36 TOBACCO BUSINESS | SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER | 22 years about spending too much time in the factory. Things are different today. Nowadays, he spends most of his days in the Dominican Republic, splitting his time between work and family. After waking up close to 6 a.m., he spends time with his wife and kids before leaving for work. Right now, Rodriguez is overseeing the construction of his company’s new factory that will be located in La Vega, the fourth-largest city in the Dominican Republic, where a team of about 500 people are already slated to begin working once construction is complete. By the end of the year, that number is expected to rise to 800 employees. “Most mornings, that factory is my first stop,” he explains. “Since we are building it from scratch, I usually spend the whole morning there.” As is typical for Dominican families, lunchtime is spent with his family. He goes back home to have lunch with his immediate family, and if he’s short on time, he’ll have lunch with his parents, who live close to the company’s headquarters. After lunch, Rodriguez is back at the main factory, where he follows up with his team and picks up whatever cigars are in production that require his approval before their official release. This isn’t the end of his workday. After leaving the factory, Rodriguez then devotes some time to the company’s logistics division, where he follows up with the team there, replies to emails and spends time in his father’s office catching up on the latest happenings. Two to three times a week, Rodriguez also fits in a visit toMoca, a city located in the Dominican Republic’s Cibao region, where part of the company’s operations are based, and to the Santo Domingo neighborhood of Monte Adentro, where its wooden box factory is located. This work also extends into the weekend. On Saturdays, Rodriguez can usually be found in the company’s main building, where he spends time with the operations department and addresses any concerns and the latest tasks at hand. TheCrisisAdvantage Rodriguez splits his time and attention across many different areas and issues relating to his business, but his main focus is adapting his company to today’s situation and finalizing the infrastructure renovation process that was started five years ago. “We are almost done with it,” he reveals. “The only building we need to finish is our oldest one, our headquarters, where we already built twomodern aging rooms and an innovative pest control system, which will be one-of-a-kind in the industry.” Infrastructure and improving the factory’s overall operations is not something you hear spoken about in the cigar industry a lot, but one can tell it’s of great importance to Rodriguez. He and his father have upgraded the electrical grid in all of its facilities, addednewsecurity features and improved the plumbing. There’s also an expansion in the works with a new packing department being built and new machines being brought in to handle the factory’s medium filler private labels. Some enhancements will specifically help the employees, such as the upgraded climate control system located within the working areas. To build on the factory’s production capabilities, new warehouses, curing barns and an upgraded solar panel system are all on the table. Outside of the factory and headquarters, the surrounding roads within the industrial parks and surrounding neighborhoods where the business is based are also almost completely fixed. Many of these projects and improvements have been in the works for years and progressed despite challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. “I always say that a crisis is the right moment to take advantage in a market,” Rodriguez states. “We have worked five years on an infrastructure renovation project, and the pandemic hit us right at the most critical time. Initially, we started with a warehouse shortage problem, but we overcame it. Then later, a labor shortage. This was the main reason why we decided to establish new operations in a nontraditional tobacco region of the island. In addition to simplifying the company’s name to Artista Cigars this past July, Rodriguez’s company announced a new brand strategy and launched new cigar lines.
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