SMOKE: How were you introduced to cigars?

RUBIN: A friend’s father who smoked cigars every day handed me my first. They were a very wealthy family, he always had Cuban cigars in his humidor on his desk, and for me he was the epitome of success, living the lifestyle. The family was very successful; even before I had my first cigar it had a certain representation for me.

He handed me two cigars, a Dominican Partagas and a Cuban Partagas. He said you can smoke this one, referring to the Dominican, any time, but when you smoke this other one, the Cuban, make sure you’re sitting down and relaxed.

I went through the Dominican cigar. I thought it was pretty good, and it was interesting; I’d never smoked before. Later, I lit up the Cuban cigar. At that time, I worked in another business, and I went on the ladder to check some inventory, and I missed one of the rungs, and slipped, and almost killed myself. I didn’t realize the power or the impact that a cigar could have, not just mentally, but physically. There was something about that, back when I was 22, I thought that was kind of cool, but I was pretty much hooked from the time that I smoked those cigars. In addition, I thought it was pretty cool and I wanted to live that lifestyle, for that to be part of how I wanted to live. From that point on, I went to the cigar stores, started to learn a bit about cigars, and I never stopped.

SMOKE: What is it about the cigar lifestyle that appealed to you?

Rubin with corporate partner and Alec Bradley Cigar Company Vice Persident, Ralph Montero examining cheese-cloth shaded tobacco seedlings in the Dominican Republic.

RUBIN: The thing you learn very quickly when you smoke cigars is that this is not something you can rush through; it’s about enjoying the cigar for everything that it is. You’re looking at it, you’re smelling it, you’re tasting it, there’s a lot to it, and to be able to get the most out of a cigar, you need to be able to sit back and enjoy it. It makes you slow down, it makes you sit down and take that time for yourself. Even when I was young, that was something that I really looked forward to, I wanted to sit down and relax and lose myself in that moment and not think about any other part of my day.

SMOKE: When the family business was sold, did you consider anything other than the cigar business?

RUBIN: When I was in the midst of selling the fastener business, I’d put down a list of criteria that my next business venture would have to hit, and fortunately or unfortunately, the cigar business fit none of them. I wanted a business that was low in inventory, something that was possibly internet-based, something that could not be a commodity based product, and the cigar business didn’t fall into any of these. That being said, I loved the tradition of a cigar business, I loved the fact that cigars have been around for over 500 years. Actually, prior to selling the [family] business, I’d already incorporated the cigar business. I wasn’t doing anything active in it, but I already had a feeling it was a direction in which I wanted to go - I would work during the day, and at night I would work on the cigar business for the first year.

SMOKE: What sort of work were you doing?

RUBIN: I was learning more about tobaccos, finding suppliers, I was speaking with tobacconists about what was selling, what was the product they were looking for. We’re talking 96–97, the boom was really coming to its end, but at that point I was already hooked. I loved the cigars themselves, and I wanted to make a go of it.

SMOKE: When did you come out with the Trilogy Press?

RUBIN: After we had success with the Occidental Reserve line from Heinke, then we’d come out with Havana Sun Grown, which we’d had success with as well, I happened to be on a fishing trip sponsored by Thompsons. There were other manufacturers on the boat that had proven to be very successful, and I sat down and I listened to them, and what I came up with was that you have to come up with something different, something that will grab people’s attention.

It happened to be, that prior to going on that trip, as cigar smokers, we go through certain preferences at certain times. Sometimes people are just smoking robustos, sometimes Churchills, sometimes coronas, and it happened that I liked the 46 ring gauge cigar, which I still do, but I was really into 46’s. So I thought, if I take a 50, is there a way to press that to make it feel like a 46? I liked the way the 46’s felt.

I took the 50, and I didn’t really love box-press or the semi-presado, I didn’t really like that feel, so I went to Home Depot, and they happened to be demo-ing a DeWalt table saw, and I asked the guy, “Does this thing cut angles?” he said, “Yeah,” and I said, “I’ll be right back.” I went out and I bought wood, I had him cut it on angles, and I bought some wood glue, and I made molds. I used a hand-vice that we had in the back of the office, and I started pressing cigars in a triangular shape.

I made a V-shaped mold with an open top, and I used a flat top on it. That’s how we started to press them. When everyone would leave the office, I’d put two in there, and the next morning, I’d come in and take them out. It was hard to convince people here that it was what we should do, but once they started smoking it, they realized that it was really comfortable in their mouth and in their hand, and they embraced it. All this happened at the same time that we’d come up with three great blends, but we only had one concept.

We had packaging designs, different things; it was just a way of getting creative, and trying to put them all together as one brand.

SMOKE: Would you consider Trilogy a turning point? All the brands that followed took on a new way to differentiate themselves from some of the things you’d been doing in the past.

RUBIN: Trilogy in itself was a turning point for us in certain respects. People took notice; they were brightly colored boxes. We talked to tobacconists, we told them, “These are gonna brighten up your humidor, it’s not the standard wood box anymore.” We had three standard sizes, we had the triangular press. Where Trilogy became so significant for us as a company is that it gave us distribution. It made people stand up and notice who we were. They recognized Alec Bradley, they recognized Trilogy as a product they wanted to have on their shelves. We pulled a tremendous amount of distribution from that line.

It was a great product for our portfolio because it made people stand up and notice who we were.

SMOKE: For the Maxx line, why did you use non-traditional names?

RUBIN: With Maxx, every name in that line has some meaning. All of the names came from sitting down and smoking the samples and having conversations within our office. Our smallest cigar at the time, when we launched the line, was a 5 x 58, and we kind of joked that, when you need that cigar fix, for the guys who say, “I can’t wait to smoke my cigar,” they need to get to that cigar, even if they don’t have a lot of time, sometimes they call it their “tobacco fix” or their “nicotine fix,” or whatever they want to say. In the Maxx line, with everything being over the top, that was the 5 x 58, the Fix. Then the Culture was the cigar that we felt would fit the standard smoke, the Freak is a 6 3/8 x 60, based on its size, and we thought the “Freak” was a cool name for it. The Ego, is a 9 1/4 x 50, generally I don’t have to explain that one. The Vice was our first pressed cigar from Alec Bradley. We did that because, whether this cigar is one of your vices, or because it was pressed in a vice, that was the significance of that. The Nano was the smallest in the line. Each has significance in their names.

SMOKE: When you were developing Tempus, were you concerned with a taste profile, were you trying beat what you’d done with Maxx?

RUBIN: Tempus is Latin for time, and the whole concept was we’d found a wrapper years ago that we were impressed with, and it took time to understand what it was, how to ferment it properly. It’s about enjoying the time that we have so little of, as cigar smokers. As we were talking about the line, creating the line, going through it, the central theme seemed to be time. In addition, when we were coming up with the line, we felt like we had room in our portfolio for something that was stronger, that had more impact with flavor and strength, and when we came across these tobaccos and started putting them together and blending, we knew we had something special. It was just a matter of the time it took to tweak it, and get the right percentages of each tobacco to come up with this line.

Interestingly enough, I got a call from a fine tobacconist out in the southwest area, and he said, “Hey, I’m smoking a Tempus right now, and you know what this reminds me of?” I said, “What?” and he said, “Nothing. There’s no other cigar that I’ve smoked that tastes like this. This is really unique and different, and I love it.” Exactly what we’d set out to do, we’d accomplished.

SMOKE: Do you develop brands to meet market demands, or to out-do past work?

RUBIN: We don’t come up with a brand and say, “What cigars can we put into this concept?” We really come up with the cigars, we work and work and work, endlessly, tirelessly, on coming up with new blends. Right now, we’re in the middle of eight blends from the Dominican, three out of Honduras, and two out of Nicaragua.

We’re always sampling new tobaccos, we’re always looking at new things, and one of the things about Tempus, which is so interesting for us, is that we went to this little farm, and when we started smoking the stuff out of the first fermentation, I knew this was something different, something special, and that was back in 2001.

From 2001 to 2003, we didn’t do anything with it, because we realized it was going to take time to understand the fermentation. We knew that because as we continued to smoke it, there were inconsistencies, so we kept saying, “Why is this batch good, and this batch not so good - it’s missing some flavor.” What we came to realize was in fermenting this tobacco, what we wanted to do is if you bring it to 100 percent fermentation and then bale it for aging, you actually bring it a little bit past its peak during the aging process, it starts to lose a little bit of its flavor and strength. That’s why, when I smoked it right out of fermentation, before aging, I loved it.

SMOKE: The whole process that you’ve described, working with blends, the amount of time it takes to finally come up with something, is this something you think a small company is much better suited to?

RUBIN: Overall, the boutique companies are becoming successful because we don’t have certain constraints. We don’t have shareholders; we don’t have to sell a certain amount to be successful. If you look at the cigar smokers, a certain percentage smoke mild cigars, a certain percentage smoke mild to medium, and the rest smoke something heavier, we don’t have to hit that mild to medium range to get those big numbers. We always strive to make what we feel is the best cigar, and we look to make sure there’s a market for it and be successful in, but our objective is to always make the best product that we can. To come out with what would be the most interesting product that people are going to want to smoke, that people are going to want to talk about, that people want to be more involved with, they want to learn more, they want to attend events that have this type of product.

It’s an interesting question that’s asked every day in our industry, and that is, “What’s new?” The consumer and the tobacconist both ask, and then when you come out with new products, they say, “You’re coming out with new products, everybody’s coming out with new products, what do I do?” Well, if they stopped asking, “What’s new,” we probably wouldn’t come out with as many products. Cigar smokers these days are well educated, there’s a lot of information on the internet, there are great publications being put out, and people are clamoring for information. We want to come up with something new and exciting. What differentiates us is that we can take the time to do it. We don’t have to come up with a new product at IPCPR [the annual cigar industry summer trade show], we don’t have to come up with new brands, or do line extensions. When the product is ready, and we feel it’s the best that we can do, we come out with our products, and I think that gives us an edge over other companies that have to sell millions of cigars to meet their sales numbers. We don’t fall under that pressure. It’s a big advantage for companies such as ours.

SMOKE: With Tempus, you changed gears with the branding with Alec Bradley coming to the forefront with the rings. Are you going to go back and change the previous lines?

RUBIN: I don’t think we’re going to change anything we’ve done in the past. Tempus is something new for us, and bringing Alec Bradley to the forefront was important to us, creating brand identity and awareness. From this point forward, the brand will be Alec Bradley, the lines will be Tempus, there’s another product we have coming out called Mundial. Moving forward, Alec Bradley will be the front mark.

If we come up with new and exciting brands, and others start to fade, well, they do. It’s not about ego, its about being the best we can.

Launching before IPCPR was, I think, an advantage for us, because we don’t have to fight everybody at the show. We’re able to get into the mouths of tobacconists a few months early.

Our future plans for growth are coming into play: looking at factory alliances and possibly building a new factory, we’re looking at certain regulations that might come into play, and if the FDA has anything to do with cigars in the next five years, then it would be smart to build a factory that’s ISO-approved. I think that the key to continue our growth will be keeping an eye on the details.

SMOKE: How are you going to maintain growth in difficult economic times?