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THE CULLMANS’ NEXT MOVE?

Plus: bidders getting tired of Partagas 150s and Padron 40ths

Los Angeles, May 3 – With their hard-built General Cigar empire now in the hands of Swedish Match and a few dozen more millions in their bank accounts, what next for Edgar Cullman and his son Edgar, Jr.?

There’s no restriction against them being involved with cigars into the future, so they might be considering their cigar options as they turn over leadership of General to Daniel Nunez.

They would be formidable competitors, remembering that Edgar created the Macanudo and Partagas brands essentially from nothing for the U.S. market and they are the top two sellers in the country.

Cullman led a group that bought General Cigar in 1961 for about $25 million. Then, General sold mass-market brands like White Owl (its big seller at the time), Van Dyck, Robert Burns and William Penn. They moved into the premium end of the business in 1969 when they acquired Tampa, Florida-based Gradiaz, Annis & Co., which made a highly-popular brand called Gold Label. The Temple Hall factory in Jamaica came along with the purchase, with its brands Creme de Jamaica, Temple Hall and a tiny brand for the British market called Macanudo.

Focusing on Macanudo as a project from scratch, Cullman built it into America’s top brand with a special blend that focused on the U.S. market, a sweet, three-year-aged Connecticut wrapper and a heavy advertising campaign. He acquired the rights to the Partagas brand in 1975. The rest, as they say, is history.

Now, the Cullmans – pere et fils, along with David Danziger – could be looking ahead, possibly to:

• Re-energize the cigar industry in Jamaica?

Macanudo was a Jamaican brand to begin with and the first Partagas cigars were made in Jamaica. Major cigar production continued there to 2000, when the Gore Brothers ended production of Royal Jamaica on the island. Where 23.2 million handmade cigars were exported to the U.S. from Jamaica in 1998, the total was only 4.7 million in 2000 and 23,000 cigars in 2004, the latter from Barrington House Cigars in Kingston, the last producer still there.

New brands could be started, or little-remembered older brands could be revived. The Royal Jamaica trademark is owned by Altadis U.S.A. and is probably not available. But other old-time marks could be and there are a raft of old Cuban brand names which could be started anew; our Perelman’s Pocket Cyclopedia of Havana Cigars lists no less than 1,750 pre-nationalization brand names, with just 24 of those currently in production.

• Take the U.S. Cigar Sales brands off of General’s hands?

One of Nunez’s challenges is going to be integrating the U.S. Cigar Sales brands handed to Swedish Match last year in a legal settlement by U.S. Tobacco. The Cullmans could solve that problem by buying them, the Dominican and Honduran factories and the former UST tobacco farms in Honduras.

The Don Tomas and Helix brands already have recognition in the U.S. market, the Astral, Don Rex, Estavan Cruz, W&D and Vega Talanga brands less so.

But buying this package could be especially interesting since it would again provide farmland on which the Cullmans could create new blends as Edgar did in Connecticut when the Macanudo blend was developed around 1970.

• Assemble a new stable of brands?

There are boutique manufacturers with quality brands which simply do not have enough resources to promote their cigars as strongly as they could be. The Cullmans have resources.

So what about an assemblage of brands . . . from Rocky Patel’s Indian Tabac? . . . Philip Wynne’s Felipe Gregorio Tobacco World? . . . Garo Bouldoukian’s Garo Habano line? . . . Robert Spoden’s Bucanero, Ltd? . . . Litto Gomez’s La Flor Dominicana? . . . Doug Wood’s La Perla Habana? . . . or the wild and crazy Tony Borhani’s Bahia Imports? The possibilities are endless.

Cullman & Co. could also end up staying exactly where they are in their New York offices if Swedish Match decides to move the General Cigar staff to its headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. Whatever they will do will bear close watching, because whether they make a decisive move in the cigar trade or get into a new industry entirely, they will certainly be blowing smoke along the way!

Hammer time:
Busy time on the auction block this past week for some high-end brands:

• CigarAuctioneer.com completed its twin auctions of a Padron 1926 Serie 40th Anniversary Humidor and Partagas 150 Ramon y Ramon Humidor, proving that there can be “too much of a good thing.”

The Partagas 150 Ramon y Ramon humidor (shown above) with 150 cigars went out after 35 bids for $1,003 to a buyer in Weston, Florida. That’s a modest $6.69 a stick, well below other auction prices for a complete Ramon y Ramon humidor.

The Padron 40ths auction was even stranger. There were 32 bids and prices reached $1,800 for the box, but the auction was not completed. It’s the fourth time in the last few months that these cigars have been on the site, so there could be what auctioneers call “bidder fatigue” when a supposedly scarce item shows up again and again.

• On eBay, bidders were looking for Fuente Fuente Opus X!

A sealed box of 32 Opus X Perfecxion X (6 1/4 inches by 48 ring) was offered by a seller in Alabama and drew 10 bids starting at $499. It finally sold last Saturday for $685 or $21.41 per cigar.

A sealed box of 29 Opus X Super Belicosos (5 1/2 x 55) from a Kirkland, Washington seller drew lots of interest with 32 total bids. The starting bid was $500, but the box sold on Saturday for $740 or $25.52 per stick.

• Up now is yet another full humidor of Padron 40ths from a seller in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on eBay. The starting price for humidor no. 399 (there were 400 made) is $2,000 and the auction ends next Monday at 11:34 p.m. Pacific time. Good luck!

All in for the PokerSmoker:
Elegant Yamashiro restaurant in Southern California’s Hollywood Hills will be the site of the first “PokerSmoker” on this Thursday, May 5, co-sponsored by Caribe Imported Cigars, makers of the sensational Camacho Corojo line, and Smoke magazine.

There will be cocktails, dinner, a spot in the evening’s regional Texas Hold ‘Em Tournament, plus a box of Camacho cigars! The winner of the evening card play will receive a year’s worth of Camacho – 365 cigars in all – and an invite to the national PokerSmoker final in Reno, Nevada.

And you can smoke all you want . . . outdoors, of course, on Yamashiro’s luxurious terrace. Tickets are regularly $175, but readers of this space can obtain theirs for $145 by sending a request for a discount order form to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . You’ll receive back a special order form for the discount.

The grand prize for the winner of the PokerSmoker final in Reno is an all-expense-paid vacation to the Camacho factory in Danli, Honduras!
~ Rich Perelman

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