lower unit cost at a higher order value. Our deepest tier starts at $2,500 and is written for single-flavour cases. |
| Net 30 | Payment due 30 days after invoice. Available here after three settled orders, with a credit limit based on your history. |
| Resale certificate / licence | The paperwork that lets a business buy goods for resale without paying sales tax at purchase. See also: state tobacco or vapour licence, which is separate. |
| EIN | Employer Identification Number — the IRS number that identifies a business. One of the two documents an account needs here. |
| PACT Act | The US federal law that governs how vapour products move to consumers: adult-signature delivery, no USPS, labelling, and tax reporting on every shipment. |
| Adult signature required | The carrier must hand the parcel to somebody 21 or over. Every vape shipment here is sent this way, and a missed delivery becomes a paid redelivery. |
| Disposable vape | A prefilled, non-rechargeable (or rechargeable but non-refillable) bar, used until the battery or the liquid runs out. Sold by puff rating, not by millilitres. |
| Puff count | The manufacturer's rated number of draws in a disposable. It is the industry's size label: a 50,000-puff bar and a 5,000-puff bar are different customers, tickets and reorder rhythms. |
| Pod system | A small refillable or prefilled device with a replaceable pod. The pod and the liquid are the repeat purchase; the device is the one-off. |
| Closed pod | A prefilled pod you cannot refill. Sold as a consumable, so the customer returns for the same pod rather than a bottle. |
| Salt nicotine | Nicotine formulated to be smoother at high strength, so it can be vaped at 35–55mg in a low-power pod. Freebase is the older formulation, typically 3–12mg. |
| Freebase | The original nicotine formulation. Lower strengths, harsher throat hit, used in higher-wattage devices rather than pods. |
| Nicotine-free / 0mg | No nicotine — the fastest-growing part of the e-liquid shelf, bought by customers who want the flavour and the habit rather than the nicotine. |
| Resistance (ohm) | The rating of a coil. It decides how much power the coil wants and how tight the draw feels, and it is why coils sell by compatibility before anything else. |
| Sub-ohm | A coil below 1.0 ohm, used at higher wattage for more vapour. The enthusiast end of the counter, and the shelf where specification closes the sale. |
| Nicotine pouch | A nicotine sachet held under the lip. No device, no coil, no liquid — the entire product is the tin, which is why it reorders so cleanly. |
| Restocking fee | A percentage deducted from a refund when goods are returned for reasons other than a defect. Ours is 15% on unopened, factory-sealed cases. |
| LTL | Less-than-truckload freight — a partial pallet or a shipment too large for parcel. Quoted at cost here, with no markup. |
| Array | Sending goods directly from the distributor to the end customer, without the retailer handling them. We do not offer it for vapour products; PACT Act rules make the retailer the responsible party. |
| Array | The delay between placing an order and it shipping. Here it is same-day for orders placed before 2pm Pacific, because the stock is already in the warehouse rather than on a purchase order with a factory. |
Figures quoted here are the ones this business runs on. Generic trade terms are defined as the industry uses them.
Why the vocabulary matters
Almost every dispute between a distributor and a shop is a word meaning two things. "A case" is the one that costs the most: a buyer expecting a case of assorted flavours gets a case of one flavour, or the reverse, and the order is wrong before it ships.
The rest is arithmetic. A freight threshold you did not know about turns a $1,400 order into a $1,430 order, and a price break you missed by a case means the whole order cost more than it needed to. Both are knowable before you click order, which is the point of writing them down.
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