As a not-for-profit organisation IBVTA will never seek to profit financially from regulation or from our membership fees
- Representation by the only trade association focused on businesses like yours
- Regulatory support and guidance
- Access to a Trading Standards Primary Authority Partnership
- Regular updates
- Resource hub
- Events and networking
- And much more
To join us, just fill out an application form and start benefiting from IBVTA membership today.
Late in 2015 a small group of independent vape businesses, deeply concerned about threats in the form of regulations and standards that were unfit for purpose being imposed on their industry, decided to work together.
The intent was to give the independent sector a voice with government bodies, regulators, enforcement agencies and many other interested parties that are not allowed to speak to individual businesses. Many of these bodies are also forbidden to allow the tobacco industry to form any part of the establishment of policy.
The result was the founding of the Independent British Vape Trade Association in 2016, and the success of the association has been marked by positive interaction with many government bodies and agencies, and this in turn has resulted in the continuation of the success of vaping in the UK, when it could so easily have been decimated by over-stringent regulation and aggressive policing.
Things have moved on, and the needs of the industry have changed in some ways. However many threats remain, the deepest of them being the denial of opportunity. The vape industry still needs a voice, but over the last 2 years IBVTA has lost some of its larger members to acquisition by big tobacco interests, and others to a general view that it is all too much effort for what we get back.
The independent vape industry, from the biggest manufacturer to the single vape shop, should see neither of these positions as acceptable. We became involved in the biggest public health insurgency that a populace has created in living memory for a reason, and that reason has never gone away. We owe it to your customers not just to survive, but to thrive, and to make continued efforts to ensure the 7 million smokers remaining in the UK get the opportunity to join your customers in freeing themselves of combustible tobacco.
The benefits to members form the tip of a very big iceberg, much of which is often hidden from view. Any trade association needs active members for those benefits to be realised, and from there to multiply and become more visible. This is why we need your vape business to join us, and to contribute not just in silent membership, but in making your voice heard as part of a thriving community.
We have structured our membership fees to make this opportunity accessible, but with that opportunity come some responsibilities, the most important of which is to contribute views, opinions, and if you can, some effort in furthering IBVTA’s aims. Treat IBVTA as an association representing your trade, rather than an ivory tower in Westminster, and the value of membership will become self-evident.
