80 TOBACCO BUSINESS | JULY / AUGUST | 22 Do you remember what you did when you were 22 years old? When he was that age, Sébastien Decoppet left his corporate job, sold everything he had and booked a one-way ticket to Honduras. If you think that sounds like a drastic change, it was, but it paid off immensely for Decoppet, who knew he had to make a big change in his life if he wanted to learn all there was to know about cigars. Decoppet did not come from a family of cigar smokers. He got his start smoking cigars while living in Switzerland, frequenting a local Davidoff of Geneva storewhere he smoked hisway throughwhat they had to offer. These cigars leftmore than an impression on him—they inspired himand launched him onto a very unexpected career path. He knew that making the leap from consumer to cigar professional wasn’t going to be an easy transition. It was going to require a level of knowledge and experience he didn’t have and wouldn’t be able to get by staying in Switzerland. He identified all of the different cigar-producing countries there were and worked with a travel agent to book a trip. Discouraged from visiting certain countries that were subject to rough hurricane seasons, he was told Honduras was a safe bet, so he took a chance and agreed to have the trip set up. He arrived in Central America not speaking Spanish or knowing much about cigars but was determined to change both of those things. He made his way to Danlí, where he met a close relative to the Plasencia family who made all of the proper introductions that landed Decoppet what you could consider to be the internship of a lifetime, working closely with Nestor Plasencia Sr. and his family. After spending time working with the family, he learned everything from the different characteristics of tobacco to how cigars are blended and rolled. “One thing to knowabout this industry is [that] it takes a lot of commitment. It takes a lot of time to learn,” Decoppet explains. “There’s no school; there is no one way to learn; there is no, ‘I’ll go there and learn and be able to understand this industry.’ It’s a very unique industry for that, and the only actual way to learn is hands on. You just have to go and try and look and try to find solutions and find people that know and are willing to share. Lucky enough, this industry is full of people that are happy to share.” Here’s howDecoppet tookwhat he learned at different stages of his career to build his own premium cigar brand, Cavalier Cigars—also known as Cavalier Gèneve—and launch his own cigar factory in Honduras. Journey into theUnknown Decoppet was born in Zürich, Switzerland, in August 1991. While he was still young, his family moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where he went on to spend most of his formative years. Decoppet didn’t start having an interest in cigars until he was almost 20 years old, although the legal smoking age in Switzerland at the time was 16. Since he was living in Geneva when his interest in cigars did begin to take off, he satisfied his curiosity by exploring different premiumcigars offered by the local Davidoff of Geneva store. It was around this same time that he began to kick around the idea of creating his own cigar brand. “That idea to start a business was not directly aimed at the cigar industry at the time but was more of a general research for me. I passed through several projects that I let go one after the other until I realized I wanted to learnmore about premiumhandmade cigars andwhat went into themaking of these products,” Decoppet explains. “I decided to leave Switzerland and my job at the time to move to Central America and see if I could learn more about this world of cigars, at least the behind-the-scenes part. This is when I landed in Danlí, at age 22, and stayed there learning the process for about a year. I would say that I understood that this was really what I wanted to bring to life during this year: working with tobacco in Central America.” Starting a new cigar company was easier said than done. Decoppet faced several challenges in the beginning, but themost difficult one he encountered was trying to understand how the different markets (countries) worked, especially how the U.S. market differed from others. Being young and new to the cigar business, Decoppet admits that it was hard to find someone who could advise him on this particular part of the business. “Mistakes were made and corrected, others were made again and corrected again; it is part of the way to learn,” he says. “We have always focused on an international presence for the brand as of day one, but that D Cavalier Gèneve’s gold diamond was designed to be an easy-to-recognize symbol and way for cigar smokers to easily identify and connect with the brand’s cigars.
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