82 TOBACCO BUSINESS | JULY / AUGUST | 22 also forced us to have to understand that not every market can and should be looked at the same way. I believe this explains pretty well why we added operations in the U.S. and moved here from Switzerland.” When he decided to pursue a career in cigars, Decoppet was around 22 years old and was living in Switzerland. He realized he had to make a dramatic change if he was going to have any chance at succeeding in this new career. He resigned from his corporate job and sold everything he had and moved to Central America with the not-so-simple mission of learning all he could about cigars. Despite the bold, life-altering move, he had no certainty of what would happen once he left all that was familiar to him and embarked on this new journey. He relocated from Switzerland to Honduras, not knowing any Spanish and finding it difficult to communicate with most people he encountered. After making his way to the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa, things begin to change for him. It was there that he met Adin Perez, a nephew of Nestor Plasencia, who took Decoppet to different factories. Eventually, Decoppet met Nestor Plasencia himself, who told him to stay with them if he wanted to learn about the cigar industry he was wanting to get into. Decoppet took Plasencia up on the offer and ended up working in their factory for over a year and also living with them. By the end of this experience, Decoppet knew more about the cigar industry and the art of cigar making and began to make the next moves necessary to create and eventually launch his own brand. Defining theBrand Thecompany thatDecoppetwould launchwouldcome tobeknownasCavalier Gèneve, a name inspired by a friend Decoppet made while in Danlí, David Rojas. “He was a particularly interesting person, artist [and] cigar enthusiast fromDanlí,” says Decoppet. “At the time, I was having trouble finding a name that resonated withme, and this was when, one day having a cigar with David in his studio in Danlí, he showed me the ‘horse and the man’ drawing that eventually became the logo. For the quick story, he refused to sell the drawing tome. He wanted to gift it tome, but I refused to take it for free. “I ended up leaving Central America and going back to Switzerland to look at starting the company without a solution for the name. One morning in Switzerland, I woke up to the tragic news that David had passed away. He was in his early 30s. This is when I decided to use that logo and bring David with me on the journey and honor his memory that way. The name Cavalier came fromthe logo: itmeans ‘horseman’ inFrench, mymain native language. The companywas then created in 2015 inGeneva, Switzerland. This iswhere the next chapter of the journey started.” Once the name had been settled on, Cavalier’s branding was the next thing that had to be worked on. The branding was the result of the work of Decoppet’s wife, Eylin. She was responsible for creating much of the brand’s art and identity early on, including the well-known gold diamond. The diamond, featured on many of Cavalier’s cigars, is a symbol that’s become a key identifying feature of the brand that helps retailers and consumers easily find the brand beyond the cigar band. Also helpingwith the company’s marketing efforts is Wesley McQuillen, who joined the company a little over a year ago to help align Cavalier’s communication with its brand identity. Another key person working to build up the Cavalier Cigars brand is Brian Motola, who serves as the company’s sales director as well as Decoppet’s partner at Fabrica Centroamericana de Tabaco S.A. (FCT). Maintaining and pushing the vision for the company forward is also a team effort, Decoppet explains. When speaking about how the vision for his company evolves, he compares it to how a kid grows into adulthood—the brand evolves with exterior influences as well as simple internal decisions. This helps maintain the original vision but also brings new and exciting Fabrica Centroamericana deTabaco S.A. (FCT), a cigar factory located in Danlí, Honduras. The cigar factory is co-owned by Sébastien Decoppet and Brian Motola.
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