Smoke Inn Blog Smoke Inn Cigar Talk
In the early 1970’s probably 90% of the handmade cigars sold in America were sold in New York, Chicago, Miami, and L.A. The rest of the nation was what I called “Roi Tan Country” … and although I’m best known for my career dealing with imported handmade cigars, I had no problems trying to sell every cigar I could even if it sold for less than a nickel (and I really did sell millions and millions of “seconds” of five and ten cents’ cigars for LESS THAN A NICKEL APIECE!). In fact, I remember running ads in American Legion Magazine where veterans in military hospitals could order A THOUSAND CIGARS for $29.95… delivered!!!
Well. I know you people are only interested in stories about handmade cigars, so I’ll tell you a quickie about a cigar called The Te Amo Meditation – a corona sized long filler Mexican cigar that just conquered the industry for about five or six consecutive years because it was such a well-made cigar at an incredible price. In fact, every year the major retailers (me being one of them) and my friend Mark Goldman who owned House of Oxford and was partners with me and LaVonda in three other stores (on Long Island, in the Bronx, and in New Jersey) would meet at some hotel for a big illegal price fixing get together with Al Greenwald, the head of sales for Te Amo where we would all swear on our children’s lives that we would not sell a box of Te Amo Meditations for less than a certain price.
I remember some of the people who were there… what, 50 something years ago? There was a guy from Goldsmith Brothers, a big stationary outfit that also sold cigars, a retailer named Joe Goldman (no relation to my friend Mark) a guy from Barneys – a discount drug chain that sold mountains of cigars, the guy with the store on the corner of 53rd and Lexington… Milty… Milty…. Yeah… I forgot his name. Hey, I’m getting pretty old. Did any of you see the news article where Vinny Pastore who played Big Pussy on the Sopranos died recently? Well, he was six months younger than me! So, if I forget something now and then, you could understand why! Lots of people don’t even make it to my age!
Well, the two biggest retailers of the day back then were Joe Steurenthal and Morris Schreibstein of JS Cigar on the Corner with Macy’s, and LS cigar diagonally across the street from Macy’s. I wanna keep todays’ article kinda short because we have company visiting and I’m hiding out in the basement. So, I’ll just tell you that these last two guys thought they could put me and my wife out of business, but we kicked their ass so bad that they just retired instead of trying to fight us! People thought they were real businessmen, but the truth was that they made all their money during World War Two when tobacco products were rationed and they had some kind of inside deal to not only get lots of product, but also to sell it at terrific profit margins because supplies were so scarce. Once there was a level playing field years later when we came along, they couldn’t compete with us because I always held to the advice that two characters who used to hang out in front of my father’s candy store to take numbers for the mob told me when I was a little kid… “sonny, you don’t have to be smarter than everyone else, you just have to outwork them!”
Well, I’m getting a little sidetracked from the story of an unusual night and day…
Okay – so we go to this dinner that night and everyone swears on their mother that they will not break the agreed upon price, and by the time we open our shop the next morning I get a call that JS Cigar is already selling for the less than the agreed upon price, because he’s giving an extra cigar with every box. In other words, he has already broken the price!
Then… about 10 or 11 that morning a well-dressed guy comes into our shop and to make a long story short he asked what our price would be for 2,000 boxes of Te Amo Meditations!!! And I figure this is a set up and I tell him $13.95 (the price we all agreed to the previous night) … and he tries to whittle the price down, but I tell him, our price is the same for everyone. One box. A thousand boxes, all our customers pay one price. Plus, I tell him, we’re the only place in New York City, or probably in the whole country, that has 2,000 boxes of one size of one brand in stock.
Well. Surprise, surprise… it turns out this is not a set-up, THE GUY IS FOR REAL! and wants the cigars delivered to his broker who is then going to ship them to Argentina… and we make the sale… a $28,000 sale over 50 years ago—maybe equivalent to a half million in todays money!
Now comes the tricky part because there’s no way I’m taking a 28 thousand dollar check from a guy I’ve never met… from Argentina no less!
But then he says I should call Bob Lustgarten for a refence about him and whether his check is good. Bob Lustgarten was the owner of TeAme-Geryl, the company that owned Te Amo Cigars. He was also the guy behind Lustgarten Charities who ran the largest charity in the world for Pancreatic Cancer. Well, I had met Lustgarten a few times and so I called him and he personally guaranteed this guy’s check!
Hmmm… I guess that’s all there is to the story. But years later, after Lustgarten sold out to some Mexican guys, the new Te Amo people tried to shaft us and we went to war with them… and since every story I come up with seems to connect with other stories. Remember in a recent blog I wrote about Jorge Ortiz asking me about money he had lent to Carlos Fuente? Well, the new owners of Te Amo after Lustgarten tried to shaft us (even though we were by far their biggest customer) … and that’s how I ended up finding Jorge Ortiz’s factory and making Santa Clara cigars and the wholesale company called Santa Clara to capture all the TerAmo business we could!
In just a few short years the Te Amo brand was virtually destroyed… and it was well deserved. What a pack of a$$holes!
