The Premium Cigar Association wrapped up its annual trade show with a half day on Tuesday July 13.\u00a0 So far there are no official attendance numbers, but unofficially there were about 500 retailers representing about 1700 stores. In the grand scheme of things that is not tremendously important.\u00a0 What is important is the volume of sales on the trade show floor.\u00a0 By that criteria the show was a success.<\/p>\n
As I reported earlier, the show floor is between a half and a third of years past.\u00a0 Without the big four (Altadis, General, Davidoff and Swisher\/Drew Estate) that saved a lot of room.\u00a0 But without the massive booths, it may have made for better selling opportunities.\u00a0 Based on my observations and conversations with the cigar companies, in the past, retailers would come in and see the big companies, spending hours to cover all the products they sold and then blow their budgets before having the chance to really walk the floor and see other cigar makers.\u00a0 Another thing that helped shrink the total floor space is that many of the companies reduced their footprints to become more efficient.\u00a0 They did not have to compete with things like a sprawling, two story Drew Estate booth.\u00a0 This year many vendors reported huge sales numbers.<\/p>\n
Steve Saka from Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust said the first day was his biggest ever and the sales continued throughout the convention.\u00a0 Vlada Stojanov of Casdagli Cigars on Sunday said he was basically sold out of all his current production. The story was the same throughout the floor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alvaro Villatoro who runs sales for Oscar Valladeres said the current production of their new McFly cigar is gone.\u00a0 They will be making more obviously but those who were not at the show to order won\u2019t be getting them anytime soon.\u00a0 Alvaro told me that in years past, stores would order one or two boxes of a size or blend and while the overall numbers of stores was not huge, the size of their orders was, with stores buying 20, 30 and 40 boxes.\u00a0 Liana Fuente of Fuente agrees saying this year it was quality sales versus quantity. The retailers bought deep.<\/p>\n
Gurkha, JRE and Oliva had similar experiences with fewer customers but much better numbers in terms of orders.<\/p>\n
SAGA said its sales in the first day alone blew past the previous full convention in 2019.\u00a0 Liana Fuente says this year it was quality sales versus quantity.<\/p>\n
It was the same story at Rocky Patel, where there was the Aged Limited and Rare edition 2 that was only available to show attendees.\u00a0 Rocky also introduced a new White Label which is a new Connecticut that the company has been working on for about 10 years and created excitement among those who sampled it.\u00a0 It comes in four sizes and will ship in October.\u00a0 Rocky\u2019s 60th<\/sup> birthday cigar was also made available in 3 sizes and Disciple is a new full-bodied cigar in four sizes.<\/p>\n Padr\u00f3n debuted their new family reserve in a 60 ring gauge. And Plasencia debuted their new Cosecha 149 in addition to the existing Cosecha 146.\u00a0 Cosecha means harvest and the numbers represent the years of harvest. The 149 comes in three sizes and is about a dollar more than the 146.<\/p>\n Quesada cigars had their 10th<\/sup> anniversary Oktoberfest in three sizes\u2014Uber 6\u201d X 65, Das Boot 6\u201d X 52 and Bavarian 5.5\u201d X 52\u2026they come in boxes of 10 and ranger from $9.50 to $10.80. The company also showed a new Casa Magna, Liga F made in the Quesada factory in the Dominican Republic.\u00a0 It has 4 sizes ranging from a petit corona at 4.25 X 40 up to a 7\u201d X 50 Churchill.\u00a0 Prices start at 45.80 and go up to $9.70.<\/p>\n By noon, the floor was pretty much deserted except for the vendors visiting each other.\u00a0 By 1pm the breakdown began.\u00a0 Many of the cigar makers left a little early to catch flights to Miami\u2026.unfortunately their flight experienced a 3-hour delay causing them to hang out in the Centurion Lounge while they hope to before finally departing.\u00a0 The same thing happened to the Dallas flight, about 3 hours late.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Premium Cigar Association wrapped up its annual trade show with a half day on Tuesday July 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":41987,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[177,49,3042,44],"tags":[6743],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}