Tobacco Business

[ 70 ] TOBACCO BUSINESS [ JULY / AUGUST | 21 ] happiness and gratitude his club’s members express, the more he wants to do for them. Time is limited, however, and he realizes there’s only so much he can accomplish. He also understands that what makes Privada Cigar Club special is its exclusivity and small size. Privada Cigar Club is not scalable beyond where it is now. The club is private, and if it were allowed to grow at its current rate, the cigars would become less rare, less special and less limited— defeating the entire purpose behind the club’s launch back in 2017. Even though Privada Cigar Club may be limited in how big it can get, Desind is a true entrepreneur at heart and has focused his attention on giving cigar enthusiasts even more ways to experience different aspects of the club. Desind created Farm Rolled, a different club within Privada that features un-banded cigars, which puts the focus on the factories responsible for making cigars. Subscribers of the Farm Rolled club receive four cigars each month that come directly from factories. These cigars have no band on them, but just as with the regular Privada Cigar Club, subscribers receive an education on the factories that made the cigar. Farm Rolled was created to further the education on the artisan-side of the cigar industry and as a way to continue to honor the cigar makers and their products. “I’m just looking for ways to serve my people and the needs they have. They wanted more daily smokes at a really good price. This was my answer to doing that without cheapening the brand’s MSRP,” Desind explains. Another way Desind has scaled his business while also giving his customers more of what they want is by creating the Limited Cigar Association (LCA). When Desind originally launched Privada Cigar Club, he stated that he would never launch an online store because he didn’t want to compete with traditional brick-and-mortar stores. After going back on this decision, Desind felt bad and wanted to create something that would benefit traditional retailers. LCA is a program that brick-and-mortar retailers can take part in where they will receive limited, rare cigar releases to sell to their customers. “Limited Cigar Association is a once-a-month drop that goes to mom- and-pop brick-and-mortars. We created this during COVID-19 to help some of the brick-and-mortars that suffered early on from the lockdowns. We take a cigar that you cannot buy anywhere else—you cannot buy it from Privada Cigar Club or from any other place online. These cigars are only in the LCA shops across the country. Once a month, we send these retailers a limited amount of cigars and tell our members where these shops are located and what the cigar is. We do a video on our YouTube page for it, usually a very funny, fun video to promote the cigar, and our members flood these shops and buy them all.” From his time in the music industry to starting his own auto transport business, Desind knows that content is king and that the more education a cigar consumer is given, the more he or she will be willing to try a product and take a brand seriously. A Moment in Time Desind is all about giving his club members the experience they want. While his business has given him a platform and more money to work with, Desind hasn’t stopped pushing forward and expanding on his original vision of serving customers with the products they want and the knowledge and content that will help them to better understand, appreciate and connect with the companies that make them. Today, Privada Cigar Club consists of 2,000 cigar smokers, and the list of retailers taking part in the Limited Cigar Association continues to grow, making him the go-to businessman for those manufacturers looking to connect with the next generation of cigar smokers. “Never ever before has the cigar industry had a promotion vehicle like Privada Cigar Club. You’re building a relationship with the members of this club by getting your product in their hand—and not just the product, but you’re also getting the story in their head, so that they’re creating a relationship with your product while they’re smoking it. The relationships that are formed between the consumers—my members, my family—and the brands are astonishing.” When asked about being voted as Tobacco Businessman of the Year, Desind doesn’t take all the credit for his win. Instead, he attributes the win to the community that has formed from within Privada Cigar Club and the support they’ve shown him and others of the Privada Cigar Club team. “It makes me very happy and proud,”he says of the win. “It means that this is an extremely special movement and that this moment in time that the members and I have created together is being laminated; it’s being put on the calendar. It happened. It means that it’s been acknowledged that we did this, and we did this together. It’s amazing.” Desind is a creative person at heart and wakes up with new ideas, spends his days making those ideas a reality and goes to sleep thinking about more ideas. As an entrepreneur, tackling business and the needs of his customers from a different angle is more inspiring than finding a quick and easy fix. Like a true musician, Desind has built a business that puts the end product and user in mind. A musician thinks about the finished song and also about serving his or her audience with the absolute best—that’s exactly the mentality Desind has applied to Privada Cigar Club and what makes him this year’s Tobacco Businessman of the Year. TB The most fulfilling part of all of this is the members’ happiness. There’s all types of sayings out there, like, ’Privada days are like Christmas every month.’ They really look forward to the boxes. It makes them happy, it enriches their lives, and it gives them a break for $30 bucks with shipping. It’s just such a thrilling thing to be able to be a part of that. — Brian Desind