67
TOBACCO OUTLET BUSINESS
MAY/JUNE 2013
I
n a sense, Richie Castiano fell into
both cigars and Florida retail by
accident. First came cigars: “I grew
up in a big Italian family on Long Island
where my uncles and my Dad would
hang out after Sunday dinner and smoke
cigars,” he recounts. “One day when I
was just a kid one of my uncles gave me
one to smoke. They all thought I’d hate
it and never smoke again, but I walked
away with it. I’ve loved them ever since.”
Castiano always liked the idea of
opening a cigar shop, but until he fell
in love with Florida while visiting his
parents, who had retired there, he never
tried to pursue that dream. Jobs were
thin on the ground in Florida in 1982,
the year Castiano moved there, so he
took up bartending. But as cigars began
gaining popularity over the next decade,
his dream of a cigar shop began to take
shape—especially when his parents
offered to work the store while he held
onto his day jobs.
“I opened up shop in downtown Fort
Myers, but it was a dead neighborhood at
the time,” says Castiano of his first store,
Downtown Tobacco Shoppe. “There was
nothing—no retail, no restaurants—in
the downtown area where I opened;
