 More Cuban namesake brands ready for their U.S. close-up
by Rich Perelman
Editor-in-Chief
Los Angeles, July 14 – Love Cuban cigars? Who doesn’t?
Giant Altadis USA is betting that familiar names . . . and some they hope will be familiar again, will draw the interest of U.S. smokers with new introductions at the upcoming Retail Tobacco Dealers of America trade show in Las Vegas.
Already the owners of U.S. trademarks for current and former Cuban brands like H. Upmann, Henry Clay, Montecristo, Por Larranaga, Romeo y Julieta, Saint Luis Rey and Trinidad, Altadis will unveil two more brands with long Cuban heritage at the RTDA later this month: Juan Lopez and Maria Guerrero.
The Juan Lopez brand is not the best known of current Cuban brands, but it’s an underrated cigar of dependably high quality which has many devoted fans. The Altadis version will be made in Nicaragua and probably offer a fairly full-bodied flavor in six sizes. Maria Guerrero is an old Cuban brand which was created in the 1940s by Pepin Fernandez, owner of the Romeo y Julieta factory, as a tribute to the well-known Spanish actress . . . Maria Guerrero! The brand survived nationalization, but was down to one size by the 1980s and ceased production in 1985.
Why introduce more brands? For Altadis, the question is why not. By our count, the company now claims an amazing 66 brands active on the U.S. market, second only to Lew Rothman’s Cigars by Santa Clara juggernaut, which owns or has licenses for 72. Altadis’s reach is trans-Atlantic, with the home offices in Madrid and Paris, a major presence in the U.S. and , oh yes, by the way, they also own a controlling interest in Cigars by Santa Clara and Rothman’s familiar retail arm, J-R Cigars. So they actually control about 138 U.S. brands!
Behind all of this is also a half-share ownership of Habanos S.A., the worldwide distribution arm of the Cuban cigar industry. The accelerated effort in introducing additional Cuban-heritage brands to the U.S. market began almost as soon as Altadis bought up Consolidated Cigar and began countering its European rival, Swedish Match, and its acquisitions of General Cigar (holders of the U.S. rights to Bolivar, Partagas, Ramon Allones, Sancho Panza and perhaps Cohiba), Villazon & Co. (Bances, Hoyo de Monterrey and Punch) and El Credito Cigars (La Gloria Cubana and Los Statos DeLuxe).
Altadis purchased the rights to the Trinidad brand when heir Diego Trinidad finally won his trademark case against the Cubans in 2002. And they reintroduced another small Cuban brand, Gispert, at last year’s RTDA. It’s another bet that the U.S.’s Cuban Embargo will not last forever and that a major battle between Altadis and Swedish Match for the hearts and dollars of American smokers is not too far off. No one’s talking about it, but Altadis is busy doing something about it.
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