Smoking Up A Storm In Las Vegas
I walked up to the check-in booth, presented my credentials, and was handed my badge for the PCA trade show. Before long I was shaking hands with people I hadn’t met before and giving hugs to friends in this industry I’ve known for ages. And I lit the first of many, many cigars.
Every time I come to this show, I’m reminded of the summer of 1995, when I was attending my first show. Back then it had a different name (the RTDA, or Retail Tobacco Dealers of America) and I was a black-haired 27 year old who loved cigars and was eager to learn. Back in those days, the American cigar industry was in the midst of what we now call The Cigar Boom. It was a time of incredible growth, with imports of premium, handmade cigars soaring from around 100 million cigars per year to well over 400 million, in the span of about four years.
Today, we are in the middle of a new boom. Imports of cigars by units are at levels not seen (or perhaps greater) than in the 1990s. Last year around 464 million handmade cigars were shipped to America—the world’s largest cigar market, by far. One of the key differences between this boom and the one from the 1990s is that the current rate of growth is slower and more manageable. The experienced cigarmakers have been able to handle the increase in demand, quite unlike those days of the 1990s.
We originally thought things might be cooling down, but speaking to retailers and cigarmakers here it appears that this period of robust sales might be here for some time. “The consumption is very strong,” says Litto Gomez of La Flor Dominicana. “It’s a very strong market. And on top of that, the quality is as high as it’s ever been.”
His statements on quality echo the numbers we are seeing in our cigar ratings, which have been quite high of late.
Another sign that demand may continue is that cigarmakers like Litto are expanding their operations. Litto is planting more tobacco and making more space to roll cigars. Arturo Fuente is building a major cigar factory in Nicaragua, to complement its core factory in the Dominican Republic. Rocky Patel is adding space, and so are others.
The PCA trade show one of my busiest weeks (or, more accurately, weekends, as it began on Saturday and will conclude tomorrow). The days are long, the nights are late and there’s plenty to do. But it’s work that I love, and work that really helps me understand what’s going on in the handmade cigar industry.
A big part of the job here is finding out about new releases, as it’s become tradition for cigar companies to release something new (sometimes quite a lot of something new) at this show. We’ve already covered many of the new releases on our news channel on this website, we’ll be covering a lot more this week and managing editor Greg Mottola (who is also out here in Vegas) will be posting a comprehensive recap when we’re all back from the show. Everyone seems to have something new.
I’ve smoked a ton of cigars so far. And I’m getting ready to puff some more today.
