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AFTER 57 YEARS, MIKE’S IS NO. 1

New Retailer Rankings show Florida-based seller best overall

Los Angeles, May 21 – When Mike Mersel opened a small cigar stand in Miami in 1950, the Yankees were the World Series champions, Oklahoma was the top team in college football, the Cleveland Browns were the kings of the NFL and George Mikan was leading the Minneapolis Lakers to the championship of a young league called the National Basketball Association.

They were all no. 1. Now, 57 years later, Mike’s Cigars is no. 1 as well.

In our third CigarCyclopedia.com National Retailer Rankings, Mike’s Cigars earned the no. 1 ranking in this year’s compilation, scoring 98 out of a possible 100 points. Here’s how they did it:

• Our Retailer Rankings combined three components: price, breadth of brands and shipping costs. The largest component is price, which makes up 75% of the final score, with breadth at 15% and shipping at 10%.

• We compared – or tried to compare – prices on boxes of four widely-found cigars made by either Altadis U.S.A. or General Cigar:

> Macanudo Baron de Rothschild (6 1/2 inches by 42 ring) in boxes of 25;

> Montecristo Churchill (7 x 48) in boxes of 25;

> Punch Rothschild (4 1/2 x 50) in boxes of 50, and

> Romeo y Julieta Bully (5 x 50) in boxes of 25.

We compiled the online prices shown for all four of these brands and averaged them. Of the 140 sites we surveyed, 75 had all four, 17 had just three, nine had two and eight had one. The other 31 sites either had none, or were not working properly during the period of our survey from April 16-23.

• We took the 25 sites with the lowest price average on our four test cigars and ranked them in price order, giving 75 points to Mike’s for the lowest score, then 74 to TNT Cigars (second lowest) and so on down to 51 points for 25th place.

• In the breadth test, we tested our top 25 sites against a list of other top brands, awarding one point for each of the 15 brands on our list, including Arturo Fuente, Avo, Camacho and so on. Eight of our top 25 got perfect scores of 15 and four others had 14.

• For shipping, we awarded points on a sliding scale of 10-8-6-4-2-1 points depending on whether a fixed-price charge was offered and how low it was on a per-item basis. This sector was worth 10 points and four retailers – Mike’s, TNT, J-R Cigars and TopDraw Cigars had fixed-price shipping of $5.00 or less per item, regardless of destination (in the continental U.S) or weight. Mike’s scored best on the averaging pricing at $102.43 for 75 points, had 13 of our 15 breadth brands for 13 more points and 10 points in the shipping category for an overall score of 98. Congratulations to Oscar Boruchin, Oded ben Arie and their team for their achievement.

The remainder of the top ten includes:

• No. 2: TNT Cigars of Phoenix, Arizona, second in the pricing category and scoring 97 points, just one behind Mike’s.

• No. 3: TinderBox International, a fairly new site, with aggressive pricing and 94 points.

• No. 4: A tie between BestCigarPrices.com and Show Me Your Ash of Ft. Worth, Texas. BestCigarPrices.com was our top-rated site in 2006 while Show Me Your Ash a newcomer to our top ten, scoring 90 points.

• No. 6: Another tie between two of the sharpest retailers in the trade, Keith Meier’s Cigars International and Arthur Zaretzky’s Famous Smoke Shop. Both scored 89 points and are perennial top-ten finishers in our rankings.

• No. 8: AtlanticCigar.com, which won our inaugural ranking in 2005, finished with 88 points.

• No. 9: Holt’s Cigar Company of Philadelphia had another strong score with 87 points.

• No. 10: Another newcomer to the top ten, Bonita Smoke Shop of Bonita Springs, Florida, finished with 86 points and was especially strong on price, finishing fifth in that category.

The top scorers on price for our test brands were Mike’s ($102.43 average), TNT ($102.45) and BestCigarPrices.com ($104.55). Prices varied widely, from Mike’s at the top, to $107.45 for tenth place (Famous Smoke Shop), to $116.95 in 25th and $165.25 for 75th place.

But Mike’s top ranking is well deserved. They also offer a nice variety of weekly e-mail specials, some of which are truly excellent values; you can sign up for the free e-mail alerts, along with their monthly catalog mailer, at Mike’s Cigars.com.

Who will be no. 1 next year? It doesn’t look like the Yankees, Oklahoma, Cleveland or Minnesota are going to reach the summit this year, so look for a new no. 1 in 2008!
~ Rich Perelman

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