52
TOBACCO BUSINESS
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013
history. Not immune to the economic
downturn plaguing the country,
Meerschaum was grappling with
declining sales and dated equipment.
“It wasn’t so much that it was in trouble
as that it needed attention right away,”
recounts Morgan, who was also faced
with learning the business—literally
from the ground up. “We are very
vertically integrated, meaning that we
own our own 150-acre farm where
we grow the corn we use to make our
pipes,” he explains. “That was the No. 1
thing for me—learning about growing
this corn, which is a special hybrid bred
specifically for corncob pipes.”
Prior to Morgan’s joining, the
company
had
been
struggling
to maintain the integrity of the
hybridization—which was essential for
the larger-in-diameter, harder interior
ring corncob that Meerschaum relies on
to make the corncob pipes for which the
company is famous. Resolving that issue
took two years, largely because corn is,
after all, an annual crop. “If we hadn’t
gotten that right, nothing else would
have mattered,” says Morgan.
Next on the agenda was marketing, an
area that had been badly neglected. The
company hadn’t advertised, attended
trade shows, or done any marketing
at all for 10 years. Ramping up its
advertising and promotional efforts
Missouri Meerschaum’s
Phil Morgan
