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Local company on a roll with new cigar brand
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Consumers can drink a variety of things that are made in the Lowcountry, including vodka, tea and muscadine wine.
Joining them now is a Charleston label you can smoke: the Carlos Villa cigar.
Coastal Cigars, headquartered in West Ashley, has trademarked the name and band for the house-blend cigar it will start distributing in March. Carlos Villa is Spanish for Charles Town.
“The idea for a brand grew organically from customer requests,” said Dave Brown, chief executive officer of Coastal Cigars.
The company uses its house blend at cigar-rolling events that often are held in conjunction with local festivals, golf tournaments and other special events, he said.
“People would light up the cigar and five minutes later would come back and say, ‘That’s a great cigar. Where can I get more of them?’” Brown said.
The company’s master roller, Stoney Chaffin, is using Dominican tobaccos for the cigars’ filler and binder, with Honduran wrappers.
“It’s extremely flavorful, but still mild,” Brown said. “For the people that we work with, which is the hospitality and food and wine industries, it’s definitely a unique offering and we really would like it to grow. I think it has the opportunity to grow into a national or international brand.”
Alex Young, food and beverage director at Kiawah Island Golf Resort, booked Coastal Cigars for a cigar-rolling event during the Friendship Cup.
“It’s really a great added amenity for us that we can sell to our guests,” Young said.
Smoking bans in bars and restaurants recently introduced by some area municipalities won’t have an impact on his business, Brown said.
“Because of the smoking ban, the diehard cigar smoker is being driven more to golf courses,” Brown said. “We have a nice stronghold on the local golf courses and local resorts, so I would expect a slight up tick in sales. Cigars are more of a gift-giving, celebratory item. You’re not going to pass out a carton of cigarettes to a VIP at a hotel. I think that’s one of the reasons why Charleston is a good market for us, because we’re a cosmopolitan city and a lot of people appreciate the finer things and they include cigars in that category.”
Brown launched Coastal Cigars with a partner in 2002 and has been sole owner of the business since last year. He was introduced to the cigar industry at age 19 when he answered a classified ad and went to work at Kingston Tobacco, a West Ashley retailer.
“I thought it would be a fun thing to learn about,” Brown said. “I really enjoyed the types of people you meet in a cigar-related business, very interesting people. If they met in another environment they might not get along that well. (They have) different opinions on politics and what have you, but when they sit around the table and they’re smoking cigars, they all become friends.”
Now 25, Brown has six employees and a business that grew by 120% from 2004 to 2005.
“We’re on track right now for another 120 percent,” Brown said. “We started the business and it basically plateaued at about 30 humidor accounts throughout Charleston, but in the past 15 months we’ve grown to 130 with another 130 about to be solidified.”
Brown has three independent route managers that stock humidors at businesses as far away as Mississippi. He said the cigar industry hit a high water mark in 1995, when a number of celebrities were launching their own cigar brands, but by 1998 the boom had died.
“What stayed around was really the quality brands and the quality companies,” Brown said.
Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America, a national trade organization, said government statistics on premium handmade cigars reached 329.5 million last year, the strongest year since 1998. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported annual sales of $3.2 billion for the cigar industry last year, compared with $82 billion spent by consumers on cigarettes.
Most premium, handmade cigars are imported and there are not a large number of companies such as Brown’s that hand roll their own cigars for distribution, Sharp said.
“There aren’t too many people that do that, probably because of the high labor costs,” he said.
Coastal Cigars is not a mass marketer and is somewhat selective of where it distributes humidors that carry its product, Brown said.
“The main marketing engine is our events,” Brown said. “A lot of people that end up at our events are not from Charleston, so they end up taking that cigar and that business card back where they came from.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
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