Today we are going to go through the process of learning that we are not going to use a head shop, its affiliate program, or endorse them in any way. Writing this has been a journey. I am so shocked at the conclusion, but I’m going to let you go through my first impressions of the website before we get to all of that.
I was first introduced to Smokey Headz through a desperate reach out on Instagram they made to my model friend. She poses with weed a lot using cute-girl-weed type hashtags. They commented on one of her pictures asking for her to be an affiliate. Going through model hashtags for promoting your online store is beyond kind of skeevy. I don’t like that they use babes as marketing. I feel like it’s totally objectifying to use a sensual soft sexy woman as a part of your advertising. It’s not like she’s in a bikini but it’s happening.
Website
Smokey Headz seems like a relatively new site. They have a lot of broken links and just kind of amateurish mistakes.
For one, there really shouldn’t be so many different fonts use they really aren’t complementary. Another thing that bothers me is the two categories of water pipes and glass. Literally you should say pipes or dry pipes or waterless pipes not just glass water pipes are glass too.
Their homepage asks you to become a brand affiliate a million times. The bottom section of the site has a heading that says “Looking For A Gift?” But it doesn’t link to anything. I can see how a site would have some proof reading problems but for a retail shop that is clearly constructed on a basic template they have a responsibility to make sure everything works before asking for people’s money. It’s also not cool to describe every single item as being the “Daily Deal”.
I personally don’t like it when paraphernalia for cannabis is associated with nicotine and soul in the same store. I think cannabis is for helping people and nicotine is just a bad idea. Having both in the same store is also more often done by people who see paraphernalia as a money grab instead of an art form.
Company
I have no information on their side about who they are what their story is. They have no about pages. I am going to assume they collected from more of a wholesaler. They only have 33 different products in their water pipes section but it actually covers a lot of ground. The pieces are simple, but you could pretty much get any kind of basic bong here. The labels of the products themselves aren’t particularly helpful. They don’t name them anything. They just use their size as a name, which is not helpful when people are trying to look for things.
If they want to have more than 33 products they should really use actual name. They seem to go out of their way to have very jazzy descriptions for some of the pieces but it doesn’t actually translate because the pieces themselves are describe so blandly.
It’s so strange that the overhead company called “political mayhem” has no actual web address. The overhead company can be found in the terms of services or the privacy policy. I’d like to hear more about it if it’s involved in this business at all.
Selection
I always check the bong section first because I believe stores should have that section totally filled out. After looking at the page for a minute I’m starting to see just a lot of Chinese glass. They may look kind of just standard but what is evident is that the pieces just aren’t original.
The pipes are clearly import and this piece in particular looks like a colorful hunk of shit.
These customer reviews are crazy fake sounding. They all seem to be within the last week or so. I’m not sure how long the shop has been up* but that but that is crazy. Who talks like this?
*later I saw that it started January 31, 2019
Do you see the ones where the date is screwed up? Why would a template site do that?
The only way I could see this not being fake is if in their buying process they offer a coupon for reviews. I don’t see anything like that. I am very concerned about the possibility of them using fake reviews. It would completely invalidate their shop. It would just be dead to me. But if we see it here I’m sure other places we use that tactic too, so I’ll have to keep an eye out.
Beyond that, I see that just about every item has a review. Some of the bongs and a sprinkling of the other products don’t have a review. A majority of the products have a short weird little review. Most people don’t leave a review for a rolling tray they bought from online retailer that bought from average wholesaler. I’m sorry, but people just don’t talk about their aluminum rolling trays like they do on this site, if ever. The reviews are talking about selling points, not even the tray itself. Who says “This is a must buy item”? The reviews are so vague and aren’t even tailored to individual items, they could be used for any product in the store.
I haven’t seen a lot of these novelty pipes before. I like how some of the pieces are drawn out into little horns, like the sea urchin piece. These are definitely some wholesale products, the bubblers are everywhere.
They have a pretty good selection if you think about it like a closet size smoke shop in the city. They pretty much have every basic shape of bong and enough variety to not be totally basic. Smokey Headz does have some creative ideas and products that differentiate them from the other basic shops I’ve seen.
Who wrote these product descriptions? It seems like they’re really ran out of material at some point. A lot of their descriptions to be said for any piece.
“Talk about a unique piece! This heavy duty glass spoon is a header turner for sure! Watch people stop in their tracks, do a double-take, mouths agape, as they say “Whoa, what’s that?! Cool!””
“Now here’s something you definitely don’t see every day! This glass water pipe is quite unique, to say the least. Nobody can pick up this glass piece without a huge smile coming across the face. Usually the first words out are either “Whoa!” or “Cool!” “
They act like you wouldn’t buy a smoking piece unless you were actively excited about it. I haven’t watched much Mad Men but this feels like copy print.
I didn’t notice (because it’s not actually listed in their site header) that they have a monthly subscription box! I wonder about the legality of sending munchies because I think it’s weird to package the things that aren’t food with food. I personally don’t recommend getting a subscription box for anything other than a celebrity collaboration, for a friends gifts, or for a beginner smoker. From the preview image of the subscription box I can tell they don’t put their best and brightest products in here.
Smokey Headz selection of rolling trays is paltry. I’m sure these are the first options of ‘Big Acme Head Shop Warehouse Co’ trays.
Compared to that they have an actually solid supply of grinders. Two pages worth! A few of them are plastic, which I really don’t like. The rest of them are standard and the shop includes enough variety to keep it interesting.
The dab tool section looks pretty cheap. I wouldn’t clock these as original pieces. I have doubts about the art cred a $7 dabber has. It just feels like another cheap warehouse grab.
The shirt section is so weird to me. I almost never see merchandise on head shop sites. The selection of t-shirts just confuses the hell out of me. It’s not particularly appropriate to have just a big titted blonde on a shirt called Mary Jane. I love the good weed and bad bitches shirt, but upon further inspection the shirts are from AliExpress. I would hazard to say that it’s beyond fast fashion and passing it off as a $30 shirt is pretty lame.The rest of them don’t even seem like something I would give as a gift to anyone but the most obnoxious 17 year olds I know. I just think photo prints look so tacky.
It’s not really my relm, but that’s why these products aren’t usually added to head shop sites. They generally have less of a personal touch and cater to more than a few demographics. Cater is a nice way to put it, it is more like they only invite a few demographics to the table. Smokey Headz had a very distinct masculine perspective to it.
This shirt is sold on AliExpress for $6.94. They didn’t even change the picture to obscure the exact site they got it from. Pretending it’s a $30 shirt is a joke.
I have just come across their Instagram. It still contains products from the business that they ran before opening a head shop. They are politically based t-shirt mostly promoting from I’m not sure if I’m more offended that he plays both sides or just the disgusting picture of trump and the Confederate flag together. What policy says “they will be they will surely be the party stopper”. That’s because the product that they were describing was play on the acronym LGBT to cover conservative topics: ‘Liberty, Guns, Beer, and Trump’. The name of his page is political mayhem and I can only imagine that it really describes his attitude of profiting off of both ends of the political Spectrum despite any personal beliefs. I don’t think this is a typical Behavior and I believe in personal accountability when you not only support fascism but also get money from anti-fascists.
The Instagram goes on to show that he starts selling nicotine products, then battery products for cartridges, then it eventually evolves to a smoke shop. This only happened on January 31st. One of the comments describes this company as a pyramid scheme and says that the glass is definitely definitely from China. I’m glad that there is some vocal resistance to this behavior.
The comments consist of people trying to generate traffic to their own page. One comment even said they would love to do a dab out of that flower bowl piece. They aren’t looking very carefully. The public interactions influencers have can be so disingenuous. It seems really prevalent with this site.
I’ve chosen to not include links in this article. I jumped on the opportunity to sign up for an affiliate sponsorship, but I really need to be more careful. I care about sites being ethical and not being awful. Poking around shows that a ton of people are using their affiliate link and promoting this site. It matters that the affiliate program funnels money to a person I don’t want to support who sells products you can get anywhere else. I hope that this shows people that they have to be wary when shopping for paraphernalia! I know that I’m going to tread more lightly.
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