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Take lessons on how to grow your cigar business from premium tobacconists
who refuse to let the halt on product innovation stall their business sense.
B
y now you know that running
your stogie business on what’s
new isn’t going to cut it mov-
ing forward, thanks to the halt on stogie
innovation/new products as of the FDA’s
August 8, 2016 deadline.
But is that necessarily a bad thing? To
return to the art of selling stogies rather
than the fairly recent trend of constantly
pushing the latest stick out to customers?
In July, thousands of new cigar brands
were launched, for what many fear
might be the last time, at the Interna-
tional Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers
Association show.
“The question I throw out to retailers
is ‘how many [of those new cigar brands]
really represent a new experience?’” asks
Bill Sherman, executive vice president
of Nat Sherman International. “Look at
what we’re doing now—building a cigar
business on new brands and brand inno-
vation. Here you are, as a retailer, culti-
vating a customer by encouraging them
to come in and try something new—they
get excited, then the next week they come
in looking for something different. That
whole evolution of continuously selling
something new is a new phenomenon in
cigar selling. In the past there was much
more brand loyalty.”
Sherman sees the shift already begin-
ning to take shape “towards a balance of
FiveWays to Move
Past the Freeze
By Renée Covino
C I GAR SENSE
Smoke Inn Cigars’
Abe Dababneh
17
TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016