3 ms·
> Unfortunately before Altria acquired Juul it was a terribly ran company Altria is a terribly run company. I was part of their previous attempt at entering th
by llimos 4y ago
> Unfortunately before Altria acquired Juul it was a terribly ran company
Altria is a terribly run company. I was part of their previous attempt at entering the e-cig market (Green Smoke and Mark Ten). Everything they touch turns to dust, so this news about Juul is not surprising. I've never seen a company with so much dysfunction, in-fighting, and ineffectiveness.
When they shut us down in favor of the stake in Juul, we joked that they only took a minority stake in order to save Juul from them.
- pclark 4y agoMy guess is that Altria doesn’t know technology at all? They have the regulatory side locked in though. Juul understand technology but unfortunately wasn’t a technology led company. (and obviously didn’t understand regulatory side)
- llimos 4y agoYes, that sounds about right. At the time I was there, Altria's entire business model was basically "let's lobby for the regulators to ban everyone but us." It also seemed like they also didn't really want e-cigs to cannibalize trad-cigs, but they wanted it in their back pocket in case it started to take off. They were not interested in increasing sales at all and sometimes seemed to be actively working against it.
- pclark 4y agoHa, that is funny. I can see why they bought Juul — explosive growth and an alleged culture of technology — a perfect compliment to Altria. Honestly, I feel slightly bad that Altria were hoodwinked into investing in Juul and having it implode like it did, all the Altria executives I interacted with were remarkably precise and lucid. BTW I think the FDA deserves 75% of the blame for their poor vaping policies (and total lack of enforcement.)