Weekly News (March 14, 2011)

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Add this to the list of things I forgot last week… Illusione is adding a lot of Maduro. I originally was under the impression that it was only the ~CG:4~, but according to Dion Giolito, the ~88~, ~888~, ~mj12~ and ~CG:4~ will all get Maduro wrappers and be out by the IPCPR show in July. [...]

State of the Brand: Gurkha

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Don’t say I don’t listen to our readers. Back in early February, a reader, who I’ll call “John H.” for this article, asked me if I had any intentions of doing a State of the Brand feature on Gurkha. The truth was no, we had a bunch of manufacturers that we were talking with (we [...]

Weekly News (January 10, 2011)

If there was ever a fun week of news… this is going to be it. It’s an eclectic bit of information. Pete Johnson confirmed what we reported last week: the Tatuaje Black Label Petite Lancero would be a retailer exclusive for Tobacco Grove, the same store that got the Viaje Samurai in late December. It [...]

Editorial: In Response to the Gurkha Raja

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Kaizad Hansotia, founder of Gurkha, and a man who I have a lot of respect for when it comes to reinventing cigar packaging, gave an interview with Rich Perelman. In it he said a few interesting things… first: The national manufacturers used to have 70-80% of the shelf space in most smokeshops because the boutique [...]