A Cigar Hustlers Podcast 238 Return of Skip Martin

Episode Summary

Skip Martin of RoMa Craft Tobac stops by the Slapdick Studios in Daytona for a long, unfiltered sit-down with the Cigar Hustlers crew. After some opening banter about the new lounge build-out, Chet Atwell's health scare, COVID-era finger-pointing and the perennial dream of adding a liquor license next door, the conversation turns into one of the most detailed looks at cigar factory economics the show has done.

The heart of the episode is Skip's account of how RoMa Craft came to own 100% of Fábrica de Tabacos NicaSueño. He explains why production had been frozen at roughly 25,000 cigars a week since 2017, how nine unplanned months stateside during COVID proved the factory could run without him day to day, and how longtime partner Esteban Disla drifted toward his own tobacco-processing venture with Raúl. Add a new MINSA health license (pushed, Skip argues, by WHO money), a Ministry of Work demand for a cafeteria and more bathrooms, and zero remaining square footage, and the partners hit a fork: invest, sell, or split. Skip walks through the failed attempts to bring in an outside buyer, the eventual amicable buyout of Esteban, and the ongoing arrangement where Esteban now sources tobacco on commission.

From there Skip details the three new bodegas — one for finished factory-owned tobacco run by Arlen's father Chico, one for finished tobacco not owned by the factory, and one for pilones — plus RoMa Craft's first real move into its own pre-industry. He explains why fully finished tobacco has largely disappeared from the market, why brands like AJ Fernandez and Plasencia prefer to finish their own leaf, and how he and Luciano Meirelles of ACE Prime are buying and processing tobacco together (including two containers of Indonesian binder) and may form a separate free-zone company to do it.

Skip also breaks down the math behind cigar pricing — private label margins, brokers, marketing and why a $14 cigar isn't 40% better than a $9 one — and gets into Nicaragua's 382/CAFTA-DR regime versus Zona Franca, raw-material allocations, and Europe's track-and-trace requirements. He touches on a collaboration in progress with Ernesto Perez-Carrillo, competitors trying to buy up his tobacco supply, and teases Weasel Fest and other projects for part two.

In This Episode

1. 01
   Studio banter and the new lounge
   Skip sizes up the renovated Cigar Hustlers space, lockers, and the long-running battle to add a liquor license and BYO setups.
2. 02
   COVID, boosters and patient zero
   Jokes about Florida testing, who really brought COVID into the office, and Skip's refusal to get another booster.
3. 03
   Why production stalled at 25,000 cigars a week
   Skip explains RoMa Craft's static output since 2017 and how nine months stuck stateside proved the factory could run without him.
4. 04
   Buying out Esteban Disla
   The full story of failed outside buyers, capital demands, and the amicable deal that left RoMa Craft owning 100% of the factory.
5. 05
   MINSA licenses and Nicaraguan red tape
   New health and labor licenses, WHO-funded regulation, cafeteria requirements, and the paperwork tax on every import and export.
6. 06
   The three bodegas
   Separate warehouses for finished factory tobacco, outside-owned finished tobacco, and pilones — plus Chico coming out of retirement to run one.
7. 07
   Getting into pre-industry with Luciano Meirelles
   Why fully finished tobacco is gone from the market and how Skip and ACE Prime are buying, fermenting and processing leaf together.
8. 08
   The real math behind cigar pricing
   Private label costs, brokers, marketing spend, and Skip's argument that a $14 cigar isn't 40% better than his $9 one.
9. 09
   382 vs. Zona Franca and track-and-trace
   How Nicaragua's CAFTA-DR 382 regime caps duty-free raw material purchases, and what Europe's track-and-trace rules demand.

Brands & Cigars Discussed

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Transcript

Rabbit air, baby. Oh, I'm noticing how you had the tents organized over here. That's all. Everything's very organized.

Welcome to the Sagar Hustler Podcast. Special edition. Because we don't know where it's going to fall. Episode number pending.

Episode number pending. Episode numbers. Episode numbers pending. We get one, thank you.

With Mr. Skip Martin sitting in with us today. In the house. That's right.

And the Slapdick Studios. Slapdick Studios. In beautiful Daytona, Florida. Yeah, and now we're going to have good soundbites from Scoop.

We need new ones. What makes you think we're going to talk for a couple of hours and you're going to get soundbites out of it? Oh, it's happening. It's happening.

All right, you don't... No, we'll just skip everything. com. MikeMyProductions, yada, yada, yada, send me an email, blah, blah, blah.

You could be advertising here. Right. This could be us, but you're playing. Right.

Why fuck around? All around the world. I just want to say up front, I came here to do the Chet and Palmer shit show. Oh, that's Wednesdays.

And got roped into the special edition of Cigar Hustler. I'll tell Chet you said hello, though. He'll be very excited. Yeah, well, you know, you got to take what you get.

I heard he had some kind of penis surgery or... Yeah, he's... Oh, heart surgery. What?

Oh, oh, the heart monitor thing. Yeah. Um, I think they didn't end up doing that because of the way... " And he's like, "I'll be dead by then, maybe.

Who knows? What is going on? " I have it in pretty good authority that it was really just some kind of cosmetic surgery on his penis, and then this whole other story is just the front. Oh, just the front.

Yeah, just to cover, to cover the bandages and stuff that are in his pants. You heard when he went to the ER, and Chris Baldwin walked in and saved him. Okay. The follow-up was to go see a cardiologist, and they were gonna put a heart monitor on him.

So he went to the follow-up appointment for the heart monitor, and they said, okay, Mr. Atwell, we've seen all your labs, we think this is what's going on, so if you come back in six weeks, we'll put the heart monitor on you, and then we'll do the other test. Okay. Well, it's six weeks, I mean, he could be dead by then, who knows what's going on at that point.

Jeez Louise. So, and then they're gonna do the stress test and the double-blind study. He was fine upstairs, he was working the register, people loved him, now he's like, you know what, I really want to beat myself in the ground with this fucking guy, with Phil. And, you know, you can only do so much, Skip.

You try and save people. And, you know, they always, it's always, grass is always greener. I don't know. Yeah, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them think.

That's it. I mean, drink. That's it. Think.

He's in our age group, so we do less manual labor now, not more. Yeah. Right. He's ramping up.

I didn't understand. It's out of his mind. Phil pays extremely well, is the only thing. So, hey, if you want to be dead, go take that job.

Right. Or, you know, you tighten your budget a little bit and you come back to retail. You know? That's it.

That's it. It's just like, I don't work for you, bitch. Yeah, I don't, I don't fucking work for you. Yeah.

Where have I heard that before? I don't know. I don't know where that came from. Yeah.

He's been on eggshells for an entire week. It's very weird. It's very weird. Palmer?

Yeah. Yeah. He just can't tell. He's got a little bit of that, you know, that's my stapler vibe going.

Yeah. I will kill everyone. This is my stapler. When he's here, he's like, ha ha, there's no big deal.

I already forgot about it. Then later he's like, fuck that guy. Exactly. That's exactly what's going on.

She's at home mumbling watching TV. You can tell. I can tell. He doesn't respond to my texts right away or whatever.

You know, he does his little play moves. Look at him. Look at him. You just say what you do to me is actually what you just described.

Right. Exactly. So, I'll also start off by saying that I'm very impressed by everything you've done here. Oh, thank you very much.

So, I know this used to be like a church that did gay conversion therapy or something. Something. Something like that. Gay conversion?

They did that? I don't know what she did. I hated gay people. It was online.

Some kind of weird. So before that, though, you did your podcast in this place. I remember. I think I was one of the very first ones to do it downstairs.

It looked much bigger than that. And Greg told us we weren't allowed to smoke. That's right. And here we are.

And basically we said, fuck that guy. Yeah, fuck that guy. Man, fuck that guy. How is your brother doing, by the way?

He's good. He's supposedly going to be back. He's in Puerto Rico. How was your trip in back into the studio?

Well, we have AC now here, we've, you know. It's nice. Have you guys been taking your COVID test? No.

No, we feel fine. We're from Florida. Yeah, we don't have it here. You're not allowed.

It doesn't exist. Yeah, we're not allowed. The governor said so. Yeah, you're not allowed to test in Florida.

Okay. Those are the rules. So, apparently, even like Dave Garofalo posted the other day that he tested negative for like five days and then tested positive. Yeah.

Well, he's not from Florida. That he's not feeling good either. Yeah, right, right. So, like, you know.

I think no person in Florida still has Fred, Fred Rui. I try not to go really hard on people about COVID, because, you know, then I could get COVID and die, because I'm not in the best physical condition, and I don't want my epitaphics to be, ah, look what this guy said three days ago. You did have your moment there, like, early on, with, like, the whole shelter, everybody stay away, stay away, stay away, and then, fucking, one person came to you, and you had a pop, like, fucking a year ago. Yeah, well, yeah, so once I got vaccinated, because early on, there was no vaccination, and I knew if I got it, I was done for.

Right, which turned out to be not true. So, you know, once they had the vaccination. Right, you're rolling. I was like, yeah.

Fucking game on. John claims, John Oliver claims that I contaminated the office. You're patient zero. Okay, listen, I have, I have near indisputable evidence that it was Arlen.

Right. Who, despite all other evidence and recommendations, went shopping. I'm fairly certain she got it somewhere between Nordstrom's and even Marcus and then brought it. And then we all went to Mike's house for New Year's Eve and then everybody at Mike's house got sick.

Super spreader. And then somehow I got blamed. Right. When in actuality.

It was Arliss. It wasn't me. It was the foreigner. It was the foreigner.

We should have. The dirty foreigner brought it in. Exactly. We should have known.

It's terrible. They're not, they're not, you know. They can't be trusted. Right.

They're all sus. A hundred percent. Sus. Totally.

So anyway, I had COVID, then I got the, the vaccine, vaccine number two booster. I went in for the second booster like a month ago and they're like, well, you can't have it. I'm like, well, why not? You know, I have a, you know, I have a heart failure.

I have a. I qualify. There are things going on. I qualify for everything.

I just look healthy, but I qualify for everything. Well, without a note from your doctor, you can't get it. You're five, you're five days away from your 60 days or whatever. And so I said, okay.

" I'm like, "Fuck y'all. " I don't work for you. 6 days ago. " Right, right.

That's what you said to them. Son of a bitch. Yeah, so now I'm anti. I am absolutely not getting a third booster.

You got every shot but one that you can get. I'm just against it. I'm really jealous. That's too funny.

No, it looks nice, man. It looks really nice. Thanks. The private lounge is dope.

Yeah. And, And you know me, like, if there was one thing that I thought could, I thought, you know, stuff on the walls was the only thing that I could say, but everything else, it's exactly how it would have done. Okay, cool. Yeah, we, you know, I know when I bring you in, like, I'm like, okay, here we go.

Let's see. Let's see what's gonna happen. Well, I feel like, I feel like, um, because you've been surrounded by a champion. Yeah, that's true.

I feel like I've lifted your, your level of execution up a little bit. Of course. Because when I met you were just a slapdick with a glass shop. Well, shit, I was fucking, you know, you're basically selling vape, and marijuana pipes shaped like a penis.

I was 26 years old. I was still a lot of those up there. You've really upped your game since then. Yeah, I'm trying.

A lot of the glass penises up there. I'm hoping one, like the next step is to eventually grow out of that, you know, but that requires liquor, and that's been a fucking battle for over a year now. I don't know, man. Liquor is almost, the move, the move is to open a liquor store.

And make your private lounge BYO. I don't know what the laws are here in Florida. Yes. But do you have lockers?

They're not humidified, right? Right. Well, they are humidified. Oh, they are.

They are. So you could create bigger lockers, like bottle size lockers. Right. And then you could sell them the liquor in your liquor store.

Right. Because you own this building, right? Yep. Right.

You could sell them the liquor in your liquor store. Displace the lady selling whatever she's selling up there. And then they have to come to you. They don't have to, but it's convenient to come to your liquor store.

It's right there. Just leave it out of the cigar store, 'cause you got beer and wine there, right? Yep. My thoughts were a double parlay.

Take a door, attach the next bay, sell liquor off-premise to go, and have the liquor license to both spots. Yeah, I mean, that's what Jeff does at Riverside. I just don't know what the laws are here. Like, in Texas, if you're BYO, unless you pour a drink, you could sell setups.

Like, when I had a store, we sold, you know, we had, I don't know, 20 different kinds of water, Red Bull, anything you could mix with a drink. Right. And then we had nice glasses, you know, ice, all that. And then, you know, we would sell a water or a Red Bull for $5 and then they would mix it with vodka or we would sell, you know, Mexican Coke.

They had Red Bull back then? Yeah, yeah. That was 75 years ago, man. That was 15 years ago.

It was those black cans. It was only 15 years ago? Yeah. But what was great about this was, because we bought all the water and mixers and that kind of stuff from Glazers and Republic, he's setting his timer.

We're going off on it. He's setting me. No, no. I'm getting notifications.

Don't time me, bitch. He checks his phone all through the show. Ah, okay. At the time, I'm just doing the show.

I demand 100% complete attention. Yeah, I know. Okay. Good luck.

I got you. We sold, we sold these, uh, because Republican Glazers, we bought so much of this stuff that they begged other people to take, you know, like they're doing liquor at the bar next to us. You and I'll do a show. Yeah, they did the liquor at the bar next to us.

Right. And, uh, so anyway, anytime we had an event, they would come pour, you know, $1,000 worth of scotch or $1,000 worth of, you know, the swipe the card, the free, you know, that whatever the sampler, they'd get somebody from wherever to come do liquor at the event. Right. It was like the perfect situation.

So, and you didn't have to deal with all the bullshit, the bar problems, you know. Right. Yeah. They come at a price.

That's for sure. But anyway, heroin and fentanyl is the way to go. I mean, if you're really looking for money, you got to set up a little methadone shop here. One more bay over.

You know, we got bikers. Yeah, what the hell? Could be. They could supply you, I'm sure.

Yeah, they just run it right in. Right. Maybe it's what they've been flushing down the toilet, screwed up the plate. He's got one of these dealers and fuckin' everything.

I want you to tell Greg though, all those lockers are wrong, Skip said, you gotta get new lockers. No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm just saying like... No, no, no, we want to tell Greg that something's wrong, he loves it. No, those lockers are great.

But you know, once Chet, uh, throws his back out, doing all this construction work. Yeah. And then he gets the Percocets or the, uh, what's the, what's the opioid? Yeah, perks or, um, I mean, any type of fuckin'...

Whatever the hillbilly heroin is? Yeah. Yeah. When he gets that, and then he gets hooked on that, and he starts chasing the dragon, There you go.

You got a built-in shop manager. It's done. There you go. It's perfect.

It can handle everything. Yeah. Maybe in a wheelchair. I have to make things wheelchair accessible in the back.

A walker. We'll give him a walker. A walker. So Mike, I don't know if you have an agenda, but if we start talking about something you think is better for the Patreon.

Right. Because I have no filter either way. I don't really get it. You got to table it.

You got to come up with a signal. Yeah. We just got to give me a signal. Just say, hey, Patreon.

All right. And then we'll make a note. All right. Yeah, because we got to get the Patreon numbers up.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This fancy shit is not paid for itself. Yeah, we got to pay for itself. No, it doesn't.

It does not pay for itself. It doesn't. It does not. We have found that out.

Would you like to do a podcast once a week, Skip? Um, no. Oh. Yeah, he's got plenty of time.

He sure would be a great idea. He's got plenty of time. Palmer and Martin. Palmer and Martin.

Right. I'm sure people will get sick of listening to me. I'm sick of hearing myself talk. Yeah, but what do you care?

You don't care. You don't care if people are sick of listening to you. So are you excited about the two bodegas? Let's talk about that briefly.

What's going on? Yeah. So quick, quick segue. Yeah.

Well, it doesn't really start there. It starts with, um, so how do I, how far do I go back? Right. So we've been at the same production level since the mid 2017, right?

We've been at about 25,000 cigars a week. So we haven't had a new product launch since then. I mean, Wunderlust was done. Baca was pretty much in the bag.

It hadn't released yet, but it was done. Whiskey Rebellion was already done. I mean, other than a craft thing every year, or I don't think we've had anything just new, new, maybe your SBCs, that kind of stuff. So there was really no new product stuff for me to work on.

So the majority of my day is spent just checking the tobacco. tobacco making sure you know all the day-to-day there's always something right right especially in estelle yeah so um when covet hit um my mentality was i can't go three days without being in the factory because the second i walk in the factory there's four hours of non-stop just bullshit like right this little thing that little thing answering questions whatever so i it was impossible for me if i would go on a two-week trip or a three-week trip every day i'm I spent half of my day dealing with stuff at the factory. So when COVID happened, we ended up being in the States for like nine months, unplanned. We came to the States thinking, hey, if I get sick, I want to be here and not there.

So we ended up being here from like February to like January, or March to January. And so what I kind of realized from that was I didn't have to be in the factory every day. That I had done a pretty good job of building the systems, and that once you kind of just made them do things themselves, that they, there was little corrections here and there, answers every day, but there was no, like the whole train doesn't come off the fucking tracks. Right, you need to check in and review, but you don't need to check in and review every fucking day at that point.

Right, right, right. So, we had also hired or made Wilmer our general manager, right? Because Esteban, at that point, wasn't even spending day-to-day in the office, or in the factory, and we have key people in kind of positions that have been there for years and years, so it's like, they all know their jobs, the job's the same every day, there's no big curveballs coming, so after being away for nine months, I thought, hey, you know, I don't have to be here every day. And then the second thought was, I've been in SLE for 10 years.

Right. Which is… A long time. Try being in SLE for a week. It's a lot.

Let alone 10 fucking years. Right. So, when I say that, it makes me think, I posted a picture in San Juan, fast forward a little bit, and some guy comments, "Are you ever in the factory anymore? " And meanwhile, he's smoking a cigar from some guy who comes down three days every five months and is a master of everything.

So, you know, whatever, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't win, you can't win. Yeah, it's part of the game. So, um, while I, while I wasn't there, the majority of my interactions were with Anna, with Wilmer, with Doris, um, you know, our head of administration, our, uh, head of packaging and our head of production. And other than just okaying purchases, cause you know, we pay for everything, you know, 200,000 here, 150,000 here, 30,000 here, 300,000 there.

Other than, you know, approving those purchases, I just trusted, you know, that Esteban was looking at the tobacco and it was going to be good, which he always has. And so when I get back, everything's on track, everything's going fine. You know, few things are a little bit, you know, wonky, we fix those pretty quickly. And so, so I'm like, hey, I'm gonna start spending a lot more time not in Esteli.

Right. This is your time. This is your opportunity. Right.

So, at the same time, for the last three years, Esteban and Raúl have been doing, it kind of started as just, so, you know, Fidel Olivas, who we used to buy a lot of tobacco from years ago, went out of business, the bank's repoed his property, and he also did Pueblo Nuevo. And what had happened was Raul and Esteban had rented one of those old bodegas from the bank and they were doing Desparillo. So, it's very common because after crops are harvested, after they come out of the curing barn, or even when you buy a lot of tobacco and you bring it in the country, if you have to process it after that, your business, no matter how big it is, is not built to process, you know, 20,000 pounds of tobacco all at one time. So SLE didn't really have a service where you could drop off 20,000 pounds of tobacco, frog strip it, dry it, process it, and then deliver it back to you.

Right. So what companies would have to do is they'd have to hire 25 or 30 or 40 women to do this job, and it's just not sustainable. So what happened was Esteban, knowing that all these people in Regadillo hadn't had jobs for three years, nobody was farming out there, They started this processing where mainly Gus Cura from Nicoprosa or even Noxa could drop off tobacco and then they could get it frog stripped and then dried and packed, stuff they bought in bulk. So anyway, they started this processing company.

And sorting is a big part of that. Sorting, sorting, you always sort. It's always about sorting. So then they had started co-opting some of these old farmers to grow Esteli tobacco, they're growing a different seed variety, the stuff that Fidel Olivas used to grow, and actually we were buying a lot of that, so a lot of people don't buy the heavy, heavy tobacco we purchase, and it's not always available, so we would buy that from Esteban and Rahul.

So anyway, he had gotten more and more tied up into that, so he wasn't even in the factory most of the day. So his main role was going out looking for tobacco that we needed six months from now, a year from now, putting our name on it, going to look at the pallones of tobacco we purchased last year, make sure it's being flipped correctly or whatever, and then also working on this stuff with Raul. So he was spending less and less time in the factory. So knowing that, another thing you need to know is owning a cigar factory is not a profitable business.

it's only profitable in two circumstances one if you're making a lot of private labels for other people which placentia did for years right um use your own tobacco you make cigars for other people right you know you know yep i sell my cigars to me for x right i sell your cigars from me right at x plus a dollar right or x plus a dollar 20 right so where i'm making 20 you know 15 20 If I make a 30% margin or 30% margin on my own stuff because I'm subsidizing it all, right? I'm making 100% margin or keystone, basically, on the stuff I make for you. And I'm doing that to you as a favor. 50 a stick, right?

Which is, which is, uh, sometimes more than that right now. I was going to say, it's more, it's more. So my point is, unless you're making private labels, you're not really making any money. Right.

So the way our factory was set up is, Mike and I sell all the cigars, we take a lot of the profit margin we make and send it back to factory to buy tobacco for the next year, two years, three years. But we had over eight or ten years, we'd accumulated a lot of raw material. And so we started, even as we kind of hit our stride, we started paying out dividends. And Esteban was using his dividends to fund his business.

Right. And I'm using my dividends to buy more raw tobacco for this business. Right. Right.

So here we are, you know, I'm subsidizing the business. We have something more than a million dollars on deposit with the factory. And, you know, basically the three things: A, you're not really in the factory much anymore. B, you're not making a lot of money.

I mean, you know, Esteban probably made, you know, $80,000, $100,000 a year for the last seven years. Right. Which is pretty good money. Especially in Esteban.

Or X, what he used to make. Yeah. Right? So it's not nothing, but it's not, you know, AJ Fernandez burned down the world, buy a Rolls-Royce money, right?

Because he doesn't own it. Thickle chain. He doesn't have the capital. He didn't have the big CI deal, which is private label, right?

Right. He didn't have those kinds of deals, and our factor was never going to be that. Right. And we had gotten into discussions, you know, not arguments, but like, hey, it's got to be more.

It's like, okay, well, okay, we can double our production. Right. let's, let's go find some land. Let's build a new factory.

Right. I remember you, I come up with half. Right. You come up with half.

Why don't have half? Right. Okay. So, well, I'll come up with half.

You go get a loan for the other half. I can't do that. Right. Like, you know, I'm not going to pay 15% interest wide.

Like I wouldn't either. Right. Like we'll save up your, your 80 to a hundred thousand dollars every year you're making. And then when you have four or $500,000 together, we'll put the other 500,000 and then we'll give a loan for the difference.

Right. It's like, well, I want to own the factory. It's like, well, it's a funny thing. You can't own stuff.

You can't afford it. Right. That's how that works. So you get into these circular discussions again and again.

So it's like, my goal is to make cigars for me. Right. I understand the business need. I understand your need as a partner to make more money and build your, whatever, in your working years.

Right. But, you know, I can't, I'm not a sugar daddy. I'm not, you know, tobacco Santa Claus. It's not charitable work.

Right. It's work. Right. It's business.

So it's here. Oh, 20 minutes. Boom. Nice.

Nice. Well played. So, so, so the, so anyway, the, the net of it was, is like, look, there's three options, right? A lot of other stuff, but of course, anyway, three, three options.

But in December, Mike came down. It's like, look, we do need to do something. We've been at the static level for four or five years. Right.

We're selling every cigar we make as fast as we can make it. We need to grow production just for Roma, but we do not have the space. Another thing happened is there was a new license for this year, a new health license from Mensa. Of course.

Yeah, what the fuck, you know. It came from the WHO. Right. And it started off as, it was basically as bad as the FDA stuff was going to be.

No shit. But on a Nicaragua level. And then our chamber that we belong to, our chamber of tobacco producers that does Puro Sabor and all that, they got together with the government and said look you know um it's a bit much it's a little too much you know so be reasonable somehow the big guys has nothing to do with what the government wanted to do for me but again somehow the big guys convinced them that if it's for export and if you were in a free zone which we're not we're in 382 right that they they kind of curbed a lot of the rules but they still ended up with this administrative burden where everything you bring So when you're putting in, whether it's cigar labels, or paper for cigar labels, or raw material, or whatever, you had to get it approved through Mensa, that it's not going to somehow kill a bunch of Nicaraguans with cancer, which is all bullshit, because it's 100% export, number one, and number two, the entire purpose of the whole exercise was twofold. One, to get a huge amount of money from the WHO for instituting this regimen, this process, so the WHO that's trying to control the universe with anti-tobacco bullshit, said if you guys put these laws into place, we'll give you a huge chunk of money, which you may not know, but Nicaragua needs a little bit of money right now.

I've heard that, so that was a go, green light, and then the second reason why is because any kind of administrative bullshit thing they can put in place, It means a whole bunch of people start making money on the slick. Right. Well, you know. The grease.

Right. So, now, long story short on that, we have to pay a significant chunk of money every month, and every time we bring anything into the country or send anything out of the country, just for somebody to sign a piece of paper. Right. Right.

So, the whole thing is just perfunctory. Complete fuckery. It's, you know, but it is what it is. We sell tobacco, we do it.

So long and short of that is, because we had to do this new license, we had to do a whole other license from the Ministry of Work, that basically where they came in and they said, you need to have a cafeteria. For them to eat. You need to have more bathrooms. For employees to eat.

you need to have xyz and it's like we don't have room for anything right we have the nicest bathrooms yep no one's in 10 years no we've had the same number of employees for six years no one's ever said hey the bathrooms are always occupied right right i mean you know my my next step was to make you know both bathrooms gender neutral so women because we have more women than men let the women use either one right we never even had to do that because no one's ever had an Right. Right. I'm also not a restaurant. Right.

Right. So I asked them, I said, can I just pay a local restaurant for everybody's food every day? They go and get lunch. Right.

They go eat there. They said, no, you have to have an actual... No shit. Yeah.

So at that time, you know, we don't have a square inch in the factory. We've got, you know, 50,000 pounds worth of tobacco in the factory. We have 40,000. This guy's doing us a favor over here.

We've got $60,000 over here. So we've got $2 million worth of tobacco stored all over the place. And you can't just store tobacco like a trade show booth. I mean, storing tobacco, you have to keep it at a certain temperature, keep it a certain humidity.

You've got to watch it because if the temperature gets up, it can combust and literally just catch on fire. Oh, shit. And burn the whole place down if it gets hot. Right.

Which, you know, there's a lot of ways to prevent that, but it happens. That's why you hear about people's warehouses just burning down. I never understood that. That makes sense.

They left some Pallone going, it gets up to 200 degrees, and it catches the cover on fire, and then everything burns to the ground. So who's in charge of Fuente? I mean, we have to fucking talk about that. So anyway, we had this need for a storage space, so that we could store finished cigars better, because they were kind of just stacked everywhere, because our existing thing was built for 300,000 cigars.

Yeah. And it was, you know, it really wasn't, you know, it was really, it really, it was just, you've been there. Yeah. I've been there over time.

Like I've seen it, you know, at one point, it's like, okay, this thing is starting to get full. Then the next time I'm like, oh, okay. So you have to move 20 things to get, to get to another thing. Right.

Yeah. Then it gets to a point. Like our bodega that we're supposed to work in is so packed with tobacco that you literally have to take out tobacco to get to other, so anyway. It's a process.

It's a process. So we needed space. We've needed space. But you're caught in this catch-22 where it's like, okay, am I just going to have to come up with more money?

Or are we, you know, hey, take some of this money you're making and instead let's invest in this. And it's like, no, I need the money for the other thing. So anyway, we're in the middle of all that. So the government at this point is telling us, you have to do something.

Mike Sinclair: Right. Mike Sinclair: So I said, hey, here are the options. Let's, you know, invest some money. I don't know where you would get it.

I don't know if you have it. I don't know if you have access to it, but we have to invest money to do this. I don't have the company. I get half the profits.

You own half the company, you have the profits. But what can't happen is, you know, Roma putting in another million dollars. Mike Sinclair: Right. Mike Sinclair: Because no factor in the world works that way.

Mike Sinclair: No, at that point. Mike Sinclair: And we're 10 years into this. Mike Sinclair: Right. Mike Sinclair: This is not.

Mike Sinclair: You have to surround our ownership without question. Mike Sinclair: Well, fuck it. you know, you put in money and we do what we need to do. Right.

Or I sell the factory to you and you keep things going, but we're not paying deposits the way we used to. You're going to have to put your own money into this. You could, we'll pay higher prices. So we're back at come back, come with more money.

Or, or you sell your half the factory to me. And in the discussion was, well, you know, that's not enough. And then, you know, you guys make a lot of money and you have a lot So then it was, okay, well, maybe somebody I trust will buy it, my half. And after we worked with a really, really good group of people to buy my half of the factory, and at the end, they came back and said, we own half the factory, we put in 100% of the capital, 100% of the risk, and somebody else takes half the profits.

Right, you're out of your mind. That's a no-go. That's a no-starter. What a hell of a deal.

B, you know, we owe you guys a lot of money as soon as we buy the factory because of these deposits and, you know, how are we going to agree on paying that out, that's a problem, it's a problem, and number three was, you know, whatever other kind of side issues you're having with your partner, even though we've known him for 20, 30 years, whatever, it's like we don't want to enter another, we don't need your problem. Yeah, we have our own shit. So I said, "Hey, here's the deal. I trust you so much.

I'll give you my half of the factory. I haven't taken a penny out of the factory in 10 years anyway. " So they wouldn't even take it for free. " And, or, you know, close it down, we sell the company, and you know, there's been people chasing us to buy us for years, but I just, it's just not sustainable the way it is, so where we ended up coming out was, we ended up coming out with us buying Esteban out of the factory, and it was amicable, I mean, like his wife and son worked there, I said, "Hey, you could still work here," and they said, "We're not really," you know, "Work is such a" Right, well, that's such a vague term.

What do you mean isn't work? It's more like we get paid to be here. Well, I mean, you know, look, they were there from the very beginning till midnight, you know, work. I mean, you, you know, when we were behind Esteban's house, it was his kids and his wife who were doing a lot of the work.

Right. So anyways, as time progresses, you know, you find people to fill those positions and you free up more space and time in your life. Right. So, so we basically took care, really good care of them.

Right. Number one, which no one else would have ever done. Right. We took care of Esteban and we entered an agreement with Esteban to say, look, the one thing that we really do depend on you for is going We went out sourcing tobacco.

Right. There's certain kind of tobaccos we buy, number one, Esteban Lajero, which we get from him. Right. So I said, if you source the tobacco, we'll pay you a commission for doing that work.

Right. And then, so that's where we are now. So Esteban's out there, you know, looking for tobacco continuously, if we need it, if it's the right quality and it's the right price, some combination of those things. Right.

You know, if we really, really need it, higher price. If we don't really need it, but it's a good deal, we'll buy it, you know. But anyway, he does that, he sources the tobacco, and it's been working pretty well for about six months, or eight months. Yeah.

And now he's driving around a Ferrari and has to lead. No, no, no, I don't think so. It's got to be, it's four wheels, you know, it's got like the big, it's up in the air a little bit, you know. Right.

No, he would never buy anything fancy. He's not that guy, yeah. But, so anyway, all that's to say. Right.

Yes, we have a bodega. Yeah, I was gonna say, weren't we talking about the bodegas? So now we own 100% of the factory. So Arlen, well, really, it's, you know, it's...

It's Arlen's. Well, in tax, whatever, you know, it's... But Mike and I own it. Right.

So basically, I still own the first half. Mike and I own the second half. Right. But most of it is in Arlen's name.

Right. Right. The, which means whatever it means. Right.

Right. Like, if anybody's keeping track, you know, there's a lot of people out there that own Right. That actually don't own factories. Right.

Right, yeah. Right. Several. Right.

So, anyway. You mean that there's a lot of bullshit in this industry? I was just looking for clarification here. I mean, far be it for me to say that.

Unless we're on the Patreon. I'll be clear. That's this Patreon conversation. So, immediately, we started investing.

And A, the priority was get the tobacco out of other people's storage. Right. Get the tobacco out of Nicosueno. We had to have more space.

Right. That's the easiest solve for that, is find the place to hold the tobacco. Yeah, so there's three different bodegas. One bodega is for tobacco we purchased that is in the name of the factory.

The bodega is owned by the factory and operated by the factory and actually that's managed now by Arnold's dad, Chico, who started with the drone like in the late '60s, early '70s. He's kind of retired, but now I un-retired him. Right. Guess his back.

Because I trust them. Right. So he runs that. And then that's all finished stuff.

And that's what you saw on Instagram. And the fucking bodegas look extremely clean. It is. Well, you know how I do stuff.

I don't fuck around. Yeah, you don't half-ass it. So the second, if you've been in another bodega, they don't look like that. Right, no.

Yeah. The second one is also for packs that are ready to use, but are packs that the factory doesn't own. Okay. So, Luciano from Ace Prime and I have been sourcing a lot of tobacco and buying it, most of it for our own factories, but also some of it opportunistically, you know, like for example, you know, we just bought a lot of Indonesian binder, it's been kind of tough to get an SLE, you know, eight, nine dollars a pound, we got really, really good binder, two containers full, you know, 40,000 pounds for like half that.

Nice. So, I mean, you can't not buy it. How do you say you can't pass out? And you use a lot of Indonesia binder on your cigars anyway.

Yeah. So, but this is like, this is enough for me for like 10 years. Right. So, obviously, some of that will sell to other people.

Right. And, you know, whatever money we make on that, whatever my share is, we'll go back to just buying more tobacco for the factory. Right. So, it's kind of another way to kind of help subsidize that without Mike and I having to continuously...

Stroke a check. Send post-tax dollars to Nicaragua. Right. But yeah, so the second bodega is also Finnish Tobacco, and then the third bodega is for Pylones.

So are you going to take a picture with you, like standing in front of Pylones and this one, Jer? Yeah, I'll be putting like a moist vagina against my nose. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I select women the same way I select tobacco.

You just close your eyes, start heading south. If you smell it by the time you get to the belly button, You just go back on. That's it. Yeah.

Yeah. I get you. No, so the reason why, I mean, we've never had our own pre-industry. Right.

Which is rare for a factory. Yeah. Because even really small factories have their own pre-industry. Well, but you've purchased stuff pre-industry, but it's always been at other places, no?

Yeah, so like what we've always historically done is, like, let's say we go to the Dominican, and we'll buy Dominican from Leo Reyes. It's 100% ready. He doesn't sell tobacco unless it's 100% ready because he has very specific process. It's done.

Yeah. So that tobacco is ready to put in a cigar tomorrow. Right. We buy a lot of that.

Container's full. Historically, like for example, if we were to go buy a taparaca, we have always processed our own a taparaca because no one else can do it. No one else knows how to do it because it's very hard to work the way we work it, and it takes years, and nobody wants to do that. So, Autopadoc is one of the only tobaccos we've ever worked.

We usually have always worked behind Esteban's house and a couple of pallones. Right. Like six, seven years at a time worth. We use 1,500, 2,000 pounds.

We have two pallones of 4,000 pounds. So, it's like four, five, six years worth. Right. So, but like, for example, when we would buy Broadleaf.

Right. When we used to buy it from GK. Right. We used to buy it from Lancaster Leaf.

frank miller in dominican would sell it to his subsidiary in nicaragua gk and gk was set up specifically to sell tobacco to factories like ours right so they would they would they know what our needs are they would buy it they would process it and then they would sell it to us because they're flipping you know they're buying tobacco for x right selling to us for x plus 20 And so, so, we just kind of entered into an agreement with Gus Cura to say, look, we're going to go select, Esteban and I are going to go select, with Raul, for not, when he goes to buy tobacco from Knox, Esteban is going to go with him, we're going to go buy, you know, $10,000, $20,000, how much Broadleaf we can buy, as an example. Here's an example. You're going to bring it in. You know, you're buying it for $18, $20 a pound, you bring it in, you work it for 8 or 10 months, at the end of the 10 months, it gets sorted out, the stuff that still meets the requirements we have, we take, and we pay you $30, $33 a pound.

Right. You pay the premium for taking it apart, essentially, and taking the... For processing it. Right.

" Right. Right. Because it's profitable. It's not a favor favor.

Right. It's a, we'll do this for you. Right. But we're not in this business.

This isn't the business we want to be in. Right. But we'll do it because it's profitable. Right.

And it makes money and it helps you out. Right. Because we're also buying hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of other tobaccos from them. Right.

And also because Esteban, you know, over the years has done things for him, Raul's brother works there, blah, blah, blah. So, the long and short of it is, A, they don't really want to do that anymore. Right. They never really wanted to do it in the first place.

Right. Um, once we took, you know, our half a million, million dollars worth of tobacco out of their bodegas, they're like, okay, we really, you know, you really got to figure out how to do this on your own, you know. It's time for you to leave the nest. Right.

Right. And then the other thing is, whereas before 65, 70% of the tobacco we used to buy would be like Leos, like ready to use, that tobacco doesn't exist anymore. Right. Um, because tobacco, good tobacco is in such short supply that people who need it are buying it at 60, 70% ready.

Right. And finishing it. A, because a lot of them like to finish it themselves. Right.

Because they have their own processes and they, they want to finish it themselves. They don't want you to fuck it up. Right. Or not do it the way they would do it.

They want to buy it at, you know, people like AJ grow their own or even the stuff they buy. why placentia aj um my father you know all these people they don't they don't like buying tobacco that's 100 ready right because that means it's not the kind of tobacco that it's not processed the way they didn't cook it the way they wanted to cook well cooking is well no i'm in essence of like uh it's your kitchen you know for example if i want tobacco to be fermented at low temperatures over a long period of time right i don't want you to do it really quick i don't want you to rush Over six months. Right. Because I can't undo that.

Right. Right. Yeah. It's burnt chicken.

Right. " They're not going to do that for everybody. Nobody will do that. So… It's like a brisket.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, low and slow, baby. Right.

You know? So, there's that. S. side, and you have to pay brokers 15% and pay advertising.

advertising and pay podcasts and pay whatever. And I'm not doing almost any of that. Any of that. Then you have to charge 14, $15 for the same exact cigar that I'm selling for nine to make the same amount of money.

Exactly. Right. If not more. Right.

So, um, you know, you'll notice, I don't really care telling you the numbers. No. Uh, but, and the reason why is because, um, I feel like I make a fair share and my cigars are a good price. Right.

But, but, But I can tell you, when you're paying $14 for a cigar, you're not paying $14, you're not getting 40% more quality, you're not getting 40% more better tobacco, you're not getting 40% more the guy who did this is a genius, you're actually getting a cigar made by someone else, that they weren't even there to see get made, with tobacco that they maybe have not ever seen or touched, it's getting shipped in, they're paying people all along the way to do that, stuff that we do ourselves. Then they're paying someone else to walk into the store and manage a relationship to get it on the shelf, and really their primary job is going around saying, hey, I'm the smartest guy in the room, let me teach you about tobacco, and buy my cigar and pay the extra $4. Wow, you just broke down the cigar industry in fucking less than 30 minutes. My cigar is $14.

Yeah, well, you did a good job lending it. I told him right off the bat, it's overpriced for me. I know how you feel, but the second half was good. I mean, if you only want to sell 5,000 cigars, you could basically price them at whatever you want.

Yeah. If you want to sell, you know, 7 million, 8 million, 10 million cigars over years and years, the same cigar, that isn't some gimmicky new whatever, whatever, you have to charge a fair price. There are ways, you know, I know that we agree and disagree on many things, but you're right, you know, as far as, like, when you kind of grow into, like, we're not at, we're not at that level, right? We're not producing one, one million sticks a year, you know, and because we're not producing one million, so we have to fucking pay a premium, you know?

So that's really kind of the avenues as to where we're at. I would say that we've definitely made a lot of progress as to where we are now and where we've been in the course of six years, um, distributing. And, you know, there are some things that I've learned from you, obviously, I would say a lot of things that I've learned from you. And there are some things that, you know, you have to kind of go out and taste and try and fucking get your lumps as well.

So we're doing the process. You know, you just say the word. You say, hey, listen, you come to me, you make your cigars solely to me, and I'm good. I'm good to go.

We have plenty of room, you know. Well, look, and I'm not saying one is better than the other. Yeah, no. I mean, I'm making a cigar right now with Ernie Carrillo.

I fully expect to pay a premium. Oh, yeah, that's going to be expensive as fuck. Because I'm a pain in the ass. You are?

No, no, no. Oh, stop it. Is that the woman with the incredibly long name? Right.

How do you say that word? It's a quinceanera, yeah. Ken Quagenaro. What?

So it's Ken, like Ken and Barbie. Ken. Qua, like the Quan. Right.

From Jerry Maguire. Jerry Maguire. The Quan, the love. Ken Qua.

Ken Qua. Gin. Ario. Ken Quagenario.

Yeah, it's Japanese. Yeah, it sounds Japanese. Ken Quagenario. That's what I said.

It just means something that's 50 years old. Right. Like a, yeah, anyway. Yeah, somebody that's 50 years old would be a really big man to get all the way around the cigar.

So, because the market, because they can't compete in the real market, or because they don't like to, because it's expensive to compete, you know, you can't just sell an average cigar for above average price and take market share from a company that's, you know, doing guerrilla fucking sniping like we are, right? You know, they're not going to spend eight days, eight hours a day on social media responding to, you know, every slapdick on in the universe. Yeah, they're, I mean, they're not gonna, they're not going to do that. Right.

They got, they got lives. I, I live for this shit. This is what I do. Right.

Right. And you just can't compete with that. So what do you do? You got to figure out how to compete in other ways.

Right. So if you buy up all the tobacco that that person needs. Yeah, you're cutting the supply lines. Yeah, and they can't make cigars.

And believe me, there are people who come at us like that. Of course, that's been going on for years. But here's the thing. I got enough margin.

I could, at the end of the day, I could pay enough more for the tobacco that you're willing to try to buy from me? Right. So, you know, let's say Mike's selling tobacco. Mike Palmer, Esquire over here, wants to cut me out of the system.

Yeah, he says he doesn't work for you. He goes to Mike, buys all the tobacco. So I go to Mike and say, hey, I need this. And they say, well, I sold it all.

It's like, okay. That's cool. I got two years worth. I got a year worth.

Right. I'm not playing the short game here. Right. The next time you have it.

I'll pay more. I'll pay more. Right. Don't even bother with the other guy.

Yeah. Ask him what he'll pay. Right. Call me.

Right. I'll pay more. I'll pay more. Because I don't give a fuck.

Right. An extra 10, 15% for filler. Right. Whether I pay $9 or $10 and you're paying.

And here's the thing. It's like the character of these people. They can't. Their body won't even let them pay more.

They're built to negotiate down. Right. So they want more. Right, right.

I want to buy the tobacco so Skip can't make cigars. Right. But something in my DNA will not let me pay a dollar more than I'm supposed to pay. Right.

In fact, I want to get 50 cents less because I'm buying it all. I'm buying all of it. Right. Give me a deal.

No. Skip's still going to pay a dollar more. Right. And you have the systems in play where...

And I'm still going to make more money. Right. I'm still making more money than you. I'm not saying more like, you know...

Right. J. Fernandez is killing it. He's not hurting for money.

I'm going to make enough. I don't need it anyway. There's no Learjet. You're doing alright.

I'm already paying my people more. I'm already doing more for them than most people. And this isn't the Patreon. And you haven't chimed in.

No, we're not getting into details, but I'm just saying. You can ask anybody that will tell you the truth. Who knows? I'm already living down there.

You won't live there. I'm already buying the best tobacco possible. I'm already not making cigars when I can't find that tobacco. I will not substitute tobacco.

No, you don't. I can tell you that, I can attest to that for 10 years as a customer. Yeah, I'm already, I'm already, I don't, I don't, charge me 30% more. Now, now, I don't even have to pay another person in the factory.

Right. I could lose money in the factory. Right. Come at me, bro.

Let's go, motherfucker. I do not give a fuck. Let's go. I don't, I'm not here.

I'm agile. I'm not here. My retirement is taken care of. Right.

I mean, you know my lifestyle. I don't need 20 years of retirement, number one, my kids are already taken care of, you know, I don't, I mean, I live in fucking Nicaragua, I buy nice stuff, but the stuff I buy, I don't spend money on, I buy a $20,000 watch, I could sell it for $18,000 to $25,000, I don't spend money, I live on like $2,000 a month, I mean, I do buy, I do take $20,000 Disney, $25,000 Disney Vegas, but hey, you know what, it's all about making those memories. yeah exactly you know but my point my point is from a business perspective right we're doing just fine right and going back to where we were on the bodegas oh yeah but i have to buy i have to buy i'm not gonna lose train of thought yeah that's never gonna happen i don't remember what the original question i have an index card i'm going back yeah you gotta listen to the skip interviews gotta be all about it so it's all very interesting so i can't buy tobacco anymore that's 100 ready Right. So I have to do my own pre-industry.

Right. And I don't know the first fucking thing about pre-industry. Right. This is a new realm.

Just like 10 years ago, I didn't know the first fucking thing about making cigars. Right. It doesn't intimidate you. No, I learn fast.

Right. I learn fast. I'm a nuclear engineer. Right.

I have an MBA from basically one of the best schools in the country. Right. And I've been working in Nestle for 10 years, you know. I can figure it out.

Yeah. You know the game. I never worked at NASA. Right.

But it's not rocket science. And I said that just for Tyler Jeffrey, by the way. But my point is that I know the people who do know, right? And I'm not going to fuck it up.

Primarily, Luciano has been doing this for a long time. Pachardo's been doing this for a long time. So, you surround yourself with champions. You know what you know what you know and you know what you don't know.

Right, you know your scope, and then you get the right people around you. So there's things that I do that I think I do differently or better or whatever than Luciano, I mean, I've built a brand, I've been selling Coralines, I distribute my own cigar, there's a lot of things I do that he's learning from, and there's a lot that he does that I'm learning from. Right, it's a good give and a take. Yeah, so, I mean, right now, we're just doing it kind of my stuff and his stuff mixed together, sharing the expenses and then doing it.

Longer term, we may be doing it as a separate company because another funny thing about the 382 is I'm only allowed to bring in or buy so much material a year. Oh, it's capped. So, the way the government controls things is everything I export, I pay taxes on the export. They don't wait for you to file a tax return and tell them what you owe them.

Right, you're right. They collect it off the top. Right. So instead of charging you 30% of your 10% of profits, they charge you 3% of 100% of your revenue, straight off the top.

Okay. So, but they let us buy certain things without paying VAT tax or EVA, you know, the value-added tax. So like if you bring a television set to Nicaragua, they're charging you 37%. If I bring in cigar labels, and I'm not in the CAFTA regime, they're going to charge me 15%.

They tax the shit out of everything. Being in the 382, which is the Central America Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA DR is actually what it is, I can buy anything into my company under my 382 that I plan to export and not have to pay taxes on it. So I'm not a free zone. I'm not a Zona Franca.

If you're Zona Franca like Placencia and AJ and my father and these big companies, you can bring tractors and cars. You can bring anything and not pay tax on it because as long as it's meant to generate an export in jobs, but they have a lot of administrative paperwork that they have to do and I've always avoided doing that and once you decide to go 382 instead of FreeZone you can't change, you can't just go okay I've been 382 for 10 years so now I'm going to go FreeZone, I can't do that, in fact anyone who owns any part of a company that's a 382 cannot They can't even participate in a free zone until a certain window of time passes. No shit. Because they want the arms linked.

They don't want people buying shit into a free zone and then dealing behind their back or whatever. 2 million cigars. I need this many kilograms of wrapper. I need this many kilograms of filler.

I need this many labels. I need this many Bovedas. I need this many stickers. I need this many wooden boxes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And every time I buy something I have to report it or request permission hey I told you I needed 24,000 wooden boxes this year I'm about to go buy 700 and then the next time I buy 900 and they subtract that from my balance if I get to the bottom of that balance they say you can't buy anymore you have to start paying taxes no shit. So if I've already consumed my allocation of raw material, wrapper and filler, deveined, you know, tobacco and rama or deveined tobacco, they're going to say, okay, bring all you want, but you got to pay 15% tax, which is, I'll pay it if I have to, but I don't want to, you can request special permission to increase your allocations, and it's a huge, huge paperwork drill, which I've done. So, but what's happened over the years, when you're growing, what happens is, every year they go, okay, you need how much more? You need how much more?

You need how much more? You need how much more? And you just kind of pad that number, because what they think is, if you buy it this year, it goes into a cigar and it gets exported this year. And they think January to January.

But what really happens is, I buy Broadleaf three years ago, I need to buy everything that's available. So I got to buy four years worth, three years worth. That's going into cigars over the next three years. But the way they look at it is, if you're buying more than So if you're selling what you're consuming, you're selling it out of the back to people who aren't into 382, without paying the taxes.

So the way they control you from, from creating a black market of untaxed raw materials is they limit how much you can buy untaxed. Gotcha. So it's, it's kind of complicated, but the net net of that is to say, if we're going to start buying big chunks of tobacco now, which I'm free to do now that I don't have, have, you know, I have, we own it 100%. If I go out and buy tobacco, I don't have to do this shell game all the time, so we may form a free zone so that we together can buy tobacco without having to worry about that.

A different company. But he also needs that because he grows his own tobacco and he brings in tobacco from Ecuador, and right now he's bringing that into Pacharta, which is a 382, so he's dealing with all that administrative stuff. Right. And I probably shouldn't even be putting all his stuff out there because it's really his story to tell.

But from my perspective, we have these bodegas so that we can work our own tobacco because we need to. And I buy a lot of tobacco from Luciano as well. I buy Puello Nuevo from him. I buy Jalapa from him now.

It's the highest quality, most dependable source for that for me. Right. He's definitely on the uptick, man. That Maria Lucia is really good.

Yeah, it is really good. It is really good. That's probably the best thing he's made so far, in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, he's made some good things.

Yeah, and I'm not shitting on anything else, you know. When I was in Europe with him, and you know, like on the flip side of that, right, you know, like I've had relationships in Europe for a while, and, you know, things like track and trace or a new regulation thing. If you want to sell into Europe, you have to document where every leaf of tobacco came from. Holy shit.

everything it's called track and trace it's a nightmare so if you just google track and trace tpd or whatever for europe it's it's a lot so a lot of these companies already do this like nikaprosa and noxa people who's hoy to nicaragua they started doing track and trace a long time ago because they sell huge amounts into europe right but little companies they don't They don't do that generally. Fortunately, Schuster does it for us, so we're helping with that, we're helping with, you know, you know, that's the thing about the cigar business is, you know, I needed help when I started. I still need help today. Sometimes you never know what you're going to need.

Yeah, there's so much, there's so many layers to it. Yeah, so you try to help other good people when you can. I mean, Luciano was talking about that on a podcast last night, but... he's a lot more willing to help certain people than I am, which is his deal.

But me, like, you know, show me who you are one time. Right. I'm going to tell you, I see it. Right.

This isn't how I do business. This isn't who I am. Right. I don't need to do business with you.

Right. You know. I'm moving on. I'll give you one more shot.

But you should know that I know, that you now know. You've been warned. Part of the reason why we are a certain size is because I don't, I don't brook bullshit. I don't, I don't have any time to fuck with people who, who, who, who are a drag on me in that way.

Right. And so, you know, Luciano is a little different, more different, he'll, you know, he's a different character. A little more opportunistic. He's like the whole business is that way.

You just can't tell everybody to fuck off. I'm like, well, actually you can. You can actually tell every single fucking person to fuck, pretty much, because there's enough good people out there that you can work with. Yeah, of course.

That you don't have to work with these other people. Right. Or there's people that are like that with others who won't be that way with you. Right.

If long as you're clear up front that you're not going to put up with it. Right. So. Figuring it all out.

One step at a time. So all that is to say. Yes, I have two bodegas. Now we have three bodegas.

Three bodegas. Yeah. So that's the story of the bodegas. Careful with the next question, Michael.

Yeah, we got more to talk about, you know, we got some family shit to talk about, the little vacation, your experience, I'm kind of curious to see what you want to share about that, so we can cover that. There's, I mean, I know that there's some quiet rumblings about some other things that you're working on, maybe you want to talk about those things, it's up to you. Sure. But we'll see that on the next...

Talk about Weasel Fest, everybody's asking about Weasel Fest. Yeah, when's the fucking date, you know, and all that stuff. If it's happening, when it's happening. Yeah.

I'll talk about that an hour or two. All right, let's go. All right, we'll be right back. All right, bye.

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Hi, I'm doing, I'm Husto-E-Raw. Yeah, we just don't have to do a single, uh, single podcast ever again. Perfect. I'm good, Mike and Mike.

How are you guys doing? The Hojo, the... Hojo! It's the Hojo!

He didn't even let him fuck it up all the way. I couldn't get past Hojo! I don't even have to try it. Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike Squared, Squared, Squared, Squared.

Show Notes

Part 1......Back by popular demand Mr Skip Martin of RoMa Craft.  Some big behind the scenes info!!