PCA Magazine Winter 2020

PREMIUMCIGARS.ORG WINTER 2020 | PCA The Magazine 37 in the office and we worked out of a post-and-beamcabin inConnecticut beforemoving to a 50-acre tobacco farm in the heart of the river valley. If it wasn’t for DionGiolito fromIllusioneCigars at that first IPCPR trade show in 2015, we wouldn’t be here today. Dion let me use part of his booth space that year.Weweren’t even listed on themap of booths, but retailers throughout the country searched us out! If it wasn’t for those first accounts, wewouldn’t be here today. Those first accounts were crucial to building our foundation. We are passionate about the leaf and about this industry, and we areworkingwith accounts throughout the country that share this same passion. They know their humidors and their customers, and they believe in the quality of our blends and brands.We are not an everyday name in the cigar industry, so we choose toworkwith retailers who over stand the depth of our products. They knowand feel confident to recommend any of Foundation’s brands to the final consumer. What was your first sale? At the 2015 IPCPR trade show—sold to a shop in Pennsylvania calledWooden IndianTobacco Shop andCigar Lounge. How do you build your relationships with your retail customers? Brick by brick and stone by stone. First and foremost, we pour our hearts and souls into our products. This is the basis of our relationships. A commitment to quality and consistency. I built a portfolio of unique brands geared to any customer whowalks through that door—fromthe blends to the price points, strength levels, complexity and infused hand-made cigars. If you only have FoundationCigars in your humidor, you are bound to find a cigar for any customer who comes in. I want retailers to know that our dedication to quality and consistency is themain pillar of Foundation.We are a small company and I have had to bootstrap it fromthe beginning. I didn’t take on any investors because I wanted to do thingsmy way. But in order to do this, we had to start fromthe bottom. We are nowworking hard for 2020 and continuing to improve customer service, fromour in- house teamto our sales team.We Foundation Cigar Brands have been so busywearing so many hats and have experienced a lot of growth in a short amount of time, so its tough to have things perfect. But that’s what we’re committed to: learning and growing. There are shops on our list we want to target.We reallywant to workwith “true tobacconists”— the shops primarily interested in the business of premium tobacco. That’s where brands are reallymade. Developing our relationships with retailers has mostly happened organically.We launchedwith only one brand, but having been on the business side, and getting to knowa lot of retailerswhile Iwas inNicaragua helped bring a good group of retailers onwith us that first year, and a lot of it was driven by hard-core consumers. We started out by focusing on the consumers and the retailers they knew, and it sort of spread fromthere. So now retailers are calling us!We’ve been growing so fast, in both demand and brand awareness. How do you carry out your mission to “provide the best hand-made cigars to connoisseurs around the world”? I have been fortunate to build relationshipswith some of the best farmers and leaf suppliers in theworld. This is the root of providing topquality hand- made cigars. It startswith the leaf. I have had an intimate relationshipwith the leaf, and early on started learningwhere certainflavor profiles come from through seed varieties, different countries of origin, fermentation, sorting andfinally blending. I workwith incredible factories and quality control teams, and I spend themajority ofmy time inNicaragua to ensure that our products are always on point. A S O L I D F O U N D A T I O N