PCA Magazine Show Issue 2021

38 PCA The Magazine | SHOW 2021 PREMIUMCIGARS.ORG C I G A R L O C K D O W N T he past year has exacted a unique and selective kind of pain on the consumer tobacco industry. Brick-and-mortar merchants, shuttered or restricted by public-health lockdowns, found themselves at wit’s end seeking to capture lost revenue in the face of an unheralded challenge. Customers were locked out of their favorite stores, while, for store owners, the costs of maintaining a business remained. Meanwhile, for the most part, manufacturers were prospering. Their smoking customers, newly forced to work at home, stepped up their buying, often relying on internet sources when their own neighborhood outlets closed during the pandemic. For years we have kept a wary eye on the looming threat to B&M shops that internet buying presented. It had already seemed virtually certain that big online sellers would come to take an increasingly rapacious bite out of the retail action. This is nothing new; and retailers have been energetic in meeting that test with promotions and tailored accommodations that B&M stores can uniquely deliver for walk-in customers. Still, last year, the changes forced on the industry proved almost too sudden and radical for Main Street merchants to counter sensibly. Sam Phillips, president of La Palina Cigars, and Clay Roberts, that company’s COO, were mindful of and sympathetic to the undeserved plight of their B&M clients. The cigar industry amounts to a vast network of personal relationships that go back generations. Phillips and Roberts were interested in minimizing disruption to these business connections that had wedded B&M shops to manufacturers since time immemorial. Says Roberts: “We were trying to figure out how to support brick and mortar during the closures. And how could we, as a cigar company, sell product while a majority of our retailers were not open?” From this necessity was born the invention of Cigar Lockdown, which Roberts calls “a virtual program for selling cigars on a talk show kind of platform that smokers can view from home.” It’s not a Zoom platform, which Roberts says tends to be kind of boring. “Cigar Lockdown is something more Hollywood-inspired,” he says—“a talk show format that would be fun for people, because so many people were down and out, depressed and struggling. That’s really the intent that got this program started.” With full blessings fromBill Paley, who revived the La Palina brand in 2010 and whose father was the founder of the CBS television network, Roberts and Phillips began calling on manufacturers to assemble special cigar packs for Cigar Lockdown that could be drop- shipped directly to merchant or consumer. Viewers of the online shows could order the packs through their B&M retailers, and the retailers could collect their customary percentage. Phillips says: “In normal times we would tell a retailer, ‘You have to order 100 of these things,’ and the retailer traditionally would say, ‘OK, that’s great.’ But when you’re closed, you don’t have any money.” Adds Roberts: “So we said to store owners, use your customer lists. You all have lounges, most of you guys know your customers. Email them and say, ‘There’s this neat online TV show to watch, and they’re offering cigar packs.’ Retailers can sell the packs to customers at the advertised price. If you sell one, great. If you sell 100, even better. As a store front, you’re closed. But we can offer these and we can ship these direct to you or your customer. You still make the commission. You’re going to make the money. We have no interest in being a direct-to-consumer business. That’s not what we’re here for. We were just trying to do something in a bad situation that can be good for everybody. Not only for La Palina, because we obviously get to sell a lot of cigars. But for the industry as a whole, because everybody was stagnant and needed to see some creative new ideas being tried.” “WE WERE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SUPPORT BRICK AND MORTAR DURING THE CLOSURES. AND HOW COULD WE, AS A CIGAR COMPANY, SELL PRODUCT WHILE A MAJORITY OF OUR RETAILERS WERE NOT OPEN?”