The electronic cigarette brand UZO New Vapor Species has completed A round of financing which amounts to 36 million yuan recently. The investor is Shenzhen Qianhai Caishi Investment Management Co., Ltd. This round of funds is mainly used to increase R&D investment, as well as talent recruitment and sales channel construction.
UZO is a new vape brand launched by Shenzhen Clean Grass Technology Co., Ltd. Clean Grass Technology is an enterprise that integrates independent research and development, production and sales, brand operation and service of vape products.
Co-founder and CMO Zhang Min told Vape.hk that the UZO has recently launched the first pod system. The price of the starter kit is 299 yuan, and the price of 1 pack including 5 pods supporting 450 puffs is 118 yuan. Among them, hardware and e-liquids are independently developed and manufactured by themselves.
The UZO Lab R&D team of UZO has more than 10 years’ R&D experience in the electronic cigarette industry. Its team is headed by postdoctoral doctor of organic chemistry. It consists of several talents with master’s degrees in phytochemistry, senior flavoring engineers and hardware engineers (both e-liquid flavoring engineers and hardware engineers come from major tobacco companies and well-known vape factory).
Zhang Min said, “UZO target itself at traditional tobacco flavors, so much more research and development has been devoted to the original flavor of tobacco compared to other brands. The team adopted reverse osmosis membrane separation technology, selected a variety of high-quality raw materials from four major tobacco farmlands in the world, and through more than 1,000 deployment tests, developed a cigarette-like flavor compensation technology.”
On the other hand, nicotine benzoate is commonly used in e-liquids, and the technology of amino acid nicotine salt is introduced through long-term research and development of UZO. Zhang Min introduced that the use of this technology can reduce the aroma loss of vape juice to 3%, and almost no impact on the taste, the effect of addiction reduction is more stable. In the hardware appearance part, in order to improve the handling feel of the device, the UZO adopts the mobile phone surface treatment technology.
In fact, members of the founding team of UZO set up R&D centers in the UK nearly a decade ago, and provided research and development and supply of e-liquid products for many brands around the world. Relying on the long-term accumulation of the team, the production facilities of the self-owned R&D and production base of UZO are designed and constructed in accordance with GMP standards, and have passed the certification of ISO 9001 quality management system.
On June 24, the UZO pod system was launched in Jingdong e-commerce platform. Tmall store and self-operated small program store will also be launched one after another, and they will enter major domestic e-cigarette exclusive stores in the future. Zhang Min said that because the team had accumulated in overseas markets for many years before, it would continue to work hard in the area of the overseas market.
