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MEET
REGIS
BROERSMA:
GENERAL CIGAR’S
DYNAMO
Since taking the helm at General Cigar,
this STG veteran has been traveling
the globe, firing up enthusiasm for the
company’s family of premium brands.
~
BY JENNIFER GELFAND
PHOTOS BY ROBB SCHARETG
Í
In the premium cigar business, where icons, legends and
venerable family names abound, it can be hard for a rel-
ative newcomer to stand out. However, that hasn’t been
the case for Regis Broersma, the cigar industry dynamo
who took the helm of General Cigar in 2015. Unlike
many of his cigar industry peers, the 40-year-old didn’t
grow up in the business, nor did he come into it out of
a love for cigars. In fact, he was not a cigar smoker at
all when he joined Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG),
General Cigar’s parent company, straight out of univer-
sity in 2002—although he had fond memories of visits
with a cigar-smoking grandfather in Holland.
“I did have a positive attitude towards cigar smoking,
as I remember vividly that when I was a small boy visit-
ing my grandpa he would always come home and light
up a ‘tuitknak’ cigar,” recalls Broersma. “He would wan-
der off and enjoy the moment, overlooking the river from
the window. He did not seem to hear my grandma chat-
ting endlessly in the background. He always seemed to
be satisfied and enjoying the moment when he had the
cigar—although he was actually smoking what is now
our competition.”
Early in his career at STG, Broersma enjoyed both
the people he worked with and the opportunity to learn
about branding and taste preferences as he moved
through 12 positions in six different countries. However,
it wasn’t until he was charged with managing the compa-
ny’s Hand Made Cigars (HMC) brand in the U.K. and
then later in Germany that he became truly passionate
about smoking cigars. “My interest in tobacco and hand-
made cigars was sparked then, and when I visited our
factory in [the] Dominican Republic, that is where I was
sold,” he says. “I became a Hand Made Cigar man.”
Managing HMC helped prepare Broersma for his
role as president of U.S.-based General Cigar—the
premium cigar division STG has owned since it merged
with Swedish Match in 2010—where he was charged
with re-energizing the company’s brand family—includ-
ing stalwarts like Macanudo, Cohiba, Dunhill, CAO
and Toraño. Coming into the post, Broersma wast-
ed no time, embarking on a whirlwind tour of premi-
um cigar shops across America, as well as visits to the
company’s factories.
He’s kept up that dizzying pace ever since, listening,
learning and representing the company in meetings
with General Cigar’s customers, retailers, distributors
and stakeholders. Ask Broersma how he starts a typical
workday and he’ll tell you that it all depends on where
he wakes up—or where he’s headed. “
A day in my life
is sometimes just trying to get to a destination, some-
times working with one of our salespeople to visit local
retailers and talk to our customers, or sometimes walking
around the office or the factory for a ‘good morning’ and
casual chat with people of all levels in the company,” he
explains. “Our main office is in Richmond, Virginia, in
the center of the state, [and] our distribution network is
in Hampton, Virginia (two hours away, near the coast);
we have salespeople covering 50 states, an internation-
al team responsible for more than 60 countries world-
wide, and three cigar-making and two box factories in
[the] Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras,
in addition to our tobacco growing [operations], so my
workdays can be very diverse.”
➤