It’s just something we kept at—to continue to be a pipe store. You can’t just buy 12 pipes. You’ve got to be committed to it. I highly recommend doing bulk tobacco instead of tins. We’ve been blending Ole Carolina House Blend here for 35 years. You can’t buy it anywhere else but Anstead’s. It’s a huge mail-order item for us. It’s a huge in-store thing too. You can’t go downtown or down the street or to another city and find it, so you have to come back to us. So, private labeling tobacco is important.
Then you have to get employees who are into pipes. When people start [working] with me, it’s one of those things where I have had nonsmokers work for us, and they’ve done a fantastic job, but we have a pre-employment questionnaire, and when it asks you if you smoke, it’s not a bad thing here. Some companies say, “We’re not going to hire you; you smoke!” Even if a guy is a cigarette smoker, when they come in here I give them a pipe when they come to work for us. I teach them how to pack it, smoke it and care for it. I have one guy who has been with me for just about a year, and he’s just a pipe guy now, and he’s our main go-to pipe guy. We actually have two. You have to have a pipe guy, because if people don’t know anything about it or just don’t get interested in it, then pipe sales just don’t happen.
You have to be committed to selling pipes. You have to carry a variety of pipes, and you have to have the whole realm—a variety of price points. The sweet spot for us is probably $50 to $125 for a pipe sale. I have a pipe that’s $3,000. Do I expect to sell it? No, but now that $125 pipe doesn’t look so expensive anymore to the customer. It’s like when you go to the jewelry store, if they don’t have Rolexes, they don’t really have watches. It’s kind of the same thing with pipes.
How would you describe yourself as a manager? I am a micromanager—I am what I didn’t want to be—but I’m working harder and harder at delegating. My philosophy here is that I want this to be the Disneyland of cigar lounges, so I want everything stocked, I want everything cleaned, ashtrays emptied—all of that sort of thing. I’m getting better at backing off and giving others responsibilities and letting them do it, so that’s been a challenge for me to get past that. I feel I’m getting better.
What do you think it takes to be a great tobacconist? I think you have to have passion for the business, and you have to be really all about customer service. Our culture here is that we want everything that happens in this store to be perfect. I think if you’re not passionate about it, you lose something with customers. You have to be genuine. You can’t be faking it to them. And try to take care of your employees. We pay ours way more than most people probably do.
This story first appeared in the January/February 2020 issue of Tobacco Business magazine. Members of the tobacco industry are eligible for a complimentary subscription to our magazine. Click here for details.
– Story by Antoine Reid, senior editor and digital content director for Tobacco Business Magazine. You can follow him on Instagram @editor.reid.
