Opening the doors to a flagship store

In 2015, Italy became one of the first countries to sell our Vype range of Vapour Products outside the UK. Following a successful pilot in the city of Florence, Vype products have been rolled out to 10 new cities, reaching over 2,000 retailers, as well as being available nationally online.

In November 2016, our first ever Vype flagship store in Milan opened to coincide with the international launch of our Vype Pebble, a small, portable and simple-to-use vaping device.

Luca Angiolillo, Head of Next Generation Products at BAT Italy, explains: “The store is not only a place for consumers to buy Vype products, but also to learn more about the category.

“It was a fantastic culmination of over two years of work in building our Vype business in Italy, from developing new supply chain and distribution channels, to training our marketing agencies in our Vapour Products Marketing Principles to ensure full compliance.

“Being such a new category, there is still a lot of debate and misunderstanding among both regulators and the general public, so we’re particularly proud of our successes in building a constructive and transparent dialogue on regulation and product standards with the Ministry of Health and the National Institute of Health, based on expertise and scientific evidence.

“It’s been no easy undertaking and we’ve still much more to do, including further expansion across the country and introducing new devices and flavours in 2017.

“For me, it’s been a very challenging, yet incredibly fulfilling time and I’m excited to see where the future will take us.”

In the past five years, we have invested over US$1 billion in building our Next Generation Products business and developing a range of products – including Vapour and Tobacco Heating Products.

We launched Vype in the UK in 2013 and by the end of 2016 we had six different Vype devices available to consumers, while the range was in ten markets worldwide. We also became the leading Vapour Products business in Europe, covering the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Poland.