Alternative tobacco manufacturer Taat Lifestyle & Wellness [CSE:TAAT/OTC:TOBAF/FRA:2TP2] has begun marketing its Beyond Tobacco cigarettes in Ohio, the first state the company’s management team has picked for distribution of its non-nicotine, zero tobacco product. As part of this initiative, Taat Lifestyle & Wellness has launched a website that allows residents of Ohio to request free product samples.
The original TryTaat website, which lets users request the samples, has already had to be migrated to a new server due to capacity demands, having been live for less than a week. Unique visitors to the site have converted confirmed registrations at a rate of more than 30%, substantially higher than average landing page conversion rates in any other industry.
Taat says it is actively working to solicit interest from current tobacco smokers of legal age in order to begin circulating a supply of the cigarettes concurrently with their first availability to retail. Made of a proprietary, non-tobacco compound, the patent for which Taat has filed for, the cigarettes contain no tobacco and no nicotine. They are designed to assist existing smokers in giving up their nicotine addiction.
Taat has been engineered to replicate tobacco cigarettes
Taat is a combustible product, engineered to replicate the experiential and sensory components of the experience of smoking a tobacco cigarette. It is manufactured using a 14-step process, including the patent-pending refinement technique, to create a taste and smell that closely resembles tobacco. The cigarettes are being launched in Original, Smooth and Menthol varieties.
Taat made the decision to launch in Ohio because of the state’s size and geography. With a population of approximately 11.7m people and a smoking incidence rate of 20.5%, it contains a sizeable segment of potential Taat users. Although the seventh most populous state in the US, Ohio ranks only 34 by size. It is a very containable market in terms of early stage commercialisation and marketing of Tat. The product is anticipated to see its formal launch later this month.
Added to our watch list in September
The Armchair Trader added Taat Lifestyle & Wellness to our watch list in September. We have already been impressed with the performance and impact of Beyond Meat in the US market, and we are very interested in the development of healthier alternatives in other consumer segments. Taat is attacking the tobacco market from a differing angle to previous vaping products, as it is using a proprietary material that contains no nicotine and could conceivably help smokers to wean themselves off nicotine altogether.
“Bringing a new product such as Taat into the $814 billion global industry does not just require an excellent product, it requires a disciplined strategy in which that excellent product can be manufactured at an optimal cost and quality, marketed intelligently to drive last brand awareness and recognition, and made available for purchase through popular sales channels with efficient distribution tactics to sustain a sufficient retail inventory to meet demand,” said Taat CEO Setti Coscarella.
Taat now has the large scale commercial manufacturing and wholesale distribution in place. Its free sample initiative is currently only available to current tobacco smokers aged over 21 years of age and resident in the USA. The company has confirmed that it does have international distribution plans, including Europe, but the timescale has yet to be defined.
