Ike Karipides is Drew Estate’s director for speciality retail.

Karipides joins the company after five and a half years as executive director of premium cigar sales for Nat Sherman. Prior to that he worked as a sales representative for Miami Cigar & Co., a brand developer for House of Oxford, and general manager of Barclay Rex, a New York retailer.

“Ike brings a wealth of premium cigar industry knowledge with close to twenty-years of progressive experience across most tiers/sectors of our industry,” said Glenn Wolfson, Drew Estate’s ceo, in a press release. “Given Drew Estate’s recent reorganization into a channel-centric approach with specific strategies, programs, and tactics tailored to meet the needs of our customers in each channel, he is an ideal fit with our evolving go-to-market approach.”

Drew Estate made the announcement internally earlier today. Karipides replaces Zev Kaminetsky.

His role will be overseeing the company’s salesforce responsible for selling cigars to tobacconists.

Drew Estate is a division of Swisher International, the world’s largest cigar company.

Avatar photo

Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.