68
TOBACCO OUTLET BUSINESS
MAY/JUNE 2013
and in 1996 you couldn’t even get cigars
because of the boom.”
Focus and Family
The intrepid entrepreneur persevered.
His mother worked the cash register at
the 500-square-foot tobacco shop and
he bought and sold whatever cigars he
could scrounge up. Most of his sales
came from strolling to the nightclubs
up the street with a box of cigars and
selling sticks to the patrons waiting on
line outside.
Then opportunity came knocking in
the form of a customer looking for retail
shops for the historic 1914 building he
was buying. “He kept telling me he was
going to buy the building, and that he
wanted me to rent space from him when
he did, but I didn’t take him seriously
until he actually did buy it,” Castiano
explains. “The whole building needed
to be redone, but in 1996 I didn’t have
anything, so I figured I had nothing to
lose. I was his first tenant, and I opened
up with $15,000 for a build-out in a
1,800-square-foot space.” The flagship
World Famous Cigar Bar features a
super-sized walk-in humidor, enticing
winged high-back chairs and leather
couches and, of course, a bar stocked
with all the finest top-shelf spirits.
To save money, Castiano and his
father did most of the work on the
new shop themselves and his mother
worked the register during the day.
Still, the business struggled. “For the
first five years, we made no money,” he
says. “My mother worked for free and
I worked two or three other jobs until
trench marketing
“the whole
building needed
to be redone,
but in 1996
i didn’t have
anything, so
i figured i had
nothing to lose.”
