The vape capital of Britain: how have two Manchester backstreets come to dominate the e-cigarette trade?

Clustered together in the area of Cheetham Hill are more than 50 shops specialising in vapes and vaping paraphernalia. How can they all make a living – and for how much longer? I meet Ali outside his tiny wholesale business, Fly Vape – the store name combined with the image of a vape bookended by angel wings appears on the shopfront. In place of a halo is a cloud of vapour. The softly spoken 40-year-old says that working in the vape trade is “OK, better than nothing”. He opened Fly Vape just ...

By Emily Retter