I laughed when I saw that post. That is a very rosy view of how the industry works.

I see some of my sales reps once a year. Others less. Others once a quarter. It doesn’t really get more often than that. A lot can happen in a company in that time that doesn’t get communicated to the retailer. Additionally, reps often get huge territories (multiple states), and they can’t remember what they already told you or not. So, information gets lost in the cracks.

You might question whether this is just my experience. Maybe I’m a smaller customer and get less priority. I don’t believe this to be case. I have spoken with many other cigar shop owners who have this experience, and of those, many are very big, profitable cigar shops who do huge orders.

Now, why don’t reps keep a database of their customers and communicate these changes and updates via email? Why don’t manufacturers? Good question. Seems like an easy solution to me. However, very few companies and reps do this.

The level of customer service in the industry, on the manufacturer side, seems to me to be very poor overall. I would say 20% of the companies I deal with give me a high level of service. The rest, poor. The reason for this, I suspect, is because they don’t have to. If you want to carry a brand, you have to deal with that company. Otherwise, you don’t carry it. Sometimes this isn’t a choice. For example, if Oliva (for the record, a company that gives me good customer service) makes you mad, are you really going to drop their line? It’s Oliva. You kind of need it in your humidor. So, they have you over a barrel, to an extent.

However, retailers have other options. One company that will remain unnamed gives me the most appalling customer service. My rep never responds to emails. He usually doesn’t even put my order in. There are constant problems with my orders and I have had at least four phone conversations with the owner of the company where I have been assured that “things will change”, but they never do. This line is one of my best selling lines. Would I drop them? Yes. But I don’t want to, because some of my customers would be upset. So before I take things that far, I will use my other options. First, I have reduced my facings that I carry from them which halved the business I do with them. I also stopped recommending them to my customers. My next step will be to move them to the worst space in the humidor and further reduce the facings. My goal will be to make it NOT one of my best sellers, and then phase it out.

It is so simple to keep your retailers happy, but many manufacturers and reps don’t seem to care much. Just yesterday, I called my rep about an order that I placed last week that hasn’t even shipped yet! I asked my rep to clear things up. I was actually told “this isn’t my job.” If it is not the job of the company representative to provide you with customer service, then whose job is it, exactly?

Another order I checked on yesterday was placed three weeks ago. I still haven’t seen it. I called to check on it yesterday and was told the order never shipped because they don’t have my up-to-date tobacco license on file. Why didn’t that company call me and let me know so that I could send it over? Beats me.

My experience is that many manufacturers treat retailers as though you should be thanking THEM for LETTING you order from them. Instead of thanking US retailers for giving them our business and promoting their brand to our customers. I am befuddled by this attitude. I also think that some reps, who are usually commissioned only, seem to only care about getting your order, which they make money off of, and if you have an issue or a request that doesn’t not immediately translate into money in their pockets, they don’t care to help you (like requesting an updated price sheet, asking for help clearing up a problem with their company, etc…).

So, let me provide you manufacturers and reps with some simple suggestions that, in my opinion, would greatly improve your relationship with your retailers, and would likely result in increased sales.

Manufacturers:
1. Get a free newsletter account with mailchimp.com, create a database of your customers and email them important updates so everyone is in the loop (like if you change your blend, or if you introduce a new product).
2. Keep your website updated and full of information. If a customer has a question, and I go to your website and find a cigar that has been out for six months still isn’t listed on your website for me to reference, we are all going to be annoyed.
3. Put your email address and phone number on your website so that if we need to alert you to a customer service issue you might be unaware of, we can contact you (afore mentioned bad manufacturer has an email address listed on their website that isn’t vaild!)
4. Remember that the retailer is YOUR CUSTOMER. If your company screws up, fix it. Don’t blame the retailer. Don’t punish them. Take responsibility for your actions and MAKE IT RIGHT.
5. Put a penalty on your terms. If a retailer needs to pay you late because, well, shit happens, then let them. But put an interest rate on it so you’re not inconvenienced and so the retailer will be motivated to pay on time (but has the option to take the penalty if they just can’t).
6. Hire an in-house customer service advocate that retailers can contact to clear up problems OR pay your reps a small base salary to motivate them to provide basic customer service (you could probably accomplish the same thing by making their territories smaller).
7. Train your reps. I have a few reps that don’t know answers to basic questions, like, what’s the wrapper on this?
8. Give your reps correct information. If a product won’t ship until Dec., don’t tell your rep it’s shipping in Oct.
9. Give an annual, anonymous survey to your retailers where they can review the performance of their rep. Only La Flor Dominicana does this. One particular company might be interested to know that their sales rep goes to events and literally sits in the corner with a beer and doesn’t talk to anyone or try to sell anything.
10. Please, for the love of God, send a tracking number automatically when you ship a package. Only about 1/2 of the companies do that. It saves both of us a lot of time.
11. Don’t hold an order for backorders unless asked or unless you only have, say, 1 box in stock. Ship what you have. Ship the rest when it comes in.
12. If you are out of boxes and are holding an order because you have nothing to ship it in, consider shipping bundles. Actually, I think all cigar companies should ship boxes on the first order only, and refill bundles for re-orders. It would reduce everyone’s costs and would reduce shipping fees. Plus, this would be a bonus for the environment! Yeah, yeah, I know, “branding”. Re-brand yourself as environmentally friendly. Problem solved. Seriously though, reps can monitor to make sure product is being displayed properly in the display box on the shelf. Also, you could provide retailers with a couple of empty boxes for full box sales to end users. When the retailer needs more they can request empty boxes for a small fee from you. Customers may prefer to buy w/o a box anyways if it makes the cigars cheaper!
13. Consider a log-in based, wholesaler e-commerce site. I would like to bypass my rep and order online. This way I know my order has been placed with you. I know my order was placed correctly. I could log in to see our tracking number and order updates, like “this order is on hold b/c product is backordered”. It would save everyone so much time and aggravation, and yes, money! The site should also have company updates, and in-depth information about the cigars in your line.

Reps:
1. Be an advocate for your stores. I know you don’t get paid for it in the short term, but building a good relationship with your retailer makes them want to give you more business. Being a jerk makes them want to give you less business.
2. When a retailer requests a store visit, an event, samples or a price sheet, respond to the email and take care of it!
3. Remember the retailer is your CUSTOMER and you should be thanking them for the business, not the other way around.
4. Try to keep in touch with your retailers and communicate company news effectively. See the newsletter tip to manufacturers.
5. When a retailer places an order, write back and confirm you received it.
6. Don’t treat your smaller customers worse. One day they may be your bigger customers, and they won’t forget.

Finally, let me say that there are some great companies out there. I get good service AND great communication from Torano and their wonderful rep Brian McGee, and Ashton and their very passionate rep Jared Biocca, my Camacho rep has never once been in my store, but the company does a great job of sending out emails regularly updating us to new things going on in the company. Padron, while having no reps, and being pretty strict on their policies and offering no events, is the best at sending out orders (you get an order conformation almost instantly, a tracking number by day’s end, and the product always arrives quickly). Other companies should take note. I would also like to say that although I feel like some of my reps could do better, I do understand that they are constantly on the road, saddled with too-big territories, and have to deal with a lot of crap. I also know their income does only come from sales and they must budget their time accordingly. Perhaps their failings are more a failing of the system then of them.

Hello!
Heard many good things about your company and ask to send me a sample of your tobacco.

Maxim Turin

Postal code : 142703
Country : Russia
State : Moscow region
Town : Vidnoe
Adress : Shkolnaya 87 – 20

Thank you

From the Ukraine:

Hello.
I would like to get sample free Cigars

My address is:
Maksim Vernichenko
pr Kirova 96 g kv 44
Dnipropetrovsk
Ukraine
49055

From Ukraine again

Please send me your free sample of product for test and next sales.

Nemchenko Olga
pr. Geroev Stalingrda 48. apt. 14
Kiev
04213
Ukriane

With best regards,
Nemchenko Olga

From Russia

Hello
My name is Arkadiy. ,I would be grateful if you bestow me sample and souvenirs for me and my friends
My address is:
Russia
Rostov-on-Don city
Oganova st. 7A-66
344069
Klitsenko Arkadiy
Thank you!

It goes on an on. Does this ever work on anyone??

Austin, TX (November 24, 2010) – Let’s face it, there are many bad cigar ads out there. Some are great, but overwhelmingly we find that cigar ads can be poorly thought out or victims of bad photo-shopping. To illustrate the point, Fumée Cigar Bar in Cedar Park, Tx, recently polled its customers to find the best and worst cigar ads of all time. The votes are in, and the unfortunate winners are being announced.

Customers overwhelmingly chose Di Fazio Cigars as the recipient of “Worst Cigar Ad of All Time”. The ad features a man in bed with a cigar band on his ring finger. The copy reads: “Another cigar lover is about to cheat on his favorite cigars.” Bob, of Cedar Park, Texas said: “This was too phallic- and not in the way I like.”

SEE OUR WORST AD WINNER HERE

Conversely, the winner of the “Best Ad of All Time” as elected by Fumée Cigar Bar customers was Don Diego. This ad has a similar setting as our worst ad- a person in bed- but this time it’s a woman. The copy reads “Don Diego was here.”

SEE OUR BEST AD WINNER HERE

“This experiment is a great case study. From this we learn that a simple change in an ad can make all the difference. And, that it’s important to know your audience.” Says Heather Haddad, owner of Fumée Cigar Bar. Her personal pick for worst ad was a poorly photo-shopped La Gloria Cubana ad.

SEE HEATHER’S WORST AD PICK

Participants also chose the Nub “True Story” ad as second-best. There was no second-worst ad, as the Di Fazio ad garnered nearly 100% of the votes.

SEE THE SECOND-BEST AD

Perdomo To Sue

Miami, Florida, July 19, 2010 – Camacho Cigars, a key player in the international cigar market, and Bayer CropScience, the world’s leader in crop science and crop protection, have signed a working partnership under the Bayer Food Chain Management program. With this new alliance, Camacho Cigars has become the only tobacco company in history to be in compliance with strict international standards for Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). By complying with the practices set forth by Bayer CropScience, Camacho Cigars ensures the responsible management of natural resources, bio-friendly pesticides, industrial safety, and biosecurity. The Food Chain Partnership is the first of many steps in Camacho’s plan for a higher level of social responsibility and it’s furtherance in manufacturing the highest quality cigars in the world.

On June 29, 2010, Camacho Cigars and a team of Bayer executives welcomed select members of international media to visit their tobacco fields at Rancho Jamastran and cigar factory in Danli, Honduras. Following the daylong tour of Camacho’s operations, a press conference was held at Las Lomas where the partnership was officially signed.

First, let’s go over the residence at the factory. When you go on the cigar tour you get to ride in this pimp bus:

And you get these “VIP all-access passes”

And you get to stay at this beautiful casita on the factory premises:

Here’s the actual building where the rooms are. The rooms are hotel quality- there’s even a maid- and every two rooms share a bathroom.

This is the cigar lounge at DE which was stocked with booze and cigars that we could help ourselves to to our heart’s content. Awesome.

And here’s the outside of the Drew Estate factory. In my opinion, this was the nicest factory in Nicaragua. Not only is it new and pretty, but it doesn’t feel like a factory, by that I mean all sterile and cold. It’s colorful and painted and full of life.

Okay, here we go: the factory tour! This room is the “pre-industry” room, basically where all the raw tobacco is stored. This room is HUGE, much bigger than the picture shows, and Jon told us that it’s only a six week supply of tobacco!

More tobacco storing:

We didn’t see any fermentation or pilons at DE, but we only saw 75,000 sq ft of the 100.000 sq ft factory. Some things, like the infusion process, are secretive. We’ll get to pilons and tobacco fields in the Pepin blog to follow.

Next the tobacco goes into a humid room to soften it for rolling:

Once the tobacco is softened it’s sorted by type (capa, capote, ligero, seco, viso) and origin.

And then it’s rolled into the cigars. We didn’t see any rolling machines (to call it a machine is a stretch) here, but we did at some other factories. The rolling machine is just some cloth that a roller puts the tobacco in and manually rolls a lever over it, and this causes the cigar to roll up on itself. At places where we did see it used, it was for short filler cigars, or for the new rollers who were still learning.

After rolling, the cigars are put in a mold and pressed in this contraption for 20 minutes, then they are turned and pressed again for 20 minutes. This picture is actually from the Oliva factory because I didn’t get one at DE.

Once the cigars are rolled, molded and pressed, they are wrapped and capped, and once that is done, they are “wicked” which means left in a room to dry out for up to 48 hours. Once a cigar is wicked, it’s smokeable for about 2 days, and then it falls into a “sick” period for about 10 days, during which you don’t want to smoke it due to the ammonia being leeched out. The only brand that doesn’t really have this problem is Padron because they are using super aged tobacco with basically no ammonia left in it at all. This is the wicking room:

Some cigars are put into box pressed molds, like this one, to create a square feel:

Once the cigars are wicked, they are sorted on either a black or white table (black is better for sorting maduros). The cigars are sorted by color so that each box has cigars that look alike. This is why you might get a box of cigars and then find that a second box of cigars has a much lighter wrapper. It doesn’t mean it’s a different wrapper, it’s simply a variation in wrapper color grouped together.

Sorting:

Demonstration of wrapper color variation (at Rocky Patel), this is all the same cigar with major color differences:

Once the like colors are grouped together, they are sent to quality control. Drew Estate has the best quality control that we witnessed. They are pretty high tech in a low tech industry, using bar coding and statistical analysis. This chart shows the cigars that the first level of quality control people threw out (blue line) and the red line shows the head of quality control and how many cigars he deemed unworthy. Wherever you see a red spike is where the floor level quality control people didn’t catch enough bad product and the head of quality control ended up catching it.

And here he is, the head of quality control:

After passing quality control, the cigars are left in a cool aging room to continue to leech out ammonia and to blend the flavors into the finished product. It should be noted that DE has different rooms for their ACID cigars, JAVA cigars and natural cigars so as to not accidentally infuse some flavor into the naturals.

Now that the cigars have aged, they are ready to package and ship. All of the packaging is done by hand, including label application, box decoration, cellophaning and shrink wrapping (with the assistance of a very small machine)

Boxing up the cigars:

Shrink wrapping the new Acid Tips (Jon Drew on the right):

That’s it! Now you know how cigars are made at D.E. I’d like to point out some of the most interesting things I learned from Jon Drew. His company is very socially responsible. They don’t fire pregnant workers like some other places do, they don’t promote the illegal box trade like I mentioned in an earlier blog, and they are great patrons of the arts, even employing a full time art director, Jesse, who does graffiti art at the factory and around Nicaragua. They are also conscientious of paying taxes to Nicaragua as a way to give back to the country as opposed to trying to skirt them. Every where we went it seemed that employees were happy and well taken care of, but especially so at D.E. I was really impressed by their facility, their hospitality, and mostly, their ethics. I will be a Drew Estate supporter going forward, and I challenge everyone to learn more about their favorite cigar company and find out if they are practicing business in a responsible way. Support companies who do with your business and buy their cigars!

Next blog we’ll cover more pre-industry over at another company I was really impressed with: Don Pepin’s place- from leaf to fermentation.

Prepare to be jealous:

Joya de Nicaragua “Antono Dark Corojo”- I wanted to like this one more than I did. I have another, I’m going to give it another shot with a cleaner palate.

Illusione/Drew Estate “Nosotros”- Had one that was a week old, so it was pretty ammoniated still. Lots of potential.

A guy on the trip, Matt, gave me an LG Oscuro, which is a rare version of the LG. Thanks, Matt!

Drew Estate “Dirty Rat” – I liked this a lot- not sure of the release date.

Joya de Nicaragua “Cabineta” – With a dual wrapper (one from band down, one from band up), this was one of my favorites. I’m a sucker for a schtick.

Nestor Miranda “Dominicana” by Don Pepin – I liked it, a lot. Spicier than I would have thought, which you know I love.

Don Pepin “Tobacos Baez Serie H” – I’m about to smoke this now!

PS- I learned that Oliva is going to release the Cain “F” or Super Fuerte as a regular line in March

Factories:

Rolling Floors:

For the answers, highlight here with your mouse: 1 is Joya De Nicaragua, 2 is Perdomo, 3 is Padron, 4 is Pepin, 5 is Rocky Patel, 6 Oliva is and 7 is Drew Estate. <<< —— highlight this area with your mouse.

Few manufactures have box factories of their own, probably because of the strict restrictions in place on wood, but we were able to see one. What surprised me was how EVERYTHING is done by hand, including applying the labels to the boxes and packing them with cigars.

Here’s the wood for the boxes

And some guys making the boxes

A pile of almost-boxes

This machine adds hinges and clasps to boxes (one of the very few machines used in the cigar making process)

Applying the labels to the boxes with glue

Finished boxes ready to go!