IPCPR 2014: Day 2 Recap

Another day of the IPCPR show in Las Vegas is in the bag, and here is what we heard and saw while on the floor yesterday:

Looks like the cigar thieves are still working the show. While there are some problems with cigars going missing every year, the thieves have seemingly become more brazen, with three different manufactures complaining to us yesterday that they have had issues. In fact, someone walked off with an entire box of Undercrown Flying Pigs out of the Drew Estate booth on the first day — the only one they had — meaning that the vast majority of the retailers and media at the show will not see them in person.

Speaking of Drew Estate, their new booth is massive, with a Brooklyn Bridge-esqe theme that is at least two stories high and includes some semi-private lounging areas on the top floor.

There seems to be a large push to sell smaller cigars this year, with at least three different manufactures releasing tins or packs of long filler cigarillo sized cigars in various blends. L’Atelier, Quesada and Davidoff are all showing new cigars in smaller formats. The Quesada petites are sold in boxes or sleeves of 10, the Davidoff Primeros come in tins of five and the L’Atelier are sold in soft packs of five.

Quite a few manufactures told us that they thought the show was significantly slower than last year, but that sales seemed to go in spurts throughout the day. The show floor does look almost deserted at times, but the major players have almost always been crowded with customers so far, and even newer, smaller brands told us that they were quite happy with how sales have been so far overall.