76
TOBACCO BUSINESS
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013
trench marketing
all word-of-mouth,” he explains. “We’ll offer a 10
percent discount on a box of cigars, and I’m not shy
about giving away [a] product when I think a customer
will like it. But I do it well enough in advance so that
word gets out through the grapevine, and I count that
as my advertising. I’d rather give someone a $5 cigar
and get his or her honest feedback than spend it on
advertising to the general public. When someone gives
you something these days with no strings attached,
that’s odd. But that’s how you get qualified feedback
and demonstrate genuine goodwill.”
Another way he leverages the grapevine is via social
media channels like Facebook, which he has largely
turned over to his right-hand man, Pete Pike. Pike’s tenure
at the store evolved naturally, notes Christopher. “Pete
was a customer of mine at the original store, which I ran
by myself. He had the same calling for this business as
I did, and I recognized that. His love of the product is
unmistakable. He’d come in, smoke a cigar, we’d talk, and
finally when he told me he wasn’t happy in his current job,
it became apparent that he should come work with me…
within a month, he was [working for me] full-time.”
Pike manages the store’s website and contributes a
regular cadence of posts via Facebook. “He’d like to do
more computer-related promotions, but it looks easy from
the outside,” says Christopher. “Once you get in here and
see the busy reality of day-to-day business with customers,
you realize that it’s hard to devote as much time as you’d
like to it. But it really does extend the business.”
The most important thing retailers can do, advises
Christopher, is to build relationships. “That applies to
customers on a daily basis as well as your suppliers,” he says.
“I hear from a lot of reps that so many of the relationships
they have with shop owners are adversarial, and I don’t see
that as a good thing. It’s a lot easier to work with someone
than it is to work against them. I just come to work everyday
and do the best job [that] I can, and it’s working—knock on
wood.”
TB
