PCA Magazine Summer 2022

PREMIUMCIGARS.ORG VOLUME 3 2022 | PCA The Magazine 53 For another thing, there are ways to fill your bowl that will smoke just as well and take only half as long to finish. The pipe smoker has a lot of control, in accessories and in costs. Pipe smoking is a highly customizable pastime, and every individual nurtures a completely unique relationship with it. LarryWagner’s very interesting take on how to sell pipes in this issue (p. 46) remindedme again howmany new tobacco retailers have entered the field since the cigar boomwithout ever seeking to realize the additional 15 percent in revenue that pipe traffic can bring into a store. It is to those sellers that I here address myself. Yes, cigars aremore profitable and quicker to turn around than pipes. But it remains a rational business decision to try to grab that unrealized 15 percent. Also, pipe customers tend to be thoughtful, loyal, knowledgeable, long-term clients … andmany of themwill buy cigars, too! Merchants lacking a pipe presence would do well to heed Larry’s advice and get themselves briefed on the pipe scene. But be patient with yourself, and with your customers. The first few years I smoked a pipe, my purchases were limitedmostly to basket pipes and bulk tobaccos. It was a while before I bought my first Dunhill, and it was quite a long while before I went in for my first S. Bang. Likemost hobbies, pipe smoking can become as expensive as the enthusiast is willing to bear. This is the normal course of things—always a progression. The key is to start themoff slowly, keep things simple at first, and let the hobby draw them in. It’s a peculiarity of pipe smoking: Your new pipe customers can learn the ropes inexpensively, but inevitably their tastes will grow in sophistication, and their purchases will grow as well. The first order of business is to get themcomfortable with a pipe in their hand, andmake sure they can smoke a bowl without technical difficulty. It’s easier to fall in love with pipe smoking than outward appearances let on. It can be the very soul of simplicity. Both you and your customers can start slowly and grow into it. By way of example, I offer my afternoon pipe today. I have very few items on the table tomake this smoke go. Today I am turning to an old, no-name billiard that I scored long ago on eBay for $25. My tobacco is an old favorite: Samuel Gawith Best Brown Flake, froma tin that I bought in 2008 and whose contents I transferred to a Ball jar in 2017. I’ve been keeping an eye on this jar, and figure today is the perfect time to cash in onmy long patience. The tobacco is well-preserved in its jar, moist and pliable, and now aged nearly black, which has brought the leaf to a sweet maturity that highly recommends the foresight of stashing away some good leaf for aging. Not wishing to smoke the full 90minutes a fully packed bowl can deliver, I just grab one of the tobacco flakes and ball it up into a sphere, pressing it down into the bowl, though not all the way down, maybe halfway. I then rub out part of a flake into tiny particles which I sprinkle on top for kindling. This is known as the air-pocket method, popularized by FredHanna (you can Google it), which tames quite a few of the pipe-smoking difficulties that newcomers so often complain about. Today I amusingmy trusty sterling silver Zippo with pipe insert. A fewwoodmatches would do as well. My tamper is in the room next-door, and since I don’t feel like fetching it, I just usemy finger. All that’s really needed is pipe, tobacco, fire source, and— crucially important —some pipe cleaners, one itemof pipe equipment that is indispensable to a good smoke. I sometimes think it is underappreciated, the central role that a fistful of pipe cleaners plays in empowering a pipe to deliver its very best. When I smoke a pipe, I findmyself swabbing it out every 6minutes or so to keep things powder-dry…which is no imposition; I do it by instinct. I give the pipe two char lights, each time laying the Zippo on its side across the top of the bowl to tamp the bloomdown. Then I give it two full-puffing lights, and I’moff to the races. Forty-twominutes later I’m done, and I shake out a smattering of fully combusted ash. No dottle. There’s no reason a pipe newcomer can’t have the same triumph with the same few items on hand. Once they’re accustomed to enjoyable pipe smoking experiences, their purchases will start to ramp up as a matter of course, as their sophistication grows. Whenever you sell a customer his first-ever pipe, make sure you send that pipe out the door with a bag full of pipe cleaners, and advise that they be used liberally. Every tale you ever heard of a would-be piper complaining about gurgle goes back to a lack of pipe cleaners, and no knowledge about using them. As a retailer, you can fix that. Sing the praises of keeping it dry, and your chances of winning some new business will go up. Pipe newcomers who get a first inkling of success will very soon developmore expensive tastes. So guide your pipe newbies to keep it simple at first, to just learn the mechanics of smoking. They will let you knowwhen they are ready to spend the big bucks, but they will never reach that point if they don’t first learn simply to get through a satisfying bowl. Which ought to be easy enough, if they are guided properly by a patient, interested mentor: their friendly neighborhood tobacconist. Happy puffing! ” The pipe smoker has a lot of control, in accessories and in costs. Pipe smoking is a highly customizable pastime, and every individual nurtures a completely unique relationship with it. T H E P I P E