Mo Hassan explains how experimenting with home-made vape flavours as a university student led to him establishing the award-winning and international brand that is Dr Vapes.
Words: Caroline Barry
Mo Hassan has taken Dr Vapes from an idea fleshed out in a university bedroom in 2012 to an internationally-recognised company with an amazing line up of e-liquids.
He worked in a vape shop while at university, which led to him gaining a vast amount of knowledge about this emerging industry.
Mo said: “I was a smoker at the time so I started using vape devices. Vaping led me to quit smoking and I knew that if it worked for me it would work for others, so I really started to believe in the product.
The whole thing was new to me so I learned all I could to be up-to-date with everything that was happening within this fast paced industry.
“My passion for vaping grew as I was able to help more and more people come off smoking every day.”
Soon Mo started mixing his own e-liquids in his spare time and experimented with different flavour combinations to find ones he really liked to vape and was amazed when friends soon started asking to buy them from him.
Dr Vapes started as orders for his mixes grew. Mo quickly gained a reputation for unique flavours with quirky names and as more orders came in he hired his younger brother Mortaza to join him in the production side of the business to keep up with demand.
They started with a Ribena flavoured e-liquid before moving on to other fruity mixes in the following months. Mo keeps a record of the old products to remind himself of the flavours that the company made.
He said: “We had grape juice, blue slush flavour and we actually had a flavour called Bastard; which consisted of banana, strawberry and custard. People loved the name and it was delightful to see people coming off cigarettes and using our flavours,” he said, as that was one of the main reasons he started the brand.
Music has always been a passion for Mo and he combined the two when he released a track called “In the Clouds” last year. He has a lot more planned for 2020 with the possibility of an album with vaping as its core theme called ‘Vaping 101.’
He said: “I have always liked music and I used to mix and master sounds in the past. I’m planning to bring out a whole collection of tracks looking at different parts of vaping such as how it can help you and how to vape safely.
“The idea is to tell new vapers everything they need to know about vaping and what sort of vapes you can get.”
At October’s Vaper Expo Professor Green entertained the crowds on the main stage and he was followed by Mo performing “In the Clouds.”
Mo said: “I really enjoyed it but I felt the pressure because I was performing after such a big name. As time went on, the nerves faded and I became more and more excited to just get out there and share my music with the awesome crowd we had. Professor Green has an e-liquid line himself, so we discussed our mutual interests whilst organising our performances. It was an exhilarating experience, I really loved it.”
Last year Dr Vapes expanded their flavour range, notably with with six new additions to their successful Panther line and four flavours to Dat Blue Stuff.
Despite all his business success, Mo still gets huge satisfaction from helping smokers quit.
He said: “For me the main drive for 2020 is to get even more people to quit smoking. We get lots of feedback from consumers telling us how we’ve helped them quit smoking and this is what it is all about.
“My proudest moment was winning an award for best e-liquid brand which was incredible for us. Having this whole thing start from my bedroom to being the best e-liquid brand out of so many amazing international brands was unbelievable and is something I will be proud of for the rest of my life.”
