Ooooh Pretty Colors!:
I’m sick of mediocre cigars in high priced packaging. I walked into the local Tobacconist last week and saw a bunch cigar boxes and humidors designed to catch my eye. CAO and Gurkha are the biggest culprits of this lately, both make fine cigars but it makes me wonder if the cigar would be cheaper if they had gone the route of a cardboard or wooden cigar box.
Look at the pretty lights!
Wear a back brace prior to any heavy lifting.
Cuban Seed smuggled out in the dark of night:
I don’t care if your seed came from Cuba, you age tobacco like Cuba, and have rollers from Cuba, if it is not grown in Cuba it will not taste like a Cuban. No matter how hard you try your cigar will not taste like a Cuban, just like a Honduran cigar will not taste like a Dominican or a Nicaraguan. If you make a quality cigar people will smoke it no matter the country of origin.
Websites:
Your websites suck! I can not go to your site and find simple detailed information on your cigars, instead I’m going to vendor sites. Your sites are either annoyingly flashy with useless bells and whistles or five years out of date or both. I want to be able to find out what cigars you make and what sizes. Also give me an easy way to sign up for newsletters or press releases. Here is a prime example of this at the Alec Bradley Cigar Company website. (Thanks Cigarfan)
Update: I can’t really use Alec Bradley’s Site as an example anymore because they’ve made some major improvements to it.
Free Stuff:
You don’t send me any.
To be continued…
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey man, I gotta say I fear the new CAO Visions are falling in that category and of the $20 we will have to shell out for these, $15 will be for the outer sace packaging.
Puttin’ lipstick on the pig.
Yeah the CAO Vision is one of the things that made write this rant. That cigar isn’t bad from what I hear but the packaging I bet adds $2 to the price of the cigar.
Though I agree with you regarding the flashy packaging, I have to say I get weak in the knees when I see the pretty colours from these new boxes. The Vision is the newest vandal to the cigar store shelf to do this. I have smoke the Vision and it was a smooth cigar, easy to smoke. I paid $20 for it. Will I pay it again? I just may if I want a mild/medium cigar and have the money to burn. This is more of a $12 cigar and your right would probably be if it were not for the fancy humidor box.
I was updating my site today and found 2 of the Cigar websites were no longer in use. Pretty disappointing, when you want to find more info about cigars and their homepages are gone. I don’t want to go to cigarinternational to find out cigar sizes, construction and tastes of the cigar. I want to be able to find this info at their website.
I will add one gripe, if you sell certain cigars online and other lines at the B&M’s, list all of these cigars on your website! Many times I wanted to find more about a line of cigars and no info is available about that line. Its like they don’t even acknowledge they make this cigar.
My biggest burn in regarding lack of information was a La Flor Dominicana with a curly head. All I know is that was a special edition they gave away at events. A great cigar but there is no information on the thing. I’ll admit I’m sucked in by that packaging to until I see the price.
My favorite manufacturer website is Alec Bradley’s. It’s been “under construction” for well, forever, I think. I’ve never gotten past the “Pardon Our Dust” page. I wonder what they’re hiding? Probably something really good, like a long lost bale of 1957 Cuban leaf. That’s another good one…
Cigarfan, thanks for that tip! I’m going to link it as a prime example of a bad website.
I agree almost 100%.
I actually harbor a great deal of respect for CAO’s marketing prowess.
They’ve done a lot to make cigars “Hip” and breathe some life into the industry without inflating it like the 1990s
Still you’re right that the seasoned cigar smoker has to wade through a lot more of this fluff to get to the cigar.
They do have a great marketing arm and I understand the benefits. I like the hats and all that stuff, heck I even have a CAO Italia Humidor(Won it in a raffle) and I think it is beautiful. I like the boxes for the Italia and the Brazilia but my concern is how much of the cost of a cigar like the Vision, is going into that humidor box. Why not sell the humidor separate from the cigars?
Very good point.
There’s a lot of cost in all that hipness.
It would be pretty sweet to get a soprano boss (under a different name without all the licensing fees) for a fraction of the price.
Maybe they can release the seconds as the CAO Tenors? :)
LOL
“… Mission accomplished, but dear Vishnu your site looks like a 4th grader did it with a Tandy…”
Very nice.
Rocky Patel has updated his site but it is still not near what it should be.
Excellent post! I look forward to the next installment.
A-frickin’-men on the web criticism. Never mind the “Web 2.0 hype”, these guys are still in the high times of Fax machines. It’s been so annoying trying to find some information about a cigar, and not even being able to find a picture of it on the website! Every cigar should have that 360 degree functionality that lets you rotate a reasonably large image of a cigar for inspection. It’s so bad in some cases, I have to wonder if it’s an intentional Luddite thing.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I kind of liked the idea of C.A.O. super duper space age glowing box. I’d like to have the box, I’m not so sure about the cigars (so far I haven’t been that impressed with C.A.O.). But hey, I’m readily admit to being a geek.
I appreciate the niceification on the link, CigarJack!
I actually did a “competitve analysis” on Cigar companies and their Web sites. Check it out here:
Daily Doormatt’s Cige Site Analysis
Edited by Cigar Jack to nicefy link.
The cigar that interests me at the moment is the Partagas 150 which comes in a wooden box and still runs $20 a stick.
You are right, Rocky Patel’s Web site has improved. It needs some real refinements, but a step in the right direction
Yeah apparently a pure FLASH website seems very desirable to these guys. They seriously need talk to a good web consulting firm.
I still think they use too much FLASH, but I have to give kudos to La Flor Dominicana. They pretty much have information on everyone of their cigars, even the special ones, on the website now.
Bringing this back up cause it’s a great post. And it’s still applicable. I’ll have to look for the continuation…
Well, I am thinking that it will be a yearly report so look for it in November/December
This was just a type of rant post. I’m not sure how often I’ll do these. You’ll see more stuff like this during the winter months though when it is just too darn cold outside to smoke.