PCA Magazine 2022 Show Issue

50 PCA The Magazine | VOLUME 2 2022 PREMIUMCIGARS.ORG N It’s About Relationships, Stupid | BY JARR I D TRUDEAU, Executive Vice President, Kristoff Cigars The Industry OVER AND OVER AGAIN we hear about how the cigar industry is a “relationship business.” If you think about it, the product we all sell has no switching costs, is priced fairly similarly, and is generally of good quality. When there’s so much infrastructural parity between companies, the intangibles become the major point of differentiation. The one critical variable that is different every time is the relationship with the company sales representative sent to call on your store. They are very often the factor that can make or break a brand in a retailer’s humidor and, given this is a relationship business, there’s a real responsibility for both parties to work on that relationship and grow together in the same direction. This raises the question: What should that relationship look like? The short answer is that there’s no short answer. Here’s the three overarching expectations that I think encompass much of what it takes to build great business Photo by Arielle Lewis