Hello and welcome to halfwheel‘s coverage of the 2019 IPCPR Convention & Trade Show—it’s here, earlier than ever before.

I’ve never been at a trade show quite like this year’s. We are back at the Sands/Venetian/Palazzo, which is great. However, the show is also in late June, which is not great. Oh—and then there was an announcement earlier today.

After four days in Las Vegas, here are some observations at the start of IPCPR 2019.

  1. Please see point 3.
  2. Please see the below bullet point.
  3. Consumer Day Over Everything — Everyone is talking about one thing: CigarCon 2020, i.e. the change to the event that will mean consumers allowed onto the trade show floor for one day next year. I’ll have some more thoughts on this at a later date—and you can read more about it here—but it’s pretty rare for everyone to be discussing just one thing.I am skeptical about consumer day for a lot of reasons but I do think that many of the announcements regarding the PCA—the new name for the IPCPR—are quite positive. However, they are completely overshadowed by the consumer day announcement. In fact, at the press conference announcing the changes, there was essentially only one question unrelated to consumer day.

While CigarCon might be the only thing that is getting talked about, I will point out a few more things:

  1. The Show Floor Is Tighter — The Sands Expo Center means the show floor feels a lot more compact. I suspect that even if there are slightly fewer attendees than last year, the show floor will look more crowded than last year.
  2. Almost No One Is Talking About July 4, Yet — Given the discussion of CigarCon, the talk about a drop in attendance due to the July 4 holiday is almost non-existent, at least for now.
  3. The Palazzo/Venetian Is So Much Better — For a number of reasons: convenience, restaurant options, better rooms and just an overall niceness factor, I’m so glad to be back at the Palazzo/Venetian/Sands.

Finally, while the IPCPR/PCA is getting some things very right, it’s getting other things very wrong.

Overall Score

Davidoff is the official sponsor of halfwheel's coverage of the 2019 IPCPR Convention & Trade Show.
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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.