Cigar Hustlers Podcast Episode 269 Roma Craft Part 2

Episode Summary

Part two of the Cigar Hustlers Podcast sit-down with RoMa Craft Tobac's Skip Martin and Michael Rosales goes deep inside the business side of running a Nicaraguan cigar factory. Skip opens with supply updates: there's a healthy amount of CroMagnon and Aquitaine in the pipeline — roughly 150,000–200,000 CroMagnon left, likely exhausted by late March or early April — while sizes like the Aquitaine have already sold out. With RoMa Craft's own pre-industry operation now running, lighter Connecticut Broadleaf that didn't make the CroMagnon cut has gone back into pilón for another year of aging, which should yield more usable wrapper down the road.

The heart of the episode is Skip's candid account of the past year at the factory following Esteban Disla's departure. He walks through tightening quality standards (a stricter segundo rate, new sorting leadership), adding roughly 25 employees, hiring a new chief of raw material with Scandinavian Tobacco Group and Nicaragua-based experience, promoting a longtime buncher into production supervision, and taking direct control of the raw-material side of the business he had previously left alone. He's blunt about what went wrong while he spent nine months in the States during COVID — money going out faster than cigars going out, missing inventory accountability, and unhappy employees squeezed by Nicaragua's córdoba devaluation and payroll withholding thresholds. RoMa Craft raised salaries, absorbed roughly 45–50 cents per cigar in added cost, and Skip estimates he and Mike invested around $2 million to get the operation right for the next 5–10 years.

Skip also reacts to RoMa Craft being named Halfwheel's Factory of the Year and to an anonymous commenter who dismissed it, arguing the award belongs to the team on the floor, and pushing back on the notion that a good cigar can't be made under $14. There's a warm digression about James and Angela Brown of Black Label Trading Co./Oveja Negra, respect among people who actually live and work in Estelí, and the family tradeoffs of relocating to San Juan del Sur. The Ernesto Padilla-free, Ernie Carrillo–inspired trip to the Dominican Republic and the Quintagenario project with Skip's peers are credited with rekindling his enthusiasm for the craft.

The back half covers news and industry commentary: Aganorsa Leaf's Supreme Leaf Toro (the line's first round vitola, $13.99, 2,750 boxes), price increases from Crux, Caldwell, Lost & Found and Powstanie, JRE's Aladino Candela Robusto, Alec Bradley's returning Filthy Hooligan and Shamrock, plus a Candela tangent that lands on the Camacho Diploma Monarch. The guys close on retailer inventory hangovers post-COVID, the migration of hardcore smokers to online buying, the rising share of cigar price that has nothing to do with tobacco quality, and TPE's quiet run-up.

In This Episode

1. 01
   CroMagnon & Aquitaine supply update
   Skip breaks down how much CroMagnon inventory is left, when it runs out, and how lighter Connecticut Broadleaf went back into pilón for future wrapper.
2. 02
   Rebuilding the factory after Esteban's departure
   Stricter segundo standards, 25 new hires, a new raw-material chief, and a promoted longtime buncher now running production.
3. 03
   Owning the raw material side
   Why Skip took over tobacco buying, inventory and bodega management after years of leaving it to a partner.
4. 04
   Nicaraguan wages, córdoba devaluation and payroll taxes
   How exchange-rate slide and income-tax withholding quietly cut employee take-home pay, and why RoMa Craft raised salaries across the board.
5. 05
   Halfwheel Factory of the Year and the critics
   Skip's reaction to the award, giving credit to the team, and his rebuttal to the claim you can't make a good cigar under $14.
6. 06
   Life in Estelí vs. San Juan del Sur
   Respect for James and Angela Brown of Black Label Trading Co., the sacrifices of living in Nicaragua, and buying a house on the coast.
7. 07
   Industry news roundup
   Aganorsa Leaf Supreme Leaf Toro, Aladino Candela, Alec Bradley Filthy Hooligan and Shamrock, and a wave of 2023 price increases.
8. 08
   Retail inventory, online buying and price inflation
   Why shops are sitting on overbought stock, where the pre-COVID regulars went, and how much of a cigar's price has nothing to do with the tobacco.

Brands & Cigars Discussed

Linked items are in our shop. Mentions without a link aren’t currently stocked or couldn’t be matched with confidence.

Transcript

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Right. But once that's gone, it's going to be gone for a year or two at least. No, we've exhausted a lot of, like the Averis, like I think the Averis is sold out, I think reach of the piece is done. So, I mean, we have it, it's coming in, but it's already accounted for.

Right, right, right. And, but there is a decent amount of, there's probably another 150,000 to 200,000 Cro-Magnin. Yeah, I think based on, based on the numbers, I think we'll probably be done with, with Cro-Magnin probably at the end of March, first part of April. Yeah, and now that we have our own pre-industry, we were taking a lot of the light-colored Connecticut Broadleaf, the stuff that was on, wasn't really Cro-Magnin, we put it back into a Pallone.

So now it's got like a year more in Pallone, and it's been real low, and we're going to get a lot of wrapper out of that too. I don't know, Arlen's sister kind of took over as our sorting, our Rasaga, the person who sorts the cigars for packaging. And she's just like super hardcore. Yeah.

So our Segundo rate went up a lot. And instead, you know, instead of saying, hey, no, you know, don't, don't be so picky. Right. I went back to the rapper ladies and said, look, you know, this is the standard.

You know, I don't know what it was before. You know, I have never been that concerned with the way the rapper looks, but I get it. I get why, you know, because especially now it's like, well, Esteban left, so the quality is going to go down or whatever. So I'm like, let's go the other direction.

The quality is going to go up. So let's just get better and let's use our new pre-industry to make our tobacco even better. Right. So, I mean, and plus we've, we've cut off a lot of retailers.

So we've, we've really like this year, um, like I was having personnel issues with some people, you know, fake doctor's notes and, you know, Monday morning flu and, you know, just problems that we didn't, like Keanu, I don't, I don't know if we had these problems, I didn't know if we had these problems before, and Esteban just never told me, but it's certainly not something that I don't know if we had these problems before, and Esteban just never told me. But it's certainly not something that I'm cool with, or Arlen, who's harder than me. So we just, like in December, we said, you know what, let's just go down to 10 pairs, and let's just, because we were cutting back on retailers, and it's like, we're going to make the same amount of money either way. right i don't it's but let's just let's just simplify it make it even better and um you know dial it in right yeah so that's what we've been focused on so those lines are coming out and then um yeah i've just been trying to really tighten up a lot because you know we've always kind of been in charge i mean and i this is new people didn't really understand what my role was at the Right.

So, you know, we own half the factory. Right. And then Esteban owned half the factory, and then now Mike and I own the second half of the factory, right? So, essentially, 100% of the factory is funded by Mike and I either way, always.

Right. No matter how you slice it. Well, and post on, you know. But before the...

Other than, you know, the piece that Mike owns. Okay, yeah, yeah. But before the way it worked was, I would kind of get involved in making sure the tobacco's I was really involved in the blending and this is the product we're going to make because we didn't make a lot of new products. Then it was, okay, now you're responsible for going finding this tobacco and keeping it the same.

Right. And then anytime any kind of issue came up like, hey, Condega changed this year, we would have a little powwow about it, but I wasn't really that involved in the raw material side. Right. In fact, we as a company weren't involved that much in the raw material side.

We would go select tobacco in the Dominican, and then a year and a half later, after Gus Cura got done with it, we would take the best of it. And we never had to really worry about it, because it was just always there. And it was small amounts, so we always had large amounts of inventory for the cigars we made. We always kept $800, a million dollars worth of inventory, minimum.

And especially filler, we never really worried about, because if we needed 10 packs of filler or 50 packs of filler, we would just go get it a little bit at a time. We'll get it a little bit at a time from Raul and from Noxa, and it just doesn't work like that anymore. So we would, I was really mainly kind of focused on from the time we started deveining and drying it, to how we managed it in the bodega, to how we got it to the rollers and bunchers, to how the cigars were made, how they were aged, how they were packaged, and then how they were shipped and delivered. Right.

And that was really where we focused. In fact, you know, Arlen managed most of that inventory process and it's all, for years we've never had any issues at all because it's just, I mean like, hey, we're missing three cigars from this, we're missing a bundle of Saguna. I mean, we, one little thing can change and we, you immediately notice it because of the tightness of the project. Right.

The process. But on the raw material side, it wasn't like that. Total opposite. Right.

From the beginning, it was like, it was never like that. It was never like that. Right. And, And it was such a, it was such a, I mean, for years I would say to Mike, hey, you know, he's not, you know, we're not managing the yields correctly.

He's like, dude, you know, the costs are the cost, you know. Right. Wait till it goes up on the window in the kitchen. Right.

And then, you know, whatever, as long as it's good. Keep going. Don't, don't rock the boat. Yeah.

You know, apply your insanity to that side. Right. So anyway, now my insanity has been applied to that side. And we've added 25 employees, so we used to have like X number of employees for every Roller & Buncher, now we have like two X employees for Roller & Buncher, we've added a lot of administrative people for tighter bookkeeping, tighter data, management, we added the warehouses, and all the staff over there, I think now we have about 15 or 20 people over there.

We added a new chief of raw material who actually worked with Esteban for years and years. Actually a lot of the people that we have now are people that came up with them. Yeah, I mean, it's still a small industry, bro. You know what I mean?

It's not... Yeah, so our new raw material guy, you know, is... The great thing about him is not only is he a servant leader, he's really smart and he's a good worker, good work ethic, But he also has always worked with these same kinds of tobaccos, and he's from the same school, right? So he was at Scandinavian Latin Cigar for 15 years, and then he was at Knox, so now he's with us.

The lady running our Escoher, the sorting and classification over in the bodegas, she was actually with us in our first year when we were behind Esteban's house, Lilium. So she's, she's killing it. She's got like, she brought like eight or 10 really good ladies with her. And then, you know, from the factory perspective, you know, the guy that we kind of had as, as our, as our production manager did, wasn't really getting the job done.

So we promoted a, one of, an employee that's been with us for 10 years and he's one of our best bunchers. He's been with us a long time, and he had back surgery and really couldn't sit all day anymore, so I was like, well, we'll make you, you know, this supervisor, and then it turns out he's actually a really, really good leader of the production, so he's been doing a great job. Phil, have you switched up the cameras at all? Yeah.

Okay, 'cause I see him kind of hanging out on his fucking phone. Oh, no, he was engrossed in the show earlier. So all the pieces are really falling in place. Which is awesome.

Now he's just clicking them around. It's just been a lot of work. It's been a lot of work. Yeah.

I mean, you know, I think that, I mean, knowing you guys for over a decade at this point, which is kind of scary for me to say, I would say probably six months ago, maybe a little bit longer, maybe eight months ago, I could see that there was a lot on your plate. And it was definitely very stressful for you. Like you were just, it was like, it was like you were handed this fucking gigantic Christmas tree fucking lights, knots, and someone said, here you go, sort this shit out, right? So you gotta slowly break it all down and you could tell that you were working it out, you know, and coming and seeing you this time around, obviously the knots aren't completely kinked out, but things are definitely flowing in the better, in the right direction.

Well, you know, I would say November a year ago is kind of, so kind of whenever the, the project with Ernie Carrillo had, had really kind of, uh, kind of started taking shape. Right. So we go to the Dominican and, you know, we start looking at the process that they're doing. We start looking at the way the operation, how organized it is.

And not that we don't do that in other factories because you do, but, um, It's different. It's different. Right. Um, you know, you're talking about a guy who's got the organization, And just in the places where they keep all of the vistas and the labels and whatever, like packaging materials, they've got a process for everything that goes in and out, and how it goes into the production table, so all the finished cigars that are going to get, you know, labeled up and whatever, you start kind of looking at these things, and I think even before that, just going in and looking at all of, you know, Skip kind of downplays like, hey, this project for this Quintagenario, it's like, hey, let's go look at tobacco that neither one of us really use, right?

And so there was this kind of this, like he rekindled this flame, right? Right. Because I think for the last eight or nine years, like we just keep growing, growing, growing, and everything's kind of on cruise control and it's just keeping on tracks. And then, you know, it's like, hey, let's go look at this other factory and how they do it.

Let's go look at tobacco that we're not using or they're not using. And then it's like, you know, this kidnest candy shop, right? Right. And so it becomes fun again.

So then, but then you come back home, and then you realize there's some disorganization in your own house, and with that disorganization, it's like, you know, you just kind of turn a blind eye to it, it's like your kid that just kind of keeps his room a little dirty, you know, it's like, you know, but he's got good grades, he's doing all the right things, but, you know, he's a little messy, and so... Still making honor roll. Yeah, so it's like, how hard do you ride him, right? " And so we go down there and, you know, and he's kind of telling me some of these things that are kind of going on, but it's not, it's different until you like really see it.

Right. And it really, just for context, it really went off the tracks when I was in the States for nine months for COVID and it was- Which makes sense. It was one of these deals where- Not by a beach though. Just for clarification?

No. Okay. It was one of these deals where I kind of always kept things on the rails. Even though it was kind of a crazy train, it was like, okay, I'm not going to go to the kitchen and make sure all the stuff's labeled properly.

Those kind of details, they don't work like that. I'll just drive them crazy, so I'm going to stay out of the kitchen. Yeah, if it's being produced, if you know that it's happening and it's working, you're not going to fuck with it. Right.

And all the things we're talking about have nothing to do with product quality. It has nothing to do with quality of raw material. It's all about, here's what I've learned in business. It's about owning those gaps, right?

Those little gaps of things that aren't perfect, right? And when you're away for nine months. - Right, really where it showed up, really where it showed up was, it showed up with how employee satisfaction, how they were reacting to things that were happening. And it also showed up in the money.

- Right. So, we've always been super, super efficient, and the way it works is the factory needs money, Mike and I send money, and then when there's an invoice, it comes off of that deposit, and then, so what was happening was, is that our deposit kept getting bigger and bigger, and so what that means is you're consuming money faster than you're selling cigars, and so when you start looking down into the numbers, and you start saying, "Okay, I need this data. I need this information from this inventory. I need to know what happened to this binder.

I need to know what happened to this seven bales of Tibet. Where's your inventory? There's no answer. Yeah, there's a lot of open questions.

Yeah, so if the money had gone down in the invoice is paid, but yet you can account for here's seven bales of XYZ, then it checks, so you don't even think about it. So like another thing, I never really paid much attention to how much we paid people, like salary wise, right? Um, I understood the kind of overall costs that were being told to me, right? Like that I, that we were paying for the total, I'm signing the checks, right?

But, but then, um, but then when you start looking at salaries, you're like, is that right? And then you, and then you, then you go to other factors and you say, hey, can you do me a favor? He said, "Can you tell me how much you guys are paying the people who do this? " Right.

Oh, I work for you a lot more. " Why are there three Ferraris out front in Inca Suenio? But then you start talking to the people, right, and you start talking to the people and you go, "Yeah, it isn't that we're making less than other places, that's why we haven't left, But we're not happy because it's not enough. And I'm like, well, what do you mean it's not enough?

It's like, you know, even looking at the numbers, you know, it's like, so then you start looking, okay, let me just take the data and let me compare it to consumer price indexes and exchange rate to dollar. And you start realizing, for example, without getting into a long, long thing about it, but for example, there's a big thing that changed. 0%, like a one and a half or whatever percent Medicare, and then your employer pays a portion, right, and then they take federal withholding, and at the end of the year you file your taxes and people who aren't paid much almost get almost all their taxes back, right, right? Well, there is no filing your taxes process in Nicaragua, but most employees don't pay federal income tax withholding.

Unless you're a highly compensated employee, you don't have to pay taxes in payroll. So like for example, the Social Security portion, that was what all the trouble was in 2018. 5% and people lost their shit. And also because they wanted to take benefits away, et cetera, et cetera, because the world, I mean, the IMF told them, we're not giving you any more support if you don't fix your pension program.

So, there's always been in Nicaragua, if you make over, let's, I don't know what the exact number is, I think it's like 120,000 cordobus a year, if you make more than 12,000 cordobus a month or something like that, then that's when you're, you've reached that level, now they're going to start taking taxes. Right. So what was happening was the more highly compensated people in the factory had already started paying withholding, like 15% of their check. So they were making less money.

Well, effectively, those people have always made less money, but they were making even less because they were paying taxes. Right. So what essentially has happened is, if you go back seven, eight, nine years, the exchange rate was like 17, 18 Cordoba for a dollar. Now the exchange rate is like 36 Cordoba for a dollar.

Oh shit. So let's say you used to make 70. It's almost double. Right.

So it's half against the dollar. So used to, let's say you made X 70 Cordoba, 75 Cordoba to make 100 cigars, now you're making 120 Cordoba per 100 cigars, but you're really making less. Right. Because you're not making, even if you were making 150 per se, you know, then you would be making about the same.

So the equivalent of 75, yeah. But if you add on top of that, now because instead of making $2,200, $2,400 a quarter by a week, now you're making $4,000 a quarter by a week, now you're over this threshold for the tax, now you're making 15% less. Right. So I started looking at all this data and it's like, well, nobody has.

It's like, but everybody's bitching about people leaving the United States, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and it's like, well, you know, it's expensive. It's like, yeah, but it's more expensive to not take care of people. And our people weren't leaving. They were just grumbling, just unhappy.

Yeah, and I didn't really even know that. So they're like, well, other factories don't make their employees pay these taxes. I'm like, yeah, they do. They just give you money off their table or a gift card or whatever they're doing, it's not legal.

You know, it's your government says I have to pay the tax, I'm going to pay the tax, but what we're going to do is we're going to raise everybody's salary and we're going to – so anyway, things like that. Right. The things like that is like where it's like, okay. Those are the gaps.

Yeah, I mean, we probably were still paying 5%, 10% more than most factories were, but we went up a lot. So all of that is to say that Mike and I have invested a lot of money, a lot in this year, getting things right. So the goal of the whole time has been the piece that you see, the cigars and all that, how do we not fuck that up? Right.

But then at the same time, fix everything else. Right. So that the fundamental pieces of the business are stronger and better. - Yeah.

- And essentially what happened was, is that we had to get stricter on what was a Segundo, we had to overpay for tobacco, to get the right tobacco, and, you know, it basically, our costs went up per cigar, our costs probably went up 45 or 50 cents a cigar. - Yeah, I mean, we felt it even in the stuff that you make in Postana and, you know, those other things. It was inevitable, you know? Yeah, I'm not talking about just the price increases.

I'm talking about our costs have gone up. Well, it all kind of parlays. And now, finally, we are getting it to a point where now that everything's right, now we can start cutting in the deficiencies again. So it's like we became really inefficient to keep it good.

It's like, just keep throwing money at it so we don't fuck up anything. And then now it's like, okay, now that we kind of get a grip on it, now we can go back. Well, now that you're focusing on that side as well, because you never were before. Yeah.

Because you had a partner for it. We probably invested $2 million this year, keeping the train on the tracks and getting stuff ready for the next 5 or 10 years. Yeah, but I think that when you look at it, it's everything, right? It's like the growing pains of any type of major investment to go to the next level, like the inefficiencies of that.

you know but then once but you realize like once you make these sacrifices and you kind of do these things like you can see like the light in the tunnel is so much better right like it's yeah of course so you know and you know but but you know we kind of all make fun and jokes of this it's like all the work that we do on the back end like you know in in the consumers themselves never have no fucking they have no idea no fucking idea which you know and at the end of the day that's that's you go to a wedding and you don't realize there's anything that goes wrong right like The bride and groom have an excellent time because, you know, the Nazi lady is making sure that everything is on time. Right, right, make sure everything happens. So, like, we make fun of that, but at the same time, like, these long conversations and, you know, it's stressful, but at the same time, when you stress, that's how you grow from that, right? You stress.

Right? It's called you stress. It's a good stress. So, it's like, you know, you want bigger muscles, you gotta stress the muscles.

You gotta stress the muscles. I like that you pointed to me. Thank you. Thank you, Mike.

That's a way you can understand. I had to dumb it down a little bit. You had to dumb it down a little bit for the muscle guy. But again, the consumers have no idea about the challenges that are going on with any company.

But at the end of the day, you hope that if they get a $10 cigar, a $12 cigar, and they enjoy it, that's the reward. And I'll say another way of saying what Mike just said, but in a less politically correct way. Are you saying that you're not politically correct when you speak? Well, okay, so, this, this, this fucking dumbass that made the comment on the Half-Wheel thing.

So, this is the way the Half-Wheel thing broke out. Anonymous? Anonymously anonymous? This is how the Half-Wheel thing broke out.

" And I'm like, "Okay, for what? " Which is awesome. " Gave you the nod, yeah. Well, we've been nominated as like the honorable mention, or...

Well, I thought you got the award before. I'm pretty sure you did in the past. I thought it was 2017. We got brand of the year or company of the year.

You got factory of the year. You got factory of the year before. Yeah. Which isn't a surprise to me.

I mean, Coop has given us factory of the year, you know, whatever. But anyway, any factory, there's a lot of factories that could be the factory of the year, you know, everywhere. Right. Right.

So it isn't so much that, hey, oh, we finally got recognized or this is our year. It was, this has been a really tough year. Right. um i my very first thought immediately was hey get the get to get the team together and let them know that they won this award it wasn't oh man me and mike are kicking ass right high fives it was literally my first thought was tell the people that put in the work every fucking day my first thought was awesome that they are getting recognized yeah because this has been a tough And, you know, just having people on the outside say, so we got everybody together and we said, look, I said, look, let me explain this to you how this works.

This is a publication. Some people think it's just as relevant as a cigar aficionado. I would say more. That's the one that they all know about.

I'd say it's more relevant, yeah. I said, but to me, it's relevant. I look at it, you know, every day or two. Right.

And I said, what they're saying is that of all the factories in the world that they look at cigars, And so, we're talking about the cigars. It isn't just that our cigars are good. They're recognizing that consistency and all these things that we talk about, they are, you know, I didn't promote us for this. I didn't ask them to recognize us.

Just randomly, they said, this is the best factory for the whole year. Yeah. Right? And what they're saying is, is that as a group, it's like we were saying about football.

It's like, Philadelphia may have been the best team this year, but Kansas City, right? But Kansas City has the best program. It's like Alabama may not have the best team every year, but Alabama has the best college football program, right? And so what they're saying is that the factory has the best program, that we're doing things the right way, we have done it this way for years, we're putting good products out there, they're consistent, they're good value, et cetera, and they're recognizing them.

Right. And so then to have this fucking, you know, asshole come on there, which it was somebody in the business, I don't know who it was, because they knew, they know, they know a lot of stuff that's going on. Yeah. So, so they say, well, you know, what a joke.

It's unimpressive. I was like, look, you know, whatever. First of all, you're making this about me. Right.

And it's not about you. And never since, since, since I heard about this three hours ago, was this ever about me. It was a, it's always my first two minutes after we found out, I thought there's a photo on Instagram telling the team about the award that they won. Right.

And that's not false humility. That's just how we looked at it. And so you have these kinds of things and then you have, you see, and we understand why if you buy a cigar from a factory and you only go down three or four times a year just to sit down in a room and be the big shot for the week. Yeah.

And someone else is doing all this hard stuff that we've had to do, right? Investing millions of dollars in raw material, making sure you don't get bugs, making sure you don't have mold, make sure you don't overhumidify, under-ferment, making sure that your people are taken care of in the middle of a mass exodus to the border, making sure the people who need to go can go. Right. And that's another piece.

There's people who've been with you for years, it's their time, they've been making cigars for 20 years, this is their shot, they gotta go. And so how do you help them do that? Not sit back and bitch at them, right? There's all those pieces.

And then, so then that same person can turn around and sell cigars for $4 or $5 more, $3 more, and then they say, well, you can't make a good cigar for less than $14. Right. Because, you know, anybody that's selling cigars for $9 is making shitty cigars. Like, no, No matter what they tell you, they're not using good material, blah, blah, blah, it's like, hold the fuck up.

We actually pay more for labor. We pay more for material. We pay more for packaging materials. We pay more for all that stuff.

We make, our factory, for all intents and purposes, is a nonprofit. We've covered this last time. We make almost no, we sink money into the factory, because where we make our money is on the US side, because we only have three employees, because we don't have salespeople, We don't do marketing. We're very, very efficient on this side.

So we do well as a company. 20 points of margin, 25 of income, 25 points. That's as good as any company out there. Guaranteed.

It's better than STG. I know. You drop the EBITDA in front of fuck you. It's better.

Always the EBITDA. It's better than all of those. It's better than Davidoff. The best EBITDA in the industry.

It actually is the best EBITDA in the industry. I'm sure. That's why I said it. I mean, Padrón's probably better.

Padrón's probably better. Yeah, that's true. Mike doesn't like us, though. No, but I'm saying my point is, we're doing as good as anybody.

But if we're comparing, if we're having a conversation and Padrón's one of the only ones that we could mention, I mean, shit. Yeah, that's not bad. That's pretty fucking good, you know? I don't know, that NFT drop, that's pretty high.

I mean, that's gotta change. Oh, that was dope. Yeah. I mean, that's gotta change your numbers, you know, a nice little cash investment.

Yeah. " I know. I appreciate it. I know what it takes.

I know what you do every day. I mean, you know, me and Arlen getting in a car in San Juan at 3 in the morning or multiple times. Arlen gets in the car at 3 or 4 in the morning, gets to Esteli at 8 in the morning, works for 4 or 5 hours, and gets back to get Fiorella dinner. And it's a 5 hour trip both ways.

But she's got to go up and sign checks or she's got to go up and fix an issue or she's got to, you know, or I do that. Or we go sleep in a shitty bed in Los Arcos for a month while we're dealing with every small bullshit thing, it's like, I'm not I'm not saying I'm a master blender, I'm not saying, but I'm a cigar maker, and that means something, we selected the tobacco, we paid for it with our own money, we touch it, we deal with today our production manager's grandfather died, we deal with that directly. We're shutting down the factory this afternoon. Why?

Because his grandfather's funeral is more important than half a day of production. So we're going to shut down the whole factory. Take care of your people. Exactly.

We do that every day. At the end of the day, are you a good fucking person? We try. You know what I mean?

We try. Yeah. Yeah. And so the thing is, is when I don't expect to be patted on the back for that, but I also don't expect to be chastised either.

Yeah. Whatever the fuck I was characterized as. Oh. It's like, dude, you have no idea.

I worked three, four, five in the morning. I worked 20 hours a day, seven days a week. Yeah. In one form or another.

Arlen starts getting phone calls and texts at seven in the morning. It doesn't stop until seven o'clock at night. Right. So...

And you reap the fruits of that labor, of all that hard work. We're doing good. Yeah. We're doing good.

And I don't need... And that's another thing for fucking people to hate. It's like, oh, you can't, you know... Yeah, well, it must be nice to have all the watches.

It fucking is. Sure fucking is. Again, if we figured out a way to come up with a cigar that retails in the market anywhere between $8 to $12, right, the consumer wins, right? And if we figured out a way to make money on that and put out a fucking great product that's rated as well as they are, right, then why are people bitching?

You know what I mean? Like, it's win-win. Well, it's part of its jealousy and part of its just, you know, hate. You know what, though?

Listen, you can, what's the saying? You can gauge how successful you are by the fucking amount of haters that you have and shit like that. I mean, that's really a thing. It is.

And I really don't need, Mike can tell you, I don't need the pats on the back. " He's not that kind of guy. He doesn't need attaboy. I don't need external, but I do, it's like, just rationally, it's like, just look at the real, the problem is the people saying this don't even really understand.

You have no fucking idea what's going on, not the closest concept. " You know what I mean? That shit right there, that actually goes a lot further. That's the real deal, though.

Those are the people that are in it. They realize, right, and it's like the street cred among your peers, and it goes both ways, right? It's not just like, hey, look at us, it's really, it goes, dude, I'm in awe, you know, I mean, you see these guys, you know, it's like, oh, I've been smoking your cigars since I was fucking, you know, 20 something years old, right? So, it goes both ways, but whenever you're kind of brought in, not that we sit at the same table, but, you know, you have a place at the table, like that means something.

Well, there's only a few people who really live in Nicaragua. Right. And there was only a few people who have long periods of time in SLE working to build their own thing. I'll give you an example, James and Angela Brown at Ovea Negra.

When we built our factory, I was proud of it, but I knew it wasn't really what I really wanted to do. And then when they got this space that they got their new factory, and they started doing all their own design and everything there, and I was like, oh man, that's so cool. I remember telling Mike, I'm like, dude, I love what they're doing over there, the way they're taking care of their people, way they're doing small but they're doing you know like you know people say oh you copied a black you you copied black label on this thing and i'm like first of all when you're talking about like multi-rapper barber poles right the way that they get it almost near perfect i mean if you look at our saber toots and our black irish they're not beautiful they're they're tasty i think the tobacco I like it better than other cigars, but they're not near as perfect in terms of aesthetically, artistically perfect as what, say, James and Angela do, in my opinion. So, I don't even view myself as copying or, you know, I didn't invent any of this, you know, everything we did was copied, right?

But I remember when they moved, I've always had respect for them because they're there, they get in the same restaurants as us, they buy groceries in the grocery store, They're not tourists, you know, they're actually, they're doing it, and believe me, if anyone understands what that means, and the sacrifices you're making, so when they, when they moved to San Juan, because, so their son could go to a better school, kind of in the back of my head, kind of in a, kind of a hater way, my first, my first thing, every time I saw their picture with their big dog, and on the patio, and the swimming pool, and I'm like, yeah. Oh, you should take some really nice photos. It's like, oh, but you guys used to be in the trenches with me, but now you're just. Now you're a tourist.

They left me. Right? Now you're living the life. And every time I would see one of those pictures, I would be like, oh, that's really cool, good for them, because I know how hard it was on them too.

Dude. Right? And so, but then at the same time, I'd be like, but I'm still a real cigar maker. I'm still here.

Right. You know, in a way. Yeah. Like in the back of my mind.

Right. And then, so finally, we go down and we're just looking at property to buy, because the conversation was, we want to buy a house. It doesn't make sense to buy a house in SLE because it's all overpriced and there's no way to buy it when you want to sell it. Right.

But San Juan's good, good, real estate investment property. Mike and I are looking for some investments. We go down there, we stay there for a weekend in July, we find this house, boom, you know, 500, you know, whatever, you know. Buy the house.

Buy the house. Buy the house. Cash. Got monkeys, for God's sake.

Right. We have monkeys in the backyard. We have monkeys in the backyard. Right.

So then we're like, okay. Now he does this bitch about the monkeys coming. He's the papaya. Damn monkeys.

He's the papaya monkeys. No, I like the monkeys. These monkeys were amazing. Now they're a fucking problem.

You need the big dog to keep the monkey. You got to get the big dog. I'm just not, I just think, I'm just afraid one of those monkeys is going to jump over the thing and tear somebody's skull off. And then I'm like, okay.

Right, that's how outbreak started. That's what I told you. Monkeys, bring me the papaya. Is that filter on high?

Can you make sure that filter's on high? But now that I'm down there. Switch to a different camera, Phil. And I'm giving you this to say, actually, thinking a certain way is easy to do, because I was thinking that way in the back of my mind, but actually being down there and understanding how they come up every week to do payroll, how one of them every week is up there, but they're really just sacrifice, it's really a sacrifice they're making.

Right, because you're giving up more time. So their kid can be in a good school. Right. And I'm like, okay, now that I'm living that, now I get it.

I understand that. It is way, having a- It's harder. I mean, you saw our house in SLE. It was comfortable.

It was nice. It was nice. I watched many episodes of Sopranos, Super Bowl. So now understanding having to travel and do all that stuff, now you're like, okay, now I get it.

Yeah. But the options down there for everything, it's just like 10x more. Yeah, the quality of life's better, but it actually makes running the factory a lot harder. Right.

But those are the sacrifices you make for your kids. But had COVID not had happened, and you guys didn't spend that nine months in the States, And again, you have this illusion that things are kind of working the way that they're working, that conversation piece would have never really come up as far as, is this an option to do it down here, right, to buy a house and to kind of have this house in San Juan, and at the time it was like, you know, 'cause that was before November, right, you're talking about the July before the November, so it's like, yeah, we could do this, and you know, again, we have done it. So we need a helicopter. You and James, you pull for a helicopter.

We should. We should. Oh, yes. Just don't push it like Kobe.

Talk to Booth. Booth has a nice helicopter. If the flying conditions are not good, you cannot fly. Yeah.

The point of all that is to say that, you know, until you walk a mile with someone else's shoes, it's in this industry, people saying that they do this or they do that, that they don't really do, that it's hard to filter out that stuff. But what I can tell, the point of it is to say, this has been a tough year for us. We really needed a week. Yeah.

In Florida. And here we are. And here we are. So Mike has the, uh, the visa horny story.

Yes. Yes. Do we want to say that for the Patreon? I don't know.

How good is the story? Do we have like any more dirt for the Patreon? I don't know. I mean, he, he almost was in tears.

Whoa. Where are we at on time? Let me ask you. Hour and a half.

Hmm. So we got 30, we could make this into a two-parter. It's always a two-parter when he's two guys. Well, the first parter was the wedding.

I think three-parter sometimes. Mike Carter, sometimes. Yeah, the first 45 minutes was the wedding. His wedding shit.

We can save it for the Patreon if you want. Anything fun and exciting happen in the news? Yeah, are we gonna need news? I know you didn't record any of that.

Let's cover news, yeah. Cover some quick news. Do you have stuff? Yeah, we have news.

Okay. What about a quick fact? Can we do a fact? Phil's fun fact.

An hour and a half in. Hour and a half in. It'll be 30 minutes into the second. It'll be part two, yeah.

We'll just cut it out and put it at 16. Put your camera on, Phil. Oh, yeah. Hello, people.

All right. So I have a question for all you guys. What is the oldest cigar that you've ever smoked? Want to go online?

Oh, oldest cigar. I smoked a Davidoff Dom Perignon that was like, you know, pre, it was probably 25 years old. Padrón Millennium, probably, I guess. Yeah, I would say the same with the Millennium is what I went to.

So there was a shop in Austin, Texas called Heroes and Legacies. Remember? Richard's Place? He had some pre-embargo cigars back in his cabinet that he had broke out that allegedly were pre-embargo cigars that he bought at an auction.

If they have no flavor, then you know for sure they're pre-embargo. But I would say back then, my palate was not nearly as sophisticated as, you know, so it could have been... It could have been anything, you wouldn't... The Raul Special.

Right. Alright. Is that your fun fact? No, no, no.

That's a fucking rando question. He's going to tell us what the oldest cigar is. Didn't your estate one time say they made a cigar with million-year-old tobacco? Million-year-old?

It was like a joke in one of their heads, it's like, made with million-year-old, aged for one million years or something. So, in April 2012, archaeologists from Tampa University uncovered sealed clay pots, whilst working in southeast Guatemala, believed to be pre-Columbian. These jars contained 800 cigars. A closer examination of cigars revealed that the conditions they had been stored in meant that they were still smokeable and they ended up being sold at auction for a staggering $507,000.

Wow. And right now they're available at CI for half the price. If that had been bourbon, it would be like $2 million. All right, great.

That's interesting. Okay. I'm sure you redeemed yourself. I'm sure they're in a cabinet somewhere at Corona.

Right. Probably. We don't speak that. 100% Marco.

100% Marco. Well, the biggest news, Michael, is that we are the number one podcast. That is some big news. Congratulations.

The best cigar podcast from thousands of podcasts on the web and ranked by traffic, social media followers, domain authority, and freshness. I heard Coop demanded an asterisk be put on this. Yeah, you know, if you click down further, there's a separate list that comes up that shows podcast people or something like that, and he's number one on that. Yeah.

You know. So, you have the best program, but just not the best team. You know what, at the end of the day... Right, okay, we'll go with that.

I'll take the best program. Why can't you just have your flowers? Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean?

Just give me my victory lap, you know? I mean, this is really for Mike. Yeah. Mike needed this.

A hundred percent, I just check in, I don't even know how to work this. They came out February 9th, so I mean, it just came out. I just happened to Google it looking for something else. Hey, that's a big deal.

That was the last year we got number two. I mean, you got an official podcast room, I mean, so that means... That's probably what put us over the top. You know, we have the nicest room.

I mean, listen, I could tell you, we consistently show up. We consistently show up, we're a hundred percent authentic. It's like being a dad. And there is an ad space in every single fucking thing that we do, you know?

And that's, unfortunately, that sucks to us because there's no financial benefit, but because of it, we're number one. So, you know, I mean, we respect- We don't learn anything much from listening to us, but we are very entertaining. I think that you actually learn more from us and the way that we speak about news and break things down than a lot of the other podcasts. That's true, too.

You know, well, if you did this like NASCAR, you could have like little patches of all the little sponsorship things. What do you think the giant tables for? We'll put anybody's name on the table here. No, we won't.

Yes, we will. No, we won't. And we're going to go around TPE and just take orders. That's not going to happen.

Right in the middle. We need to pick a winner for the Great Smoke. Oh, shit. Yeah, we do.

We had 13 people enter. Do you have them in? I have them numbered, and you have not seen the list or the names. Okay.

So you can have one of the gentlemen. So pick a number between 1 and 13? Okay. Yeah, we can have Skip and Mike pick a number.

We can have Arlen pick a number. Ooh, that's not bad. All right, have Arlen pick a number one to 13. One to 13.

Arlen, están pidiendo, bueno, son trece personas que tienen la oportunidad de ganar, coge una número, entre uno hasta trece. I knew she was going to say seven, I couldn't. Yeah. Number seven?

Seven. Seven is T-I-M-M-C-71, I only have their YouTube names. T-I-M-M-C-7. Tim M-C-71.

Okay, I think I have an idea who that's going to be. I might be able to click on it and go further in and figure out who it was. Okay, into the camera one more time. Who's number 13?

That's what I would have picked. That's what I was going to pick. Mark Gordon would have been number 13. Oh, Mark Gordon.

Sorry, Mark. Yeah, two out of three people would have picked 13. We're on the dark side. Arnon went with the seven.

She went with number seven. Okay, so email you at? Email me, Tim, at, where's the camera, which one are we looking at? Email me at mike@mikeproductions, timmc71, and we will get you set up.

Congratulations, you're the winner of the Great Smoke. Nice. Virtual or in-person ticket. Right, yeah, it can go either way.

Yeah. Does not have to live in Florida. Mm-hmm. What if he doesn't climb it?

What, do we give him a week? We'll have to give it to Mark Gordon. Well, no, because this is going to go up next week, the week after, if we break it up. I don't think you should break it up.

I mean, Coop has a four-hour podcast. You can pause the podcast and listen to the other half. Unless you want to get two weeks out of it, because I think the first half of the podcast is less interesting than the second half, but some people may think the other way. Yeah, exactly.

You know, to be honest, the in-depth, like, life-living stuff, I think, actually has more entertainment and shit that people enjoy. And we have learned that a lot of listeners like an hour, because usually you're driving to work, it's about 20 or 30 minutes there, 20 or 30 minutes back. I mean, the other night, we got into cock rings and boner pills. So, our conversation, Boots' wife was not as interested in that conversation as, I think you guys were talking about something else, what were they talking about before that?

No, the tolls, your, your, tollways, yeah, from Naples, it was definitely at my, because he was more interesting than, it was more interesting than tollway talk, yes, as it was, okay, what else you got? We got some Agrenosa Leaf stuff. Yeah, which was smoking the Supreme Leaf. Right.

The sixth and newest Vitola, the Agrenosa Leaf Supreme Leaf line, will be heading to stores on Friday, which is this past Friday. A 6x52 Toro, familiar Vitola for many cigar smokers. However, it is the first size in the Supreme Leaf line, which debuted in March of 2020, to be round, as the previous five had all been box-pressed. While the round Vitola might be new for the line, it uses the same blend as the Nicaraguan tobacco, capped off by a Corojo 99 wrapper.

99 a cigar and is limited to 2,750 boxes of 10 cigars. Limited. Limited. And we'll be doing that on the Patreon today.

And I think they're all sold out in the store, so. Someone said this was their favorite one. Yeah. I was listening to some podcast.

Well, we'll get into that on the Patreon. No, we don't want to leak, you know, our opinions. Uh, Crux is in, doing a price increase next week. Um, Bilado, Caldwell, Lost & Found, doing an increase next week on March 1st.

- Everyone's doing a price increase. - Everyone's doing a price increase. Everybody. - We did have a gentleman that was upset about the Powstanie price increase, and we explained why, and he's like, oh, okay.

- All right, I get it. - I get it, it makes sense. - Yeah. - First time in seven years.

- I mean, my price increase to Mike was more than, I think, as a percentage, more than what he passed on, so. - Yeah. - Aladino Candela's heading to select stores this month. JRE Tobacco Company will begin shipping its first Candela cigar to select stores later this month.

To collect stores later this month, the Aladino Candela will debut a 5x50 Robusto that the company says is a test to gauge this cigar's popularity for a future larger release. It will use a green Candela wrapper over the Aroa family signature Corojo tobacco for both the binder and the filler. That doesn't sound like a very confident fucking statement. We're going to try this out, see how it works.

No, that's going to be a good cigar. They make a lot of Candela. Yeah, but I'm saying the statement that you make is, well, you know, maybe good, maybe shit, we don't know. We're going to try it out, you know?

My favorite Candela, one of my favorite Candelas of all time, before the Fomorian, was the Monarch, the Camacho Diploma Monarch. Yeah. It's like the Robusto size of the Corojo line, and they definitely know how to make great Candela cigars, yeah. Okay.

They're gonna have 400 boxes of 20 cigars that will split between roughly 30 stores that have visited the company's operation, so I guess we won't be getting that. No. 50 per cigar. It's a good price.

Yeah. Alec Bradley's bringing back Filthy Hooligan and the Shamrock for St. Patrick's Day. Yeah.

Won't be getting that either. Not as good of a Candela. Not as good of a Candela. I mean, they make a lot of good cigars.

That Candela tastes more like a Candela. Right. I think the secret to a great Candela is that it doesn't taste like Candela. Yeah.

For me, personally. Yeah. That's it. That's it.

I kept the news light because I didn't think we were doing any. And there wasn't a whole lot out. Agrenosa released the first TPE story today. They're doing a Maduro size of the lunatic.

Which is weird, we haven't heard really anything about TBE news. No, that was the first time this week was Agrenosa. When is TBE? In like a week or two.

It's not next week, it's the week after. Are you going? I don't think so. No, it's next week.

We'll be there as media. Well, not this week, the week after. Right. Yeah.

Are you gonna do your review for the lighter? No, no, the lighter review is not a review for the... Oh, okay. It's an Amazon review.

Yeah. Okay, well then fuck that guy. yeah i ain't gotta pay retainer somebody gonna send you a lighter yeah they said hey i'll demo you the cash can you oh yeah i've got yeah a couple of different we did not like you don't like the lighter well you know who is it from i'm just curious i don't know i gotta look it up but there's you know you could tell that they did specific things so that you felt like it was a value like it was heavy right but i don't think the tank is efficient enough and the way that the The lid kind of opens up is a little fucking weird. It's not, you know, the flame, access to it is difficult.

So the lid doesn't come open all the way. You gotta go ahead sideways. Yeah, it's, yeah. Is it called something like the Firebird or something?

No. Okay, that was the one we did on the other show. No. There was a cooking company that put out a lighter.

Oh. Yeah, no, not this one. " So, yeah, I don't have a listener of the week. I do.

Do you? Yes. Well, hit the gong, mister. This in the week is Kelly and Andrew.

Oh. They were at the wedding also. Yes. They talked to me extensively about the show in different episodes.

Oh yeah, they're avid listeners. Nice. They're awesome. They have questions about specific episodes, things we did, things we enjoyed.

They're good people. Yeah, it was good to see them. They still talked about the Island Jim episode being the worst episode we ever did. I was like, I wasn't here.

I wasn't here. Well, they did blame Greg, so that was nice. that was the one show greg did he interviewed island jim podcast it was like a 15 minute show not gonna do that one again did you have heineken uh that was a problem he drank after instead of before uh that's yeah i could have told you apparently she does a lot of work with him now she's in the timeshare business and she sees him in st augustine often and he does he has time shares uh he's in the timeshare business is he yeah yeah because in cigars well he did he he worked at marriott right yeah that was like with the story stopped that we had with him yeah yep nope He met his wife working for Marriott and then, yes, uh-huh. Yep, nope, no, yes, no.

I saw him at the fucking Tampa thing. What the hell was that thing called? Oh, the thing that Tampa Humidor used to do. Oh, the Heritage Festival.

Yeah, the Heritage Fest. Thank you, Phil. Thank you, Michael. Sorry.

I felt it over here. Yeah, just throw out of Michael. You get four out of five chances here. And he was bossing Jeff Groover around to move a table or some shit.

" And I said, "Fuck you, I'm not moving your fucking table. " You know, you didn't ask the right way. " Somebody went and moved something heavy at the wedding and asked me and go, "No, I don't do that. I have a guy.

There's a guy for that. There's a guy that moves heavy things for me. I don't pick things up. You know, like going back to TPE, I think, it's one of the things about this business, it's funny, because when PCA was having issues, then all of a sudden TPE became, oh, this is going to be the next best thing.

Right. And then now, you're not hardly hearing much about TPE. We're not talking about it. Yeah, no one has said anything.

Yeah, no one has said anything. Yeah, no one has said anything. Yeah, like last year, there was four or five different places. Yeah.

But I couldn't get a booth. The booths were full. Yeah, booths are full. Other than Crux, nobody's put up that little thing where they do their logo, and I'm at booth number, blah, blah, blah.

Oh yeah. Crux is the only one I've seen. Tell me. I don't know.

There's a couple of topics that I thought we would kind of get into. So one is, where are all the hardcore cigar smokers pre-COVID that used to hang out in cigar shops? They've all kind of disappeared. And then the other thing is, is that, you know, realistically, a lot of these shops have so much inventory that they've got to work through.

Yeah. Is that because they overbought during COVID? True. That I think the amount of inventory that stores are holding are probably, you know, for them, you know, if they're normally carrying about $150,000 to $200,000, they're probably sitting on about $250,000 to $300,000.

That is fair. They would have done better if COVID stretched out a little bit longer. Well, I mean, COVID's been over a while. I mean, not officially, until May, but...

Well, here, we didn't have it here. So, one segment's into the other, right? So, again, the guys who used to hang out in the cigar shops are now buying online. Well, habits have changed.

So, you see these numbers, you see these numbers... Maybe we can get into this in the Patreon, because I don't want to be accused of saying negative things about retailers, because there are really good retailers, and there are a lot of retailers that are not very good, but you keep seeing these import numbers. The boom is still going. That doesn't mean that those cigars are selling.

Right. The retailers bought them and they're sitting on a shelf. No one's ever accused the cigar industry of being ahead of the curve. When it comes to things like that, so I can tell you at a macro level there's more cigars being made, there's not a lot more tobacco, what that means, and in the market, the amount of really good tobacco is harder and harder to get, meaning the people who used to, like Placencia used to sell a lot of tobacco, now they don't sell at all, so getting good tobacco is harder.

Getting, taking care of the tobacco and fermenting it and getting it to the right place, people are taking less time to do that. I heard comments from the Puro Sabor that a lot of the, I don't go into a lot of other factories, like walk around in a lot of other factories, but that the demographic shift of like, you know, we got permission from their parents to let them work at 15 years old in the factory kind of deal. It's like, that's crazy, but it's happening. And so, I guarantee you that the construction can't be- It's not sustainable.

Yeah, it can't be consistently good. So, not only are there an equal amount of cigars out there when their demand was high, the quality's probably lower. So, these guys are probably doing these, you know, buy five, get 10, an ashtray, a combat knife, and a reach around. Umbrella, there's always an umbrella.

90 day terms. Steak knives, get the steak knives. Yeah. You know, whatever the deals are out there.

And these retailers, they're like, fucking, a lot of them just bite on the discounts and margins. Shiny coins, baby. Shiny coins. And then they end up sitting on a ton of inventory that they have to end up closing out anyway.

Right. " And we don't have a guy walking into the shop to shame them and to actually, "Hey, wait a second. " No, let's smoke a cigar for an hour and then I'll get to the shelf. Right?

Let's talk about that, yeah. So, so what's happening is we have a lot of customers who are like, hey, I, you know, I've been buying on Famous, or I've been buying on Cigars International, I've been buying from Atlantic, I've been buying from Cigar Hustler, Cigar Hustler, Cigar Hustler. Yeah, Cigar Hustler, always buy Cigar Hustler. Yeah, and they're saying, they're saying, you know, but what I hear a lot is, hey, when are you making this?

And I'm like, we actually have some in our warehouse that's not even on back order. Right. It's like, well, my retailer said he's had them on order for three months. I'm like, well, who's your retailer?

Right. " I can at least call him and fix the situation. " So, what happens is that retailer is sitting behind his counter, bitching that his customers aren't buying as much. Right.

Bitching that people are buying online because of prices. Meanwhile, his customers are buying them for the exact same price that he used to buy them from him. Maybe a little bit of a tax difference, I don't know. But because the guy, he's not managing his inventory.

He's not reordering stuff that his regular customers buy. So fuck that guy. Yeah, fuck that guy. That's the way capitalism works.

These guys are all capitalists. It's like, you have to meet the needs of your customer, or you lose their business. " Well played. That was good timing.

Okay. Yeah, so that's a lot of those customers, too. I will tell you this, and I don't know if you want to do this for Patreon, I'll just do it here, but I could tell you that numbers wise, obviously COVID was fantastic, and then you kind of look into things as far as making sure that your inventory is in check moving into the upcoming years, but our sales in store, January was still better than January 2021. So what does that tell you?

Like, if you take care of your consumers, like you're saying, you stay up on inventory, and you take care of your employees, you're still going to continue to grow. Maybe it's not at the astronomical fucking numbers that happened in 2020, you're still going to continue to go in that right direction, you know, so. Well, yeah, well, I think that there's a lot more, there's a lot more new cigar smokers, so if you look at the events that we've done in the past, at this location, we did one in December, right? Yeah.

So, in the previous years, we would have guys come in from South Florida, from, you know, the Panhandle, you had guys drive two or three hours to come do an event, and you're like, You've got 40, 50 dudes that you know that you're high-fiving, how's family, what's everything, right? We do one in December and there's a handful of dudes that you know. There's still a lot of people here, but they're a bunch of new guys coming out, right? So that means that you've got to do a lot more education, you've got to do a lot more.

Sure. So you're kind of starting over. Yeah, you've gone through that cycle. So again, you're going to have to weed through the guys that come in here that just want to have a drink and want to have a smoke.

And then you've got the guys who are like, but the cigar nerds, like the guys who collect cigars and track down and look for this, and you're starting to see that percentage of the industry kind of fade a little bit. Yeah, I would say that it's cyclical, like anything else. Well, and if you've got guys who are making cigars that don't make cigars, you know, who are contract manufacturing, who are cigar designers, those guys are paying a dollar more than they used to. Right.

You know, landed. Sometimes more. Yeah. And so, they're selling you $12, $13 cigars for $16, $17.

Right. So, if you're, you know, if you like that cigar a lot, or you're just chasing it to smoke one or two because, you know, you're like me, you just like trying new stuff, just know that more and more and more you're paying for things that aren't what makes a cigar good. And you would assume that there's got to be pushback eventually from the consumer. You would think.

Yeah. You would think, right? It's got to happen at some point. But imagine you own a factory and you grow tobacco.

You can sell the tobacco now and make more money selling tobacco than you can make making cigars. Right. And then, on top of that, you got to deal with some guy, you know, you got to deal with the extra skews, you got to deal with the extra packaging material, you got to deal with all that stuff. It's like, okay, I'll do this, but I'm going to make my money here.

Right. So, you know, if it costs me X to make a cigar, I'm going to charge them 2X, or in some cases 3X. And then when that guy's paying the factory, paying someone to import it, paying the maximum user fees, the maximum whatever through their importer, then they're paying brokers to sell it and to travel and to do those things. Or in some of these cases, you're getting a celebrity to slap their name on it.

You're gonna be paying another $3, $4, $5 that have nothing to do with the quality of tobacco or the quality of the people making it, none of that. Yep, so true. So, if you like paying a $15 cigar for a $12 cigar, then maybe you got it like that. But if you're getting tight on money, you don't have to stop smoking good cigars, you just gotta...

Just change what you're smoking. Yeah, just... Do a little bit of research. " Yeah, nothing's changed.

All right, well, we've got to be close to two hours at this point. Yeah, we're at hour 52, so we can wrap it up. Let's wrap it up. We'll get going on the Patreon.

All right, it's been episode 268 with Mike Rosales and Skip Michael. Michael. Michael, sorry, Michael Rosales. Goddammit.

Sorry. One job. You should not forget that. There's a lot of Michaels here.

Yeah, I call him Michael, so you're Mike. No, he's not Mike, he's Michael. I call him Skip. I understand what you call him.

I just like Mike because it's shorter when you do Mike@RomaCraft instead of… Oh, for the email? Is it Michael@RomaCraft? Is that his email? Or is it Mike@RomaCraft?

No, I shorten it. RomaCraft Tobac is a long email, so it's Mike@RomaCraft Tobac. So I was talking in email. Oh, you were?

Yes, obviously. Then that's fine. All right, guys, thanks. Bye.

Bye. The Cigar Hustlers Podcast, its owners, and its sponsors take no responsibility for the opinions or statements made by the talk show host or their guests. Statements or show topics are not necessarily the beliefs of Mike and Mike Productions or the podcast providers, and opinions between talk show hosts may differ. It is not our intention to libel, incite, or hurt anyone's feelings.

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Show Notes

The second half of the Roma Craft Interview with Michael Rosales and Skip Martin