Basic HTML Version
56
TOBACCO OUTLET BUSINESS
JULY/AUGUST 2012
S
oon after Joe Gold sold his
restaurant business and moved to
the warmer climes of Las Vegas,
a guy he met in a bar made a suggestion
that would change his life. “He said,
‘You ought to be in the cigar business,’”
recounts Gold. “I said, ‘You ought to be
in a mental institution.’ I knew nothing
about cigars—in fact, I still don’t know
all that much.”
But it was the ’90s—the peak of
the cigar boom—and you didn’t
need a wealth of knowledge to make
money selling stogies. So the guy
from the bar became Gold’s partner
and the two hired a team of women
to sell cigars in Vegas clubs. Not long
afterward, Gold—who began smoking
cigars more regularly once he was
in the business—had a brainstorm.
“I happened to taste a flavored cigar
and I found that I liked it more than
the others,” he explains. “I looked
around and realized there are plenty of
machine-made flavored cigars, but no
real top-quality flavored cigars.” Gold
set out to change that. He went to the
Dominican Republic, coined the name
Havana Honeys, began producing a
handmade flavored cigar and managed
to get Thompson Cigar to buy a 90-day
supply. “They thought, maybe this crazy
guy has something, and they gave me a
chance,” he says. “Thank goodness they
were successful with it.”
Gold seems tohave a knack for getting
lucky breaks like that, which suggests
that there’s probably a lot more than
The Gold
Touch
Beautiful women
and beautiful
cigars—what’s
not to like about
Joe Gold’s
Bahama Mamas
Cigar company?
Bahama Mamas Tiffany Mason, Raquel Young
and Andrea Collins with Joe Gold