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TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL
MAY/JUNE 2014
significantly grow his loose
tobacco business. “Good
friends in the industry told me,
‘Look, if you manufacture your
own blend of loose tobacco, we
will buy it because we know that you
know tobacco,’” he recalls. “That’s how I
got the leg up.”
An Impressive
Product Portfolio
Determined to pay homage to the
tobacco farming community, Rouse set
about creating a loose tobacco blend
worthy of the name “Farmer’s Gold,”
a term farmers give their premium-
grade crops. Launched in 1997, the
mild-flavored tobacco quickly became
popular for delivering a great flavor at
an economic price. Today, Farmer’s Gold
Pipe Tobacco is available in four flavors
and packaged in eight-ounce, one-pound,
or five-pound bags (see sidebar, p. 64,
for a full product list). Since the brand’s
inception, Rouse has also made a point
of using American-grown tobacco and
delivering good customer service to his
customers. “‘Made in America’ has always
symbolized quality products,” he says.
“Unfortunately, customers are a lot more
price conscious today, and you have a lot
more imports to compete with.”
Fortunately, M&R also has a product
it launched in 2004 that is geared toward
this cost-conscious competitor: Dean’s
Cigars. Available in soft-pack 100s, the
cigars quickly gained popularity and the
line has since been extended to encompass
Dean’s Large Cigars and Dean’s Heavy
Weight Cigars, all of which are available
in nine flavors. “Dean’s is a quality
product, but also very price conscious
for the U.S. market,” says Rouse, noting
that his industry contacts provide access
to tobacco that other companies don’t
have. “I have the capability of getting
tobacco from everywhere now at a very
competitive price.”
That access proved valuable
last year when M&R decided
to venture into more specialized
blends, with the introduction of
English Blend, Canadian Blend and
Turkish Blend specialty tobaccos, as well
as three vibrantly packaged new flavors of
its Dean’s Pipe Tobacco: Out of Control,
Running Wild and Just Chillin’.
“These are getting the most
attention of any new product [that]
we’ve introduced,” reports Rouse, who
attributes the interest in part to colorful
packaging and niche market appeal. “The
Turkish, Canadian and English blends
are a higher-end niche product retailing
at about 25 percent more than the other
blends. People seem to really like them.”
Electrifying Dean’s
Last year, once again spotting an
opportunity on the industry landscape,
M&R developed a Dean’s E-cigars
product line. Initially dubious about this
emerging category, Rouse soon found
himself a convert. “I’m impressed,” he
admits. “They taste good, they look
