July 15, 2024 Charlie Minato Weekly News

Weekly News (July 15, 2024)

A farewell to Victoria McKee Jaworski, the longtime PR person for General Cigar Co./STG. After more than 20 years with the company, Victoria is off to a new job in the liquor industry. I’ve been getting press releases from Victoria since my days with TheCigarFeed. I think more than most, we at halfwheel pushed Victoria and probably caused her countless headaches. Despite all those “fun” moments a decade or so ago, Victoria became one of the easier people to work with—reliable, helpful and professional. While most of our readers have no clue who Victoria is, those of us in cigar media definitely do and things will be a bit different without her.

Quality Importers Acquires Stinky Ashtrays

Congratulations to Bill Salviano, founder of Stinky Cigar, and his wife, who gave him the nickname “Stinky.” After five years, most small businesses in the U.S. will have failed. Even amongst those that survive that milestone, that doesn’t mean they will ever reach a point when they can be sold. While acquisitions aren’t always great for consumers, it’s never lost on me that successfully selling a business is a major accomplishment. For lovers of Stinky Ashtrays, this shouldn’t be that much of a change: Quality Importers has been Stinky’s exclusive distributor for more than a decade.

Cigars International Opening East Ridge, Tenn. Store This Summer

This was the second week in a row that I’ve written about Cigars International opening up a new store. Two years ago, Scandinavian Tobacco Group—parent of CI, Macanudo, CAO, Alec Bradley and other brands—told its investors that it would add 6-8 stores by 2025. East Ridge is the sixth new location to be announced since then. STG has had great success with the new stores and I’d expect that it continues to invest in more storefronts.

Padrón’s Updated Bands Begin Arriving at Stores

While not the most consequential news story of this past week, this will be seen more than most. Padrón is dropping its two-piece design for a single one-piece design. In theory, this should double the efficiency of the people who have to put the bands on cigars, which makes me wonder why it took this long. Fortunately, the updated bands aren’t all that different than the previous versions.

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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.

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