64 TOBACCO BUSINESS | MAY / JUNE | 22 “The biggest thing was trying to convince retailers why they should carry my cigar,” Tarazona shares. “I would get, ‘I don’t know you,’ and ‘I’m not interested.’ I remember telling shop owners, ‘Well, if I was a customer off the street and you asked me to buy cigars from your store, what would you say if I told you that I didn’t know you or that I wasn’t interested?’ I’d throw it back at them. Some people may say I was being snide. Times were different then, and social media did not exist, so it reallywas a ‘who are you?’ kind of thing. Today, it’s not so difficult. It’s still a lot of hard work, but it’s easier today.” While it was a challenge, facing resistance didn’t stop Tarazona from moving forward with his new business. He treated ‘no’ as if it didn’t exist and instead focused on being persistent. He’d return to those retailers that said no time after time until they knew who he was and were familiar with his brand. This was his pathway toward success in the early years and taught him a valuable lesson: To grow your brand, you must first believe in yourself. As a newcomer in the cigar industry, the biggest thing that surprised Tarazona was how willing many others within the tobacco industry were to help him and offer advice. It wasn’t just one manufacturer or business owner—there were many who were willing to point him in the right direction, including Nick Perdomo, Gilberto Oliva and Rolando Reyes. Although some of these encounters and assists happened over two decades ago, it still remains true today that, as a collective, people in the cigar industry are willing to help one another. Tarazona’s Caraballo brand is named after Eddie Tarazona’s business partner, Mario Carabello. Each cigar in Tarazona’s portfolio has a story that makes it personal to Tarazona. This industry is a very small industry. It’s also a small world. You start getting to meet folks. And now looking 20 years later, it is amazing that I can go to Bobby Newman and ask for advice. —Eddie Tarazona “This industry is a very small industry,” he says. “It’s also a small world. You start getting tomeet folks. And now looking 20 years later, it is amazing that I can go to Bobby Newman and ask for advice. Bobby, Carlito [Fuente], Alan Rubin—they’ve always been there, and they’ve always been good friends to me. I’m sure you can do the same in other industries, but that’s what has really impressed me about the cigar industry.” The fact that so many other business professionals in the cigar category are accommodating and willing to steer their peers in the right direction initially surprised Tarazona, but it’s come to be one of his favorite parts of being involved in the industry overall. One of those connections helped him find the right manufacturing partners to bring his own products to the market. Making It Personal Tarazona is big on making his company as personable as possible. The company’s logo started off as a tattoo that he was going to get on his back. He wanted a really big eagle tattoo, and once he had it designed, he ultimately decided the tattoo would also work as a company logo. He had a friend who owned a sign company and asked him if he could make him a huge vinyl banner with the eagle tattoo on it. Once he saw it printed large, crisp and cleanly, he knew from that point onward that the tattoo was going to work well as his company’s logo. Almost nine years ago, Robert Caldwell invited Tarazona to travel with him and others to the Dominican Republic to visit a potential new manufacturing partner. The group visited Tabacalera William Ventura, a factory located in Tamboril, Dominican Republic. Since meeting the
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