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TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014
You can’t replace a real stogie, but that’s no reason to dismiss electronic cigars—
they’re an add-on business that provides your customers with a vape option.
D
o e-cigars deserve your second look?
The way some in the business tell it,
this is not your father’s cigar and it’s
not supposed to be. Perhaps even more so than
an e-cigarette, an e-cigar is best merchandised
as an option to its combustible tobacco
counterpart—not a replacement.
“The entire experience and passion of
smoking a cigar… this does not take the place
of that, but it helps my customers get through
the times when they can’t do it,” Dennis
Lambert, owner of Tinder Box in Rockford,
Illinois, tells
Tobacco Business International
(
TBI
). “It’s also not taxable as a cigar.We have
a 36 percent tobacco tax in the state of Illinois,
so our margins are good on this. I’m just
helping my customers when they need a cigar
and can’t smoke one. It’s strictly an option.”
Lambert admits he wasn’t always this open
to the idea. Like many passionate purveyors
who are cigar aficionados themselves, he did
not think that his premium cigar business and
electronic cigars were a good mix. But he did
a double take after one persistent sales rep left
a quality electronic product behind for him to
try at his leisure.
“Iwas very skeptical.I’ma serious cigar smoker
and we’ve done some business with e-cigarettes,
but I tried some other e-cigars a while back and
wasn’t keen on them,”Lambert says.
It was the limited-edition E-Cigar King
from Vapor4Life that sold Lambert over to
the idea of carrying an electronic cigar. He
praises the company’s three different e-cigar
cartomizer liquids—cubana blend, ligero and
maduro—as well as the packaging and the
battery life, which he describes as “amazing.”
The CannibalizaTion QuesTion
In fact, the product was so impressive
that after trying it, Lambert’s concern that
electronic cigars weren’t good enough turned
E-Cigar Double Take
By Renée Covino
