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purchase your own tobaccos, you age them
yourself, you care for them like they are your
children, you feed and nourish them. The end
result is art and not a commodity; it’s extreme-
ly gratifying and soulful.
As an American in Esteli, everyone thought
I was completely crazy, and Orlando Padrón
named me “The Crazy Gringo.” All the old-
er, respected, Cuban cigarmakers thought I
was a nut job as well: “There’s Gringo Loco
walking the streets and playing Wu Tang
Clan at his factory loud enough for the whole
street to hear.”
Interestingly, those unique attributes were
some of the earliest building blocks that gal-
vanized the company at the genesis level with
its “think different” attitude and swing-for-the-
bleachers mentality. We go hard and don’t look
back—because we know that there is only one
Drew Estate and we must represent it every day.
THE ART OF CIGAR MAKING
Everything from your marketing and
packaging of cigars, to the Drew Estate
website design, to the look of your fac-
tory reflects a passion for art. Is art a
personal passion for you? Beyond cigars,
what hobbies and interests do you enjoy?
Art is definitely my passion and forever built
into the DNA of Drew Estate. Art is expres-
sion and culture and time. It’s what makes us
human and is a powerful ally in whatever war
you are personally fighting. Any enemy can de-
stroy the physical, but nobody and nothing can
stamp out the lifeblood of music and food and
imagery and prose.
Every brand of Drew Estate had a reason to
be born and was a rebirth of cigar culture, time
and time again. Our products are not commod-
ities—they are art, living and evolving. We are
presently in “The Rebirth of Drew Estate” time
period as an organization right now.
“The Rebirth of Drew Estate” is about rein-
vention, but from a structural and infrastructural
standpoint. It’s about going back to our roots and
highlighting our core competencies, while at the
same time defining best practices for our retail and
distribution partners. We are branching out, diving
deeper into technology and institutional attributes
with data, for example, that we can bring to the ta-
ble in creating value for our strategic retail partners.
On a personal level, non-business, I collect
1980s street art, mostly the early graffiti scene,
which included the movements of hip hop,
CBGB’s, Blondie, Madonna, Basquiat, Andy
Warhol and Rammellzee.
Here we are, 20 years since the birth
of Drew Estate—what trends or pre-
ferences have you observed among
cigar smokers?
From the aspect of cigars themselves, big ring
gauges, small ring gauges, limited editions,
commemoratives and collaborations.
From the aspect of retailing, there are four
important aspects to highlight: digital prow-
ess, merchandizing solutions, cigar bars and
new packaging solutions, such as the G-Fresh
pouches that we have brought to market with
our partners at Swisher International. G-Fresh
creates more access points for consumers to
pick up their favorite sticks and develop new
opportunities for mass market operations to
realize the high margins of premium cigars.
Would you say that those retail paths
are where we should expect to experi-
ence growth potential within the cigar
industry at this point?
Yes, 100 percent, no question.
In 2014, we launched the ACID G-Fresh
packaging solution for the convenience sector,
hoping to birth a new “top shelf ” for premi-
um cigars at convenience and DTO locations
across the country. Even though the success
Jonathan Drew
Continued