AN electronic-cigarette store has been opened by a family in Stonehouse aiming to bring back further trade to the High Street.

Stu Adams, his step-dad Tom and mum Linda launched Cotswold Vapour earlier this month and wouldn’t have wanted to have their business based anywhere else.

The trio all live in Stonehouse and Stu has two children at Maidenhill and two more at Eastington Primary School.

He said: “It’s nice to offer the local community a new type of shop that they would have otherwise had to leave the area for.

“Since we opened in May, the levels of trade have already exceeded our expectations, and we have received overwhelmingly good feedback from the local community.

“We get several customers each day that express their delight that they now have a local vape shop and no longer need to travel to Gloucester or Cheltenham for their vaping supplies.

“We really enjoy this kind of feedback because it shows that locals appreciate being able to shop locally, which is not only good for us, but also for our fellow businesses in Stonehouse.”

Stroud News and Journal:

Through selling online and wholesale to other businesses (both nationally and internationally), Cotswold Vapour has seen steady growth, Stu saw expanding to retail stores as the next step in the company’s journey.

Since Saturday, May 20 it is no longer legal to sell nicotine products that do not comply with new industry regulations – these include similar packaging to tobacco which warns of health dangers and restrictions on high nicotine concentrations.

Stu is keen to stress an emphasis on harm reduction with ‘vaping’ preferred as an alternative to smoking, and expressed impressive knowledge about its health effects.

He said: “It has been actively endorsed as an alternative to tobacco by Cancer Research UK even more recently by the NHS after the first study on the long-term effects of vaping was released in February this year.

“This reaffirmed the fact that vaping ‘can reduce exposure to toxic chemicals that can lead to cancer in cigarette smokers’.”