28
TOBACCO OUTLET BUSINESS
MAY/JUNE 2013
A Lucky Lounge
As blessings in the cigar business go, one Green Bay,Wisconsin cigar lounge is a grateful recipient.
Before Titletown Tobacco was born three and a half years ago, four cigar enthusiasts with “regular
day jobs”—Mike Gehm, Glen Sherman, Luke Russell, and Aaron Lindstrom—were “trying to
figure out how to get a cigar shop going,” according to Gehm, who was already dabbling in a side
business of selling cigars out of his office.The lounge was tantamount to their business vision.
Just when they were getting ready to open in 2009, Wisconsin passed a state law banning
smoking inside any new operation, but any existing cigar shop business could continue to operate
as long as 85 percent of its business came from cigars and accessories (and bars could operate as
long as 15 percent of the business came from cigars and accessories), according to Gehm.“Since we
were already in the business of selling cigars from my office, we really lucked out,” he says. “And it
was a double blessing because ever since the law went into effect in 2010, there aren’t a whole lot of
places in the entire state where people can go to smoke.”
The next hurdle for the four was how to run the operation without leaving their full-time jobs.
“We came up with the concept of a 24-hour key card access in our member lounge, much like the
access given in a 24-hour gym,”Gehm explains. “We joke around that it’s really like a gentlemen’s
club of the ’30s and ’40s with the modern-day technology of 24-hour access.”
While the entire business is 2,000 square feet, only 500 is retail space—the other 1,500 is the
upscale lounge featuring humidified, custom-made lockers, four flat-screen TVs, comfortable
leather furniture, a poker table and a brand new custom-made domino table, all of which customers
can access on their own time.The store itself is only open in the evenings from 5-10 p.m. for six
days a week; it stays open from 11 a.m. to 9 or 10 p.m. on Saturdays.
“It’s really just the four of us manning the shop in our spare time,” says Gehm. “But we make
ourselves very accessible for members and customers—many of them have my cell phone number
and the numbers of my partners.”
Aaron Lindstrom
Mike Gehm
Luke Russell
Glen Sherman
