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W
hen Cheyenne Interna-
tional took home the
Best New Product Award
for its newly introduced
Cheyenne Tropical brand at TPE 2016,
we at
TBI
weren’t surprised. Cheyenne’s
well-earned reputation for overcom-
ing adversity dates back to its origins,
when four partners decided to launch a
small tobacco company in 2002, a time
when big players dominated and the
regulatory environment seemed to be
growing harsher by the day.
Fourteen years later Cheyenne is go-
ing strong, but when you think about
it, you just have to ask what the heck
the company’s founders were thinking.
“It sounds crazy, right?” answers David
Scott, CEO of Cheyenne International
and one of the company’s founding
members. “But sometimes crazy just
has a way of working out. Cheyenne
was founded by four partners in 2002
who are smart, driven and seasoned—
each bringing their own area of exper-
tise and knowledge to the table. The
notion was to bring affordable, high-
quality tobacco products to adult con-
sumers and provide jobs in what was
typically an economically depressed
area of North Carolina. We knew we
could make great products and felt we
had an opportunity to be a leader as the
premium-brand alternative.”
That simple premise—offering a
high-quality alternative to major ciga-
rette brands at a fair price—proved a
winner, and the company has contin-
ued to build on that foundation ever
since. Cheyenne currently offers three
distinct cigarette brands: Cheyenne
Cigarettes, Decade Cigarettes (a val-
ue-priced brand) and Aura Cigarettes
(an all-natural blend), each distinct but
all of which couple quality and value.
What’s more, Cheyenne has lever-
aged the company’s core philosophy
to expand into other tobacco product
categories, notes Scott. “After the
introduction of cigarettes, we subse-
quently entered the filtered cigar cat-
egory and never looked back. Since
then, we’ve expanded our offerings
into a variety of profitable tobacco cat-
egories, working diligently to ensure
our mission was at the heart of every
product: high quality at a fair price.”
In addition to cigarettes and filtered
cigars, the company now also markets
cigarettes, cigarillos, moist smokeless,
pipe tobacco and vapor brands. “We’ve
had success in all categories, but our
cigarette, filtered cigar and moist
smokeless products are at the core of
our success,” notes Scott
.
“Filtered
cigars are dominated by our flagship
brand, Cheyenne. As a product that
revolutionized the category, it offers
exceptional taste in the iconic Chey-
enne Cigar packaging. Our smokeless
brands, Klondike, Derringer and De-
cade, have made waves in the MST cat-
egory by utilizing a unique manufactur-
ing process that allows our unmatched
taste and value to shine through.”
Scott attributes Cheyenne’s suc-
cessful expansion to taking a disci-
plined approach when exploring new
The Little Cigarette
Company
That Could
Against all odds, Grover, North Carolina-based Cheyenne International continues to thrive
in a Big Tobacco-dominated marketplace.
TBI
talks to CEO David Scott about how they do it
By Jennifer Gelfand
“We knew we could
make great products
and felt we had
an opportunity to
be a leader as the
premium-brand
alternative.”
40
TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016