60
TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL
MAY/JUNE 2014
Leveraging the
success of
Dean’s Cigars and
Farmer’s Gold brands,
this Pink Hill, North
Carolina-based
company has been
on a new product-
launching spree.
By Jennifer Gelfand
O
ne might call M&R Holdings
an old new company. While
the company was founded in
1997—qualifying it as relatively new
by tobacco standards—Co-Founder
Dean Rouse can trace his family’s
tobacco-trade legacy all the way back
to 1734, when his ancestors grew
tobacco on North Carolina farmland.
By the time M&R was launched,
Rouse himself had a long history in the
business, one spanning everything from
tobacco growing and leaf dealing to
manufacturing and retailing.
“I started learning how to blend
tobacco when I was about 18 years
old; when some pinhookers took me
under their wing,” he says. (Pinhookers
were tobacco-blend experts who
canvassed warehouses looking for top-
grade tobacco before going to tobacco
auctions; they then blended and
resold the tobacco to manufacturing
companies.) “Since then I’ve been
involved in every aspect of this industry.”
That knowledge paid off after
regulation of the cigarette market
began to intensify. Foreseeing the
enormous price hikes that the Master
Settlement Agreement would demand
from cigarette manufacturers, Rouse
and a partner (who has since left the
company to pursue a career in premium
cigars) spotted an opportunity to
NewMoves for
M&R Holdings
