70
TOBACCO OUTLET BUSINESS
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012
TRENCH MARkETING
K
nown as much for its abundance of great weather
and natural beauty as it is for being a center for
entertainment, technology and agriculture, the
state of California is often thought of as an ideal place to
call home. But when you ask Mark Underwood, CEO
of the Humboldt Tobacco Company, how his business is
going in the state he’s lived and worked in for all of his 65
years, he’s in no rush to wax poetic. Instead, you’re much
more likely to hear a colorful cascade of political epithets
that would make a trucker blush.
“
You can’t do anything here,” he says of the state that
was once considered a free-living Mecca for the counter-
culture movement of the 1960s. “It’s over-legislated, and
in the case of tobacco, legislation is killing the business
everywhere in the state.”Underwood isn’t exaggerating too
much, especially if you confine his observations to anti-
smoking legislation recently passed in SanMateo, the town
his store is located in.
“
The City Council just passed ‘smoking control’ laws
that basically say you can’t smoke anywhere,” explains
Underwood. Truth be told, the recent passage of San
The Last Man standing
Mark Underwood of the Humboldt Tobacco Company fearlessly runs
his business with one eye off the beaten path…and the other one on
government legislation.
By Michael Gelfand