Tobacco Business

[ 34 ] TOBACCO BUSINESS [ JANUARY / FEBRUARY | 22 ] non-fun stuff because we have a system in place to handle it, and it’ll allow you to do the important things that make your brand who your brand is, whether it’s the blending or the sales piece.” Sutliff Tobacco Company handles the warehousing, shipping, invoices, collection of remitting taxes, running of credit cards and many other business-related tasks that often prevent small cigar brands from growing. Today, Sutliff Tobacco Company serves as the distributor for a number of brands, including ADVentura, Casa Current, Drunk Chicken Cigars, Emperor’s Cut, Los Caidos, Matilde, Patina, Regius, Tarazona and Veritas Cigars. Also part of Sutliff Distribution Group are several non-cigar brands, such as Cobblestone Pipe Tobacco, Eltang Basic Pipes, Rattray’s Pipes & Accessories, Seattle Pipe Club and White Elephant. These are all products and brands that McKenna and his team believe in, and each has its own unique story and offers something different to retailers. An Expanding Network Each brand that Sutliff Tobacco Company has brought into its distribution division has helped it to expand its network of retailers. There’s some crossover of accounts, but the company has found that each brand has retail partners that are not yet one of its customers. These new business relationships offer Sutliff Tobacco Company the chance to get more of its products into new stores. It’s also an ongoing focus of the company’s sales team to open new accounts. Trade shows, such as the Tobacco Plus Expo (TPE) and the Premium Cigar Association (PCA), are two of the company’s biggest opportunities to meet retailers and open new accounts. Also, the company has earned a reputation in the industry for its customer service and support of brick-and-mortars, which has helped bring in new business. McKenna and his sales team use enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems; they do not allow technology to handle their relationships with customers. Although Sutliff Tobacco Company is now selling some tobacco products directly to consumers through its recent acquisitions of tobaccopipes. com and cupojoes.com , McKenna and his team have opted not to launch an online ordering portal for their retail partners out of fear of losing the personal touch that Sutliff Tobacco Company has built its business on over the years. “We feel that one of our core competencies is that personal touch and relationship that our inside sales manager builds with the customers,” says McKenna. “That’s something that has set us apart for years now and will continue to. That’s the only reason why Sutliff hasn’t gone to that sort of online ordering platform—not because we’re afraid of technology; we just don’t feel like it fits with who we are.” Understanding what defines Sutliff Tobacco Company and its business is something McKenna learned while in the U.S. Army Reserve. One of his mentors while he was serving ingrained in him the importance integrity had in building relationships. “One thing he always told me was everything you do, do it with integrity,” he says. “You’re not going to remember everything you said and everything you did, but what you will know is if you did it with integrity or not. I treat every relationship I come into with integrity. I never have to worry about looking over my shoulder and wondering if someone is going to catch me in a lie because there are none. I can’t do business that way, and I don’t really want to do it.” In his relationship with his staff, McKenna is big on empowering each employee to not only do their job but also to take ownership in their jobs and to make appropriate decisions. While employees have some autonomy, McKenna stresses that in order to keep Sutliff Tobacco Company on the right path and retain its customers, he has to verify that what each employee is doing is benefiting their job and the company overall. “A lot of managers empower and trust their employees to do whatever, but they never verify or check behind them to make sure that they’re doing exactly what they should with the standards that you expect out of them until something goes wrong,” he explains. ‟All of a sudden, you lose a customer, something happens, and you start digging into why that happened, and what you find out is that you laid out a clear expectation, but it wasn’t being followed or wasn’t completely understood. So empower trust but verify.” McKenna’s leadership style has gotten verifiable results itself. Half of Sutliff Tobacco Company’s staff has been with the company for over 20 years. When an employee is hired, most stay on with the company for years. McKenna sees the company’s high employee retention rate as being a reflection of how happy people are with their jobs and with the company itself. Financially, success is verified by how many pounds of tobacco the company sells. The higher the poundage, the more tobacco that is being sold and the more manufacturing that is taking place. The more manufacturing taking place, the better Sutliff Tobacco Company is doing overall. We feel that one of our core competencies is that personal touch and relationship that our inside sales manager builds with the customers. —Jeremy McKenna “ ”