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| TPN NOT DECIDED ON DISTRIBUTOR YET |
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Page 1 of 2  Plus: U.S. trademark court holds for Habanos S.A. on brand nameLos Angeles, March 17 – Tabacos Puros de Nicaragua (TPN), which manufactures the popular Joya de Nicaragua brands, hasn’t yet named its new distributor for the U.S. market and won’t until March 24. TPN chief Alejandro Martinez Cuenca relayed a comment after reading a note published on this site from a member of the cigar trade last week that Nicaraguan cigar maker Drew Estate would likely be the next distributor for TPN, and wrote in an e-mail that no decision has been made yet. He stated that “this matter is to be taken in our next Board meeting on March 24th, when the final selection will be done from four candidates that [have offered] their interest to work with us.” A TPN representative did confirm that Drew Estate is one of the four candidates, but declined to name the other three. The Joya de Nicaragua brand is being distributed by Manuel Quesada’s S.A.G. Imports at present, but the distributor agreement will end on April 25. The Joya de Nicaragua line consists of four blends at present: the original Joya de Nicaragua, Joya de Nicaragua Antano 1970, Joya de Nicaragua Celebracion and the recently-introduced Joya de Nicaragua Serie C. For S.A.G., the Antano 1970 line was by far the best seller, followed by the Celebracion, then the original blend and finally the Serie C. In the meantime, S.A.G. is already well down the road with plans to introduce a new cigar that will replace Joya de Nicaragua in its line-up. Best known for its Fonseca line and other cigars made at his highly-respected MATASA factory in the Dominican Republic, Quesada said in an interview during the first ProCigar Festival two weeks ago that the new brand will come from Honduras and be “made by a most reputable manufacturer and it will be a very, very nice cigar.” It will likely debut in the spring. U.S. trademark court holds for Habanos against Florida cigar company: After nearly a decade of producing its cigar as a local and regional brand out of Miami, Florida, the Guantanamera Cigars Company brought its Guantanamera brand onto the U.S. national market in 2007 with an appearance at the Retail Tobacco Dealers of America (RTDA) show in Houston. It’s now made in Honduras, with a medium-to-full body in eight sizes. However, a decision handed down by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on February 29 in Corporaction Habanos, S.A. vs. Guantanamera Cigar Company has held that the company may not register a trademark for the brand. The application for trademark protection originally filed in May 2001 was opposed by Habanos, the worldwide distribution firm for Cuban cigars jointly owned by the Cuban government and Altadis, S.A. (now part of Imperial Tobacco). Habanos, of course, has its own Guantanamera brand, a machine-made line introduced in 2002 and consisting of four mild-bodied, modestly-priced sizes that are aimed at developing markets such as Eastern Europe. The Cubans want to trademark the name as well – which is allowed under the terms of the U.S. Trade Embargo against Cuba – and have filed their own registration papers. They opposed the Guantanamera Cigars claim because their application is “geographically deceptively misdescriptive.” |
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Did you know?
“After nationalization of the cigar trade, Cuba introduced only one new brand between 1960 and 1990: Cohiba.
