Toraño to Distribute Palió & Other BOTL, LLC Brands

After some blatant speculation and a lot of tweets, it’s official—Toraño Family Cigars will be distributing Palió and the rest of the Brother of the Leaf, LLC portfolio. In addition to the company’s popular cutters, Toraño is now responsible for the company’s lighters and cigar lines: Escencia and E.

“Marc and I share the same business philosophy in that we both strive to offer an excellent product together with outstanding customer service,” said Charlie Toraño, president of Toraño Family Cigars. “We are very excited to be able to add such a high quality range of cigar accessories to our product portfolio.”

While specific terms of the deal were not disclosed, Toraño will take over U.S. distribution of all Brother of the Leaf, LLC products on February 15, 2013.

It is not the first time many of the individuals involved have worked together. Bruce Lewis, Toraño’s vp of sales and marketing, worked with Palió during his time at CAO, which used to distribute Toraño’s cigars. In addition, some of Toraño reps were once employees for CAO prior to the distribution split in 2010.

““The new relationship between our companies is going to allow us to focus on maintaining our current level of quality, as well as, develop new products,” said Marc Aub, president of Brother of the Leaf, LLC.

This is Toraño’s third distribution agreement in the past two years. In May of 2011, Toraño and Graycliff announced it had entered a distribution agreement, a partnership that lasted for just over one year. Later that summer, Toraño announced plans to distribute Sam Leccia Cigars before litigation with Leccia’s former employer halted production.

We originally hinted about news of the deal a few weeks ago on Twitter:

So. When does the Palió/Toraño deal just get announced already?

— Charlie Minato (@charlieminato) January 25, 2013

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.