40 / 65
12
Steps
toa
Hip
Cigar
Lounge
This Arizona tobacco
outlet retailer also
happens to have
a knack for running
a modern cigar lounge.
BY RENÉE COVINO
OPERATING A TOP TOBACCO
outlet
business does not necessarily go hand-in-
hand with running a cool cigar lounge. Part
of the trick is knowing where the differences
and synergies lie.
Bob Roberts, owner of 13-year-old tobac-
co outlet chain Smoke Em, based in Scotts-
dale, Arizona, has also run Big Sticks Fine Ci-
gars store and lounge in Mesa, Arizona since
2012. To him, a separately run stogie hangout
is “a viable diversity” of the times, for which
he has gleaned some common sense and cre-
ative steps along the way, recently shared with
Tobacco Business
:
1
It starts with a growing cigar busi-
ness.
This may seem obvious, but if
you’re a tobacco outlet store with an
expanded stogie business, it’s time to consider
opening a cigar store and lounge, according to
Roberts. Over the years, he gradually expand-
ed his cigar lines and overall cigar focus—first
came walk-in humidors, then came lounge seat-
ing in some stores. His overall cigar business has
been growing for about five or six years, which is
also right in line with the age of his cigar lounge.
2
Identify the potential in an exist-
ing, possibly failing, operation
.
Roberts ultimately purchased near-
by Big Sticks Fine Cigars lounge, common-
ly referred to as “Big Sticks,” because “our
business strategy has always been to identify
the tremendous potential in tobacco-related
businesses that are failing because they are ei-
ther mismanaged, or because the market isn’t
being fully exploited,” not because it doesn’t
have a good framework, he emphasizes. With
Big Sticks, Roberts recognized that it had
“good bones,” as he phrases it.
Put another way, Roberts doesn’t see the
sense in starting a cigar lounge (or a tobacco
outlet business, for that matter) from scratch.
“Who would do that today? It’s so competi-
tive,” he says. “We had the bones of the op-
eration to build from at the get-go.”
And so, he watched the Big Sticks Fine Ci-
gars business for a couple of years, studying
it to the point of recognizing that he would
be able to turn it around. The previous own-
er “was a cigar smoker, but not a retailer—
he didn’t understand customer relations,”
says Roberts.
CIGAR
SENSE
[ 40 ]
TOBACCO BUSINESS
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