Cigars, Cigar Information and where to find Premium Cigars, Discounted Cigars and even Cheap Cigars

IT’S ALL ABOUT ME

Private labels finally get personal

Los Angeles, August 23 – Cigars with special identification are almost as old as the cigar band.

Whether the genesis of a new brand – for example, the Bolivar brand begun in Cuba in 1901 – or simply a tribute to an individual – like Queen Victoria, a common theme in the late 19th Century – there are many thousands of limited edition or “private label” cigars.

Prior to the nationalization of the Cuban cigar industry, makers would create bands with special identification in the middle, but with their own names on the sides to create more private label business (like the Pirelli band by Hoyo de Monterrey above).

There are thousands of collectors of these bands, which run the gamut from corporate to commemorative. But of late, private labels are relatively rare, limited mostly to tobacco shops who have cigars made with their own band or mark by major manufacturers, many of whom have a variety of blends available for this purpose.

Now comes Payless Cigars, one of the featured national retailers in our CigarWire Comparison Price Sheet (available to our subscribers). Payless offers a unique personalized label service, giving smokers a choice of four of the top brands available anywhere!

The program takes standard sizes of Excalibur, Excalibur 1066, Hoyo de Monterrey and Punch and adds a second, color-complementary band with two lines of type (of up to 13 characters per line) just below the main band. The double-banded result preserves the branding of the cigars and the program also allows use of each brand’s regular packaging.

Moreover, the cost is quite reasonable. Payless was already one of our top scorers in the pricing aspect of our recent survey of national retailers and adds only $7.50 per box and just $3.75 per box for ten or more boxes, on top of Payless’s already-discounted price.

Example: your name on each cigar in a box of 20 glorious Excalibur No. IIs for just $80.45, barely more than $4 a stick! Delivery is expected about three weeks after your order. Not bad and a great way to impress a friend . . . or someone you want to be your friend.

Imports continue to expand:
The Cigar Association of America has circulated another sensational set of import/export figures for June 2004, showing a continuing rise in cigars coming into the United States, and at a fast clip indeed.

For the month of June, some 25.8 million premium cigars came into the U.S., an increase of 13.75% over the total in June of 2003.

For the year, premium cigar imports have increased by 15% and total a remarkable 131.47 million for the first half of 2004. Imports will pick up in the second half of the year, as always, with the holidays coming up, and could challenge the 300 million mark by the end of December. That level has only been achieved in the last 30 years in the wild boom days of 1997 (417.78 million) and 1998 (334.58 million).

Even better for consumers, prices are steady at a modest level. Imports from Honduras averaged 64 cents each – yes, that’s right, 64 cents – essentially the same as in 2003. Nicaraguan imports were even less costly, at an average of 43 cents a stick, down from 45 cents last year.

What about the Dominican Republic? Their figures are a little less meaningful, since 13.5 percent of their production is machine-made. With that in mind, the average import from the D.R. cost 50.5 cents, compared to 56 cents in 2003.

This means there should be plenty of reasonably-priced cigars available for what appears to be a trend toward an increasing number of smokers in 2004.
~ Rich Perelman

Bookmark

Email This

Comments (0) add comment