When Rodriguez took a more prominent role in the company, he also felt compelled to grow the business. The challenge came in honoring what his father and grandfather had built but also taking the business into the future and growing it. Rodriguez focused his efforts on the factory and its workers, making sure every employee was getting the best from the company and that the working environment was ideal for everyone.
A Day in the Life of Ram Rodriguez
Although Rodriguez is focused on honoring what his father and grandfather built and accomplished before him, he’s not afraid to bring his own approach to the family’s tobacco business. For example, his father and others in his father’s generation view increasing regulations as something to be concerned about. Rodriguez, however, is open to all the new challenges and views them as opportunities to grow and a reason to do things differently, something he also attributes to his background as an industrial engineer. Another instance of Rodriguez opting to do things in a new way can be seen within the Tabacalera El Artista factory and its use of solar panels. Not only does the use of solar panels benefit the factory economically; it also helps the environment and Artista’s surrounding community.
“I’m very open to market trends and seeing what we can do to follow those trends,” he says. “Now that I’m running the cigar making operations in the factory, almost all of the people who work with me are young as well, allowing us to identify changes and opportunities better.”
Today, Rodriguez holds many titles within his family’s tobacco business. Due to there being so many different divisions and operations within the vertically integrated company, Rodriguez is the vice president of Tabacalera El Artista (with his father serving as its president). He’s the president of Artista Cigars, which handles the sale of the company’s cigars in the U.S. and international markets, and he’s also responsible for the Miami operations of the company’s logistics and back-office company, TCD Logistics.
With so many responsibilities falling on him, Rodriguez’s days are far different from how they were when he first started working within his family’s business as a teenager. Back then, he was reluctant for many 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 to Moca, 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.
This story first appeared in the September/October 2022 issue of Tobacco Business magazine. Members of the tobacco industry are eligible for a complimentary subscription to our magazine. Click here for details.
– Photography by Carlos Garcia, Genesis Hidalgo, Isaac Rodríguez. Story by Antoine Reid, senior editor and digital director for Tobacco Business Magazine. You can follow him on Instagram @editor.reid.
