By: RICHARD CARLETON HACKER
Posted on: FEBRUARY 3, 2020
Cracks are appearing in the well-rolled wrappers of the American cigar industry, the result of an eroding cohesiveness that once united the world’s best cigar companies, insuring they remained “friendly competitors.” The glue that held them together was their trade organization, originally established in 1933 as the RTDA (Retail Tobacco Dealer’s Association), rebranded in 2007 as the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers (IPCPR), and last year, as the renamed Premium Cigar Association (PCA).
The industry’s annual trade show has historically been the major members-only gathering event for manufacturers and tobacconists alike to respectively display and purchase the newest pipes, cigars, accessories, and other tobacco-related items for the upcoming selling season. But there has been a growing dissatisfaction among the country’s retail tobacconists and cigar companies—both large and small—with the way the regulatory body of the newly renamed PCA has been running things under the management of executive director Scott Pierce.
Many of the largest premium cigar companies feel they are not being fairly represented by the PCA in relationship to the massive amounts of money they spend annually on the trade shows and related PCA costs. In addition, the PCA had proposed that the first day of the upcoming 2020 trade show be opened—for the first time—to consumers, under the banner of CigarCon. Dealers would not be allowed to purchase product during this time, which is traditionally the busiest buying day of the show. While consumers might rejoice, this would result in sales losses for the manufacturers and potentially expose some of the industry’s trade secrets to the buying public.
Read more…
