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TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
RYO/MYO category,” Steve Sandman,
president of Republic Tobacco, tells
Tobacco Business International
. He
reports that retailers have shown
growth in Gambler tubes “because of
the quality” and in the Top-O-Matic
cigarette-making machine “due to its
reliability.” He adds that the company’s
cigarette paper business has been doing
very well with the expansion of OCB
Organic Hemp papers.
Davoli agrees that increases in
premium hand-rolling tobacco like Bali
Shag, American Spirit and Drum with
Halfzware shag cut are a “nice part of
the trend and are riding on the coattails
of a better economy” and so “we may
as well take advantage of it as tobacco
retailers.”
Non-self-serve RYO can work—
It
certainly is working in Kerstein’s case.
He voluntarily made the switch to non-
self-service recently in RYO and pipe
tobacco in his stores in order to avoid any
potential battles down the road. Even
though his adult-only stores are not
required to merchandise RYO behind
the counter, “it wasn’t worth the risk to
me; it isn’t totally clear yet what all the
definitions are with adult-only stores.
There’s still a lot of grey area on that,
so for me, it was not worth it to worry
about it anymore,” he explains. “I know
of some store owners in other states who
got fine letters; it’s being interpreted
differently in different states.”
And clearly, Kerstein made the right
choice, as he reports that he “lost not
one sale associated with it. I don’t believe
this product needs to be self-service in
order to be sold.”
Category awareness continues to
be up—
One good lingering benefit of
the now-extinct large machine business
is that it raised smoker awareness, in
general, about RYO. “Smokers pretty
much know what’s going on with it,”says
Davoli. “People are much more aware of
the category now,” adds Kerstein.
The new customer demographic is
changing—
Kerstein observes that “most
of the newer consumers coming in to this
now are in the middle-age category; that
profile of a new customer has changed
dramatically for us from senior citizens
on a very fixed income previously to those
people now in their 40s and 50s,” he
says. He further explains that the senior
citizen customers are not lost, they just
“started with it six years ago and continue
with it today.” As far as new customers
coming on the scene, they are younger,
but not
that
young. “You don’t see too
many people in their 20s rolling their
own [tobacco],”Kerstein adds. “They will
go more [often] to vape or e-cigs.”
Suggestive selling still sells—
Despite a more mass knowledge of
“I don’t believe this product
needs to be self-service
in order to be sold.”