Vaping has become big business and keeps growing

NEW YORK (FOX 5 NY) - It all started in summer 2014 when Andy Aranda met a girl who was vaping at a party.

Cut to December of 2018.

Andy quit his hedge-fund job, invested his life savings in vape products, and is now running breazy.com, a website that sells thousands of them.

Headquartered in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Breazy has more than 60 team members and has doubled its sales in the last two years, outpacing an industry that's grown more than five times in size in the last four to five years.

This December, tobacco behemoth Altria paid cash for a 35 percent stake in Juul, valuing the dominant player in the vaping market at $38 billion.

These are just a few of the signs, both locally and nationally, that the vaping business is booming.