If you want the short version, read this TLDR. If you want the long version, scroll past the TLDR.
💨 TLDR: New US-Based Guided Smoke Shop E-commerce Platform
Vision: Create an online smoke shop experience that replicates the great selection, great prices, and great customer service found in the best smoke shops.
Shop Assistant: Available 24/7 to act as a knowledgeable product expert, providing in-depth information, personalized recommendations, and connecting customers to a human team when needed.
Product Curation Tool: A digital curation specialist that learns your needs/style to recommend the most compatible products whileacting as a teaching tool for both newcomers and veterans.
Site Design: Emphasizes guidance, simplicity, and compatibility-driven recommendations over popularity-based recommendations.
Ecosystem Focus: Committed to a sustainable ecosystem that equally supports customers, vendors, and affiliates.
Customer Policies:Shipping and package protection are included with every order, often still resulting in a lower final price. Includes a Norton Shopping Guarantee for $10,000 ID theft protection and a $100 best price guarantee.
Independent Artist Support: No sales percentage is taken from independent artists, there are no fees to sell on the platform, and our features put products in front of their exact target demographics.
Affiliate Program: Offers the industry's highest commission at 10% of sales.
We are a group of US-based herbal enthusiasts and technology professionals with a vision for a glorious smoke shop ecommerce experience. We have been buying glass for decades and we know all too well the foibles of the smoke shop customer experience, both online and off. I have been blessed to live in places with incredible glass culture like Garnet St in Pacific Beach CA (and that one gas station iykyk), the wholesale district of downtown LA, and the historic streets of the Haight District in SF. For me, buying a new piece has always felt like my birthday came early. The process of searching the shelves to find my new favorite inanimate object carries the excitement of the good times I know await me. I want everyone to know these joys of a new piece, that first crispy rip, sharing the experience with friends or loved ones, or even keeping it just for yourself. The best aspects of my favorite shops are always the same, great selection, great prices, and great customer service from knowledgeable people. I wanted to make the online shopping experience reflect these same principles. Here are the ways in which we are doing that.
For the experience of a knowledgeable employee that is available 24/7 to teach, guide, and help you in the product discovery or customer service process, we built our chat assistant. Our chat assistant is more than just an AI chatbot, we have written hundreds of pages of custom responses based on how an actual product expert would talk to you. The AI side of it helps with getting in depth with product information and recommendations based on your input. You can ask the assistant to teach you just about anything and everything about our products. It can help you find the perfect products for yourself or a loved one. If your questions or concerns cannot be answered by the assistant you can get connected to one of us as we are available nearly 24/7.
The curation tool is the digital experience of having that knowledgeable employee sit with you and learn everything they need to know to recommend exactly what you’ll love and/or need. It's like if you wanted the best chance at finding true love in bong form. It also serves as a teaching tool if you are new to this scene. I've been in these glass streets for some time and I still learn about things all the time, it seems like there is always some awesome new innovation to catch up to in this industry. It's a lot of information that typically takes time to learn but this will give you a thorough crash course. Whether you are brand new to these products or an experienced veteran, this tool will educate and guide you to informed purchases based on your exact style and needs so that you feel good about the products and confident in your decision to buy them. This also helps our vendors by creating a discovery machine for their products that uses thorough direct input from their target demographics to present their products to customers that are highly likely to patronize or support their brand or artwork.
When it comes to our site design, we went hard in the minimal direction for several reasons. I wanted an online smoke shop that felt easy to navigate with clear pathways and functionality. I wanted product recommendations to be based on what I would actually like. While you do have the option to search by ‘most popular’ within the shop pages, we want to eliminate the habit of leading with popularity-based recommendations so that products will thrive based on their compatibility with our patrons. We believe that this is better for the patron because their purchase decision is based on being informed about and compatible with the product. We believe this is better for our vendors because as long as you make a quality product that the market demands it will thrive. If you were to ask me ‘Hey, what’s cool here?” I would say everything is cool here, tell me a bit about yourself and what your needs are and I'll narrow it down. That is the spirit behind our features. We are confident that the end result will be an informed and satisfied purchase.
Our policies for customers and vendors are geared towards showing equal respect to both of them. We see ourselves as members of an ecosystem comprised of our customers, vendors, and ancillary businesses/affiliates. In order for anything within an ecosystem to grow to its full potential, all symbiotic elements need to be thriving. If one aspect of the ecosystem tries to grow at the detriment of any of the symbiotic elements, that growth is sure to be short-lived and difficult to sustain once those damaged elements are required again for more growth. We intend to grow to global proportions and we plan to do so with a healthy and sustainable ecosystem.
For customers, we include shipping and package protection with every order. We say ‘included’ because for the most part we are able to take the cost entirely out of our own profit margins without increasing the base-retail cost of the item but there are circumstances that require us to increase the base-retail price just enough to be profitable. This will still typically result in a lower end-cost (final price including shipping and package protection) than that of the same product on another site. You’re getting everything included in the purchase and still paying less in most cases. We also include Norton shopping guarantee with every purchase. This comes with $10,000 of identity theft protection and $100 best price guarantee. This means that if you buy something that goes on sale within 30 days and the difference in price is $100 or less they will send you the difference so that you can get the sale price. If you buy a bong for $100 and it goes on sale for $75, you get $25 back. All claims must be filed within 30 days of purchase so keep that in mind.
For vendors, we keep their prices reasonably close to their suggested retail value, we do not sell any un-approved knock-off products, we do not take a percentage of sales from independent artists, we do not charge independent artists to sell on our platform, and we manually integrate their product details and styles into tools that put them in front of their exact target demographics. We have nothing but love and respect for our vendors because they put so much heart and effort into creating things that can be anywhere from recreationally fun to medically therapeutic for the world. We have listened to many of their stories and felt the intent behind their products.
For ancillary businesses and affiliates we offer a 10% commission on any sales that come in through their promotional links or codes. This is a highest commission for this industry. We do not charge a fee to partner with us and everything is tracked on the partner dashboard for complete transparency.
This is a very special market unlike any that I know of and we are here to enhance and support the ecosystem of these products, their creators, and the people that love to buy them. We welcome your feedback and collaboration, please reach out to us at info@autobongs.com. If you are a vendor interested in selling with us we’d love to hear from you, please click here to begin the process.
