Tobacco Business

[ 78 ] TOBACCO BUSINESS [ SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER | 21 ] TheLamars andGross put aconsiderableamount of timeandresources into building a cigar brand and business. The three entrepreneurs spent a decade learning about cigars and the industry before they decided to actually start their own brand. By the time they made the decision to move forward with their own cigar business, all three business partners felt confident that they could produce unique, premium blends that would not only appeal to them but would also make the city of Atlanta proud and willing to support them. Community was at the heart of their desires to create a brand of their own. “We are a diverse company with different backgrounds, ethnicities, beliefs and all the rest,” says Janelle. “In that way, we’re just like our city and our country. Our differences as partners, though, make us stronger as a company. What one partner can’t see, another partner sees perfectly clearly. What I have experienced, as a Filipina woman, I share with Leroy and Peter, who are neither my gender nor my race, so that they can see me and appreciate me in a deeper way, and they do the same so that I can see and appreciate them. Our diversity is our foundation as a company—not because we look past our differences or act like we’re all the same but because we celebrate, support and seek to understand each other in our differences. In this day and age, that feels like magic, like a superpower. So we decided to put that strength at the heart of our brand.” Atlanta—its spirit, diversity and community—greatly shaped the cigar brand the Lamars and Gross set out to create. The city of Atlanta is home to a strong cigar culture and has over 120 cigar shops and lounges. Cigars and Atlanta are becoming symbiotic, and the city has become a destination for cigar enthusiasts around the world. When the trio set out to create a cigar for Atlanta, they knew they had to create a product that was able to keep the attention of cigar smokers around the world, much like the city of Atlanta, and that it also needed to live up to its name. “Atlanta is an incredible city with a legacy of progress, commerce and culture,” says Leroy. “We’re the city of Dr. King and John Lewis, of great universities, the capital of the South—and in the last 20 years we have become a global destination for music and film. Many have said that Atlanta is having a moment. For those of us who are native to the city, it looks a lot more like destiny. Atlanta was burned to the ground in the Civil War and rose from the ashes—hence the phoenix in our city’s logo, which we added to our cigar band. Atlanta’s swagger came out of her pain, out of her refusal to be kept down. Atlanta has marched and invested and educated herself to a place of greatness, and we wanted to capture that journey in ATL Cigar Company.” When looking back at 2020, Leroy also acknowledges that, in a sense, had last year not unfolded in the way that it did, he and his partners may not have launched ATL Cigar company. “While unnerving in many regards, 2020 also provided a stillness during the early quarantine stages,” he says. “This stillness gave us space to formalize and finalize many of our business decisions. I also believe that 2020 helped us locate our place in the cigar industry. America was suffering from the pandemic along with a host of other ills. Our political and racial troubles led many to believe we were on the verge of another civil war. Whether these feelings were entirely justified or not, America was in a very dark place. I believe our commitment to kinship, to the beloved community—along with our ability to live it out together daily—offered hope to Janelle, Peter and me that we could find a way out of the darkness, and we felt compelled to share that hope beyond the three of us.” The ATL Black is a full-bodied maduro blend crafted in partnership with Martinez Cigars, NewYork's oldest handmade cigar factory.