How to Build a Cigar Business Empire - Mitchell Orchant Interview

in my usual position drinking and smoking hello and welcome to our channel my name is russman this is ray and today we have a wonderful guest it's mr mitchell orton himself we're at the st james flagship store the seaguars flagship store in london and this store is absolutely stunning we're going to do a little quick tour of these stores or just to show you some of the uh wonderful features and i mean the humidor in this place is just incredible it's just a beautiful humidor i mean how long did it take you to build this place and get that place set up because well hi as well um and right it took too long is the clear answer because every project that we have costs double the anticipated budget and takes twice as long as we reckon it's going to take in fact it took longer than ever because the lockdown um our builders who we've been working with for many years had real problems getting the materials and getting the workers and getting the job done in fact there's still finishing touches that need to be done but we're kind of happy with the overall result but it took the best part of wow i'm thinking about it from start to finish about nine months which is probably about eight months longer than it should have taken to do but here we are in the flagship seaguar storage and james has always been my dream to be with the big boys to have it often jj fox on either side of us here i am stuck in the middle with you um so yeah there it is it is a beautiful beautiful store thank you and the staff over here are fantastic every time i come here it's just so welcoming i honestly love this place so if i if i live closer i'd be here far far more often than i am well you'd be very welcome but we'll have to open up near where you live my friend because i hear that's a very lovely city and it doesn't have a cigar specialist it doesn't we need one yeah really we you too you need one not just any we need a seaguar store of course and i need to be relocated there whilst it's going through the opening phase so we can hang out a bit more in here definitely definitely we'll miss that yeah so seaguars i mean the company is huge now yeah and you've had a recent merger with the casa del tobacco which which was another equally massive cigar company yeah uh based in belgium with uh the couple dominique and uh frederick frederick yes of course and you know you've known each other for some time uh you mentioned that you had like a great relationship with them but now you've kind of taken that relationship to a completely new step where you've well you've merged businesses how did that happen well um i've seen dominique and frederick at um industry events over the last i don't know lots of years always had a little nod and hello and then a couple of years ago we bumped into each other at the festival in in havana and we had a little chat and we said let's talk business serious business i knew frederick had a great reputation as a very serious businessman i knew dominique had a great reputation as a very serious cigar specialist and she is in fact a habaness man of the year first woman who was the man of the year so we met and we chatted and we decided we have similar size businesses we have a very similar outlook about the cigar business generally we got on extremely well my partner ronnie got on extremely well with them and i certainly trust his instinct better than mine and over the course of the last 15 months we put together the merger deal to become dominique london or owned by dominique london our holding company and i believe we're one of the largest cigar specialists in europe and we will become one of the largest spirit specialists in europe over the next few years so yeah it's the deal only completed about four weeks ago five weeks ago it's very very exciting for us and my team my management team the directors our board of directors we're very we're very bullish about the future it's a very big bold move by frederick dominique ronnie and myself to make something very special out of our businesses we're very expansive we're acquisition hungry and we're looking for interesting opportunities over the coming years so as a company you've gone from uh if i'm not mistaken you had revenues of around 11 million and you've now kind of increased that by a significant margin over the last year because of lockdown are you close well pre-lock down pre-lock down i think 2019 us our net sales were about 11 million pounds and 2020 i think our net sales shot up to about nearly 17 million pounds yes um and as a group we're probably somewhere around 30 million at the moment so that increase did that occur because of the lockdown or was it something which was already on track how did that happen well it's a massive jump from 11 to 17. it is but you've got to understand what you know we open new businesses um over the course of last year yeah and they've added to revenues and we've never actually had a decline in revenue since we started the business in 1997 and we were already experiencing double-digit growths first quarter of 2020 so that's pre-pandemic so we were in double digits yeah so um i think you know we were like a spring that was held down and then suddenly we went boom and the pandemic obviously um put a lot of a boost behind that so what do you think happened with the pandemic and people purchasing cigars like how did that well you know we were always the biggest well we've been the biggest for quite some years in the uk and there's been a few factors you've got a pandemic you have people locked down even though our stores stayed open because they were essential people weren't really coming in it was just click and collect and a few people may be passing by and seeing that we're open you've got people drinking more alcohol because they're locked down you've got people smoking more because they're not working in an office they're working at home we had a great summer last year the weather was terrific people are on balconies gardens whatever so they're smoking more and then you have this funny thing where our competition were essentially asleep they closed they shut their doors they messed around with a bit of a crappy website but a click and collect but the majority of them shut up shop so we just took all of their business basically i didn't notice that a lot of businesses just kind of stopped yeah there was no reason to we were providing a fantastic service for people who needed that service during lockdown and obviously you know it's not all havana cigars it's not all premium new world it's mr average on the street i'm not knocking it i smoked them as well villagers cigars aggio cigars you know um rolling tobacco's pipe tobaccos you know our pipe division is huge well if that pipe smoker whether he's a 20 year old you know um hipster or an 80 or 90 year old gentleman that's been smoking a pipe all his life if he can't go to his regular tobacconist specialist and get his pipe tobacco where is he going to go to get his tobacco he's actually going to go to seagulls or turbos online and that's exactly what happened so all we did was provide the service that the customer wanted and demanded and we provided it efficiently and fast in a safe environment for our staff our team in our two warehouses and we delivered we just did exactly what the customer wanted and needed so did this increase in revenue have an impact on the decision to merge with the casa or was that nobody in the motion no we well before the pandemic frederick and i had a um friendly agreement we were going to merge companies whatever it took that was it that was it yeah it wasn't about anything other than our desire to merge the businesses because we had a very similar philosophy on business and we continued to do so um and it was just a plan that we decided whatever it would take it was something that was going to be done it was only a matter of when and how it has been done it's been done it's been done in london is a very real thing it's the holding company to the business and actually we can add that probably the covet situation actually helps some businesses to grow absolutely yeah it's not only the bad way you know everyone complaining about the coffee it's how stop different stuff for the life and everything but actually those are businesses which making money in the coffee situation and grow absolutely and we can we continue to invest in the business and grow the business and the infrastructure of the business but you have to understand i've been investing in the retail side of the business since 2001 i think from memory um very very heavily investing to give amenity to give facility to give experience to our customers that still want the touchy feely sampling experience of trying a cigar before they make a decision to buy that cigar that's come at a huge investment we would have been much wealthier if we'd never have gone into retail but we gave that facility to our customers and over the pandemic year it wasn't obviously profitable um to say the least but we continue to operate everything other than sampling lounges and puffing rooms our hospitality venue was completely closed down because it wasn't legal to to stay open so you know we took the hit in retail but yes we made up for it in mail order but it's a shame and we hope it all comes back now we think it will do first indications are retail customers will come back to retail even though we can't sample yet in store um but we hope it will come back because we've invested so heavily we had this massive program of sampling sessions tasting sessions in different venues all around the country and it's a shame that we lost that whole momentum because it became like a bit of a club atmosphere in each location it was a lot of the same people then a few new people at every event so it became very you know clubby feeling the the people really liked coming for the tasting events and would be booking months in advance which is really cool i do sorry but yeah my mentioning was now when you're losing all the testing events and that kind of gathering but you have a new game in the in the field online virtual tasting which which opened the doors for many different people now it's not only to be local or to be able to travel to care about how you're gonna go home if you drink couple of uh scotches you know a couple of glasses now you can do that at home sitting at home chatting with the pretty much same people yeah faces and smoking your favorite cigars tasting on your cigars yeah i i've seen the website of the sea gas there's a lot of different samples where you can buy company in combination with the different whiskies different rooms uh jeans and stuff like that so how that changed the stuff well you know it it helped the community get together and uh continue to huff but they'd be birthing um and and it's been very successful you know we have between 40 and 200 people on a virtual earth it's not quite the same as sitting in a beautiful lounge and you know listening to the brand ambassador right in front of you um giving the whole story and q a sometimes the connections aren't great but in general it's a lot of fun and you know from the reactions on social media i think it's been a very positive thing that we're going to continue um certainly post lockdown because it grabs us a bigger audience or it gets that bigger audience more access to interacting with seagulls limited so yeah it's something we're going to carry on it doesn't revenue you you're estimating your business as a whole dominique london to kind of go up to about 50 million yeah how are you planning on achieving that and how soon do you think you can reach that especially with good question uh there's there's no straight answer really it's um it's the reality is it's by acquisition or or greenfield site new openings um and we're looking at various opportunities on on both those uh scenarios currently and you know i i'm really the tortoise in the cigar business you know the other merchants next door to us have been around longer than us 200 odd years whatever we've only been around 24 years 24 years this year yeah 24 years so was it 25 years now i'm getting confused it must be the whisky so yeah it's by a few things it's organic growth because we have our own exclusive brands of products that we either own or have exclusive distribution on so there'll be additions to those ranges including a new nicaraguan um that would take the market by storm i think by the end of this month um so so yeah new products that we own or distribute new um greenfield sites maybe in leeds with a better luck we're certainly looking there please do yeah um and certainly in other countries we're looking and certainly we're looking to acquire other cigar specialists in the uk and in europe so that's how we'll get to our target so the target's around 50 million but that's over the next few years and we'll see how long it takes i don't rush anything i'm very slow you know i'm the kind of guy who looks at business opportunities and sleeps on them and sleeps on them again and then throws it round you know my team for their opinion so i'm really really slow you know i've been doing this 24 years yeah so it takes time it's a question about the casa del tobacco yep you're basically exporting in some sense the spirit division to belgium to europe yeah we're giving the input on spirits how much of an impact do you expect that to have on the bottom line huge absolutely huge because dominique has designed could you put like a percentage or something to it or not at this stage i mean i probably could uh well no i probably shouldn't but but i can tell you dominique has designed and built the most beautiful cigar stores um that i've ever seen she's you know naturally an interior designer and has a flair for it so we think we build lovely stores i thought i built lovely stores 20 odd years ago longer but i didn't really because i didn't really know what i was doing my background is building convenience stores in petrol stations it's a lot different um but then you know i built nice stores then my partner ronnie came in and he looked to them and he said they're all rubbish you know refurbish them and build this one oldie world he made this one very modern make this one contemporary you know he gave it a completely different feel and flair and dominic has her own style so she has beautiful stores that are lacking a comprehensive range of um premium spirits that match up well with cigars so we're going to be putting in that into their beautiful stores so i think that's going to be a very important part of the business going forward so are you going to be focusing more on stullerdoo and the your own home brands or is it going to be a wider range of wider solutions it's going to be a fully comprehensive range of brands our own proprietary brands are exclusively distributed brands and then third-party brands that we have contracts with fantastic yeah with all that words about the how good designers dominic i'm hoping when you open the leads she will design the lead shop and we'll have an opportunity you know most beautiful stars probably for us um really we very much loved the la casa del habano concept but we recognize that our new world brands are very very strong as well so the ideal scenario is to do one of two setups either la casa del habano and a termos or a la casa del tobacco next door so you've got two stores and people can go either way so one is completely cuban one is completely like we have in chester you've got a turbo's one way comprehensive range you can have a smoke there a sampling there and the others are la casa so we like that and then the full scenario is to have a termos or a la casa del tobacco a la casa del habano and a puffin rooms but it just depends on finding the right premises and the right layout that is yeah that's something yeah calm down somebody bring a fan out i'm already there you know i can spend my lunch time on the fine lunch with the cuban cigar and i can spend my afternoon smoking nicola going in the next lounge yeah absolutely again i can as well so a completely new world store then in essence yeah i mean that would be quite a change especially in the uk where the market is predominant to cuba i mean is that changing um well it's changing in so far as the percentage of cubans new worlds is skewed it's going from about 65 to 60 percent um cuban to new world but it's not at the expense of cubans i think the market is just generally growing dramatically in the uk i don't know if it's grown dramatically all over the world i think everywhere is it yeah i don't know because i don't know i know the market in belgium and i know the market in the uk and that's what the the only countries i think struggle with the growing market or the countries which start with the silly legislations you know yeah it's a big packaging they're not allowed to smoke even on the street big literally a few days ago i found out in milan in a few cities in italy not allowed to smoke on the street same in quite a lot of countries i'm sorry to say how ridiculous so basically you are out in especially in netherlands if i can mention you know you're allowed to buy uh narcotics and stuff like yeah marijuana yeah which potentially if you smoke marijuana you can drive a car and you can make a car crash and kill people but you're not allowed to have a cigar in a proper way and you know i i know that you and all your colleagues from industry make a lot to keep that silly legislation behind so far you know not making interruptions to the normal looking of the cigars normal ways to smoke i know we're still not able to smoke everywhere indoors but we still can sample cigars in places sure so i really appreciate that what you're doing for that i think some common sense prevailed whether the legislation concerning cigars in the uk um was a few years ago you know we managed to distinguish ourselves between cigars and cigarettes with very different product um and i think there was some common sense where the legislation was concerned we had some good supporters and you can sample in a cigar store where they've got facility to do so one chair 30 chairs whatever you can sample you can sample one two three cigars and you can decide what you want to ask your cigar specialist to sell to you otherwise how do you make a considered purchase decision for a box of cigars that's going to cost you six seven hundred pounds for example if you can't try it first now bear in mind the uk is one of the most expensive countries in the world for tobacco because it's an exercise duty regime and it goes up automatically every year you have to give the cigar aficionado a chance at least to try that cigar sample it before he makes a decision absolutely so yeah fortunately we've got a comfortable situation where we can trade and the cigar smoker can actually enjoy his hobby as opposed to a cigarette smoker it's a very different thing it's a nicotine-y thing an inhaley thing which is not what cigars are all about it's a completely different product but they don't distinguish them in some other countries which i think is a crying shame if not ridiculous well the question i wanted to ask was when it comes to the casa del tobacco and the uh well the new business don't leak london what are like the immediate plans i mean does that have any impact at all on customers on both sides are there any like plans to kind of like amalgamate any of the services or anything to that extent no it's more back end we're integrating marketing and i t um there's nothing really at the front facing at this stage at all there's no changes in the operation retail or mail order it's really all back-end improvements that we can do because we're very strong on marketing and i.t we have a huge department doing it and marketing literally 24 hours a day um belgium doesn't quite have the same setup they're set up but it's different so we'll be taking over that there's no difference other than the spirits ranges will be put into la casa del tobacco and belgium over the coming months it's not a case of you know you can suddenly get belgium regional editions in the uk sorry you can't and vice versa with uk regional editions you can't get them in belgium it's just not going to happen if the businesses have their own identity they have their own suppliers that's exactly how it continues there will be introduction of ranges in the uk but it's accessories stuff because dominique and frederick are better at sourcing certain lines of products certain categories of products than us so we just tap into that so that's accessories there may be some kind of back and forth but in terms of crs spirits are going to be exported yeah in terms of cigars it's going to be very very individual on both sides correct so from a customer's standpoint is there going to be any difference at all like are they going to see any difference in the uk at all in terms of service or anything to that extent no nothing um you know events where dominique will be the guest star which would be really nice and um likewise i'll be going over to belgium and we'll be welcoming our uk clients over to our belgium hoofs and uh and events which you know i think they'll enjoy because we can try and put together junkets where we get a load of guys to go over there um and hang out with us over there and have a really good time at the kazadel tobacco in belgium okay so from a customer standpoint essentially there's no difference then uh no there's no difference we were fabulous before and we're going to be fabulous after what about yourself in terms of your position i mean you've you've are you taking a are you taking a little bit of a back seat are you continuing on and you know charging forward because if you did take a back seat it would have been well earned yeah thank you very much but no um i'm not taking a back seat and i didn't want to do anything in business that would put me in a position to take a back seat because i want to be doing exactly what i'm doing for a long time so i continue as managing director of seaguar's and i'm also the chief commercial officer of dominique london so i'm on the board of directors and i'm a substantial shareholder and basically nothing's changed other than i've got a bit more responsibility now because i'm on the board and obviously decisions about acquisitions and anything major i'm very very involved in so as as a collective you if i'm not mistaken you currently own uh 65 percent of dominique and then the other 35 is private equity private equity yeah so that kind of helped with merging both businesses together yeah and we have a war chest of cash to go and acquire and open new businesses now you know as opposed to really exciting well it is because previously you know um we reinvested substantially back into the business year in year out to grow the business classic entrepreneurs trap you know what do you do do you take money out every year and go and buy ever bigger bigger houses and cars and holidays or do you you know live at sensible level and put all the money back in the business and keep growing the business it's it's a trap every entrepreneur finds themselves every successful entrepreneur finds themselves in that position when do they say stop investing stop growing and actually take something for yourself so we've been literally reinvesting year in year out since day one so it was one step forward and uh then you'd have to integrate that business it could take three years and then it was producing profits and then you know you could strike out and do another acquisition and so on so now it's different we don't have to reinvest every cent of profit although we're actually continuing with that now but we also have a warchester private equity to acquire so what kind of businesses are you looking to acquire mainly cigar businesses existing cigars yeah other cigar retailers um and certainly um new locations and new countries would you be looking at purchasing cigar brands or anything to that extent yeah we could be yeah this way okay you're being very vague well because i'm more really a retailer and an e-tailer so brands i don't really understand that's more my partner ron's territory yeah um ron and and and our colleague paul they're really the brands guys for me it's all developed which has been extremely popular as well extremely successful boutique brand multi-award winning absolutely yeah so it's really down to ronnie yes although the cigar malt is down to me i'll i'll take uh i'll take the credit it's down to romney but i know that you have your part as well in the box over there so ah well yeah yes yes i mean the exclusive cigar brands are all down to me that was that was our favorite the davidoff selection many many people know probably that you are yeah you're more than successful businessman but they don't know maybe that you're very good uh in your palette thank you very good in in making a distinctive blend of you do not you know what exactly want from the blend you know how to require that from the partners which you make in exclusive cigars and that's why you know the orchard selection cigars are probably one of the best lines you have in store non-cuban cigars all the orchard selection i've tried them more more more you know i tied most of them i still haven't tried the placencia i promise you i'm going to try it soon and i'll give you my opinion okay so everything else i tried so far it's been better than the whole the the the the cigars yeah that's interesting yeah okay it's my opinion you know people know me they know what kind of stuff i smoke alex bradley ocean selection better than dalek bradley in my opinion well i agree absolutely absolutely agree whatever our translation is better than the normal well it's off the charts that oliver that's in a class of its own that's a super premium i couldn't believe how good that is no i mean everyone says that they're sold out but they are a super super premium i'm i'm very proud to have worked on these co-brands you know i i i've done blending master classes um in dominican republic years ago with davidoff which is tremendously interesting and i've done blending in peru at our factory in tarapato for inca secret blend i blended i actually did blend those cigars um and and our our co-brands are slightly different obviously i'm not picking the leaves on the co brands i did for um inka secret blend when we created the range with gennaro lettieri our partner at tobacco del oriente but the co-brands i'm selecting from blends so um i'll send a brief to the manufacturer whether it's oliva alec bradley davidoff um la flor dominicana who have regis a boutique brand massively successful for us you mentioned the florida main canada yeah in the news now we're going to do a co-brand with them in the future yeah that's in the office later this year it'll be this year probably q3 okay it's gonna be interesting there's something really interesting andrew estate we've done a co-brand with as well um three cigar sizes lightweight middleweight heavyweight after the boxes um been very very successful but i don't i don't select the leaves i select the blends i give the could you run through the the process of how that normally the process is is is simple once they've agreed the concept of doing a co-brand i emailed them a brief of how i want the blend to express itself so sizes strength flavor aroma draw so the construction wrapper color um that's about it that's the basic brief they come back with usually six blend samples just number one to six or sometimes they've got code numbers i sample them i've got my ways of sampling them i have sherbet powder in between cleanse the palette i do them one at a time then i do them all together and i do a critique back to them what i liked and disliked about each what i wanted to change and adjust you know it could be i want half a leaf more hero or less i want a looser draw i want a darker wrap or a lighter wrap or a smoother wrapper and i do a complete critique it goes back to them and usually a month later sometimes two months later get another load of blend samples and this process can go on for up to a year and sometimes has until we get it really dead on yeah and it's like ah number two you got it dead right bam and then we're into production it seems quite in-depth in terms of like getting everything together making sure that you've got you think that's difficult try creating a box oh yeah i was just about to mention that is beautiful unbelievable every detail in this is just beyond belief inside and outside you can't see the outer cardboard in front of your face every detail on every side of the box and they're numbered it must have been these were what it is a couple of years ago these were 30 pounds each yeah a bit less i think they came out 27.99 off the top of my head yeah no no i remember paying 29.99 oh there you go specifically because i remember that and i was blown away by how good i was honest honestly completely blown away i'm telling you it's in the super premium i love serious cigars anyway because i love that vitola yeah i know ray does as well and this one was just wow and now it's 50 pounds each yeah well they're a collector's item now what do you mean next time when you see the new edition i didn't want to buy them new editions coming out this year 300 boxes davidoff davidoff fortune selection uh liverpool edition what's up toro okay and it is insane is that by mr kellner yeah yeah really nice people if they don't know mr kelner just google and find out well i did hanky kellner's master class on blending um a long time ago with ron and we were blown away with it i mean he's just a genius in the business one of the guys i've seen many classes and how to test how to make your palette properly how to taste all the different things yeah it's one of the classes i've visited few times and i learned so much from him and i've met him since on a few occasions at um tasting events and he's the loveliest man and he's just also an encyclopedia of knowledge an incredibly interesting man and a very kind man to speak to so yeah he's been a pleasure to know so yeah um we've got a new one coming out i've told you about the blending process um well here's a question then yeah this is gonna probably get a very fence-sitting type answer from you but which one is would you say is gonna be better which one is better do you think the lancero or the toro is better well they're different because you get more intensity of flavour from the land sorrow whereas the toro with the bigger ring gauge you're getting milder flavors but lots of them kind of difficult to describe you're getting volumes of smoke that you're never going to get with the land sarah 38 ring gauge yeah 40 ring gauge um it's very different so the flavor is the same okay but the expression is different there's more intensity in the lancero and it actually tastes like a stronger cigar the balance is different between strength and flavor just because of the ring gauge and the length so the blend is essentially the same then just kind of expanded it yeah yeah ah okay in that case that's going to be a very interesting yeah the the flavors the same as the intensity changes so your perception on your palette because of the intensity changes how you're experiencing the flavor if you've got any lanceros left contrast them if you smoke them side by side you'll find it very very interesting i'd like to buy some i don't have anything left to smoke tomorrow i don't know i've got any michelle in my office might have some special in the old orchard reserve you're good to just leaving the humidor i couldn't i couldn't just leave from there we have a seagulls reserve humidor it's a walking humidor and the stash there is insane it's like is that the one in norfolk yeah it's just the uh director's door yeah what is in there well we can't tell you but it's just everything i can imagine it's it's mad i don't even know why we still got it but uh you know my two gems well laura my co-director and michelle my general manager uh every time there's something either auction selection or havana limited editions or it might be a dabit off limited edition there's a stash stock it's insane the last time was though i couldn't even get into it but there's you know they stash this stuff it's our history i suppose there must be some vehicles with the numbers with the numbers 52 yeah unbelievable with some good codes as well crazy yeah so that is really what factory right there there you go well i don't know they don't even let me in there in case i might take something to throw everything out [Laughter] we're going with nobody every time you come to norfolk maybe i'll open the door oh oh that would be quite we have a lot of questions about that so you know we've got really weird stuff like you know the first auction selection ever was the ramona jonas bella coso it's the uk regional edition i've seen that there's only one box left surviving i've never seen i've never seen him live i've seen him on the pictures to be honest i know about it then yeah got one box wrapped in in glassine paper but how are you how you managed to discuss with cuba to make that kind of uh like it's not like you're approaching a new world brand and you know you've got negotiations with them so cuba is different different territory i mean you're smoking a norton selection uh yeah so so the program started uh way back with the ram on beta cosos and um the credit for the whole program starting goes to john dalton who used to be the sales director of hunters and francois and who i'm still a great friend with uh the guy was an absolute genius and a really super guy to work with for many many years and he was the one who came to me and he suggested that i could select my own cigars a master case or two every every year maybe twice a year and i could select the factory code that i wanted the date code that i wanted the wrapper that i wanted i could test them out beforehand and then they would double hunters and frank out as our importers would double band them for me and i was like wow what a great idea nobody else is doing this so i jumped on that and the first one was the ram on better cosos and thereafter every year we've done one two sometimes three of my own auction selections that i go to hunters their warehouse and i select the boxes that i want to try or they'll send me different boxes and i'll test them and then i'll select the master cases from that specific code yeah fun enough it's it's not as easy as you think because sometimes they'll send me something and i'm like it's okay but it's not it's not a cigar of distinction merit character that i want to say is so much better than anyone you're going to pick off the shelves in my shops or whatever i want to find something that's really special it might be a very light wrapper that i particularly like or a dark wrapper that i think my clients will like because it suits that brand of cigars it might be a specific factory code that we've cracked and we know that's a great main havana factory or just the blend is like insane for that particular vintage or a combination of all those things so it has to be something a little bit special you know sometimes hans and franco come up with something that's just super you know they'll they'll find sancho gigantes 99 or 98 box codes and they'll say to me there's only 20 boxes do you want them and i'll jump on that or ram on 898 they're discontinued and they'll say we've got 15 boxes do you want them for an auction selection yeah absolutely so it's like kind of special some things it has to be a little bit special a little bit different something of merit and character and and then the program extended over to new world and co-branding um and and it's really grown oliver alec bradley regius davidoff drew estate you know it's presencia absolutely so it's become a really it's become quite a steam train that just keeps going and going and we have a huge following abroad for orchard selection particularly in japan our japanese clients absolutely love all so that's really cool new world really yeah yeah and you and cubans see all translation in belgium uh that's something that might happen yeah that well it might actually roll out over europe over the next over the next few months hopefully yeah that's going to be interesting it depends where our manufacturers that we're working with want to go with the product that would be that would make sense i mean you've got orchard selection here it would it would make a lot of sense yeah we think that so this particular bolivar it's an orchard selection yeah why is this one an autumn selection uh it was actually made to celebrate my 50 my 50th birthday not my 55th my 50th yeah my 50th so is it 50 i thought you said 55 we did it we did a 50 and a 55th i believe this is the 50. it's not the 50th okay i believe so um he's got a good amount of age on it then by now yeah this is a 2015. yeah this is 2015. very nice to go so what smoking is absolutely dead on so when you got this what kind of made you think this is the one so so i love bolivar bella cosas it's actually my favorite cigar um probably of all time and i i've smoked them from oh my gosh 60s vintage onwards up to the presents because i always say oh no that's me and ronnie when we're together it's always it's always about trinidad but my favorite cigar is bolivar bellicose so over the years i've made a few different editions of auction selection i think the first one was the 2007 which is yes an outstanding year beyond compare as far as i'm concerned just the best year and you know the best factory codes the juno seven july oh seven codes are magical that was the year cuba got everything right construction quality control blend wrappers everything i remember because you had them on the store for uh i think a couple of years ago yeah and it wasn't that much more expensive than the standard one yeah which is which is odd considering how old they were no i had a mountain to them oh yeah okay this is my favorite cigar so literally i don't know i had a wall of them i bought a couple of them and i was blown away by i mean i love bolivar anyway it's not a strong cigar i never found it strong no they used to be strong you know in the 1980s and early 90s there were strong cigars are very bold they really were probably bollywood in particular absolutely but they dumbed down the blends in 94 over to 95. so that's why see all this time everyone keeps telling me you know bolivar bellicose a really strong cigar and i've smoked it's not that strong it's full of flavor but it's not full strength yeah i mean i find party guys some party guys you guys a little bit stronger so i thought i'm not feeling the strength in this one you won't love them though absolutely love them so let's go back to like the beginning because you know you've got all these successes at this moment and it's incredible to see i'm genuinely pleased because you're the biggest retailer in the country you're now the biggest retailer in in the continent well one of them there are some very big other some wonderful and very huge retailers in germany and some other countries but you're pretty freaking huge now yeah i mean it's ridiculous we are to think how big uh seaguars and dominique london is now but it started pretty small didn't it i mean it was quite humble beginnings very soon well it started as mitchell's cigar company um back in 1993. um i i did part-time mail order of cigars whilst i was in a completely different business i was in the petrol station and convenience store business and that came to a sad ending in 1997 and i took a break and decided that i wanted to be full-time in the cigar business because i loved cigars i've loved cigars since i was 15. my father is a cigar smoker my grandfathers my great uncles they were all cigar smokers so i thought i'll do this full time and so mitchell's cigar company had closed for business and some time a little while later seagulls limited was created with the assistance of my father um who had a lot of fun with me smoking cigars and working out what i was doing i only could work out what i was doing because he couldn't quite understand e-commerce but he knew a little bit about selling cigars um or smoking cigars or both so we started seagulls limited with my longtime pa laura who's became a director and owner of the company and is still now a direct director of uh seagulls limited and part of our new group and yeah we set it up in 97 full time but back in 93 we were probably the first on the internet in the uk as a cigar specialist um we worked crazy hours 24 hours a day 97 98 99 2000. there was no competition of any description we were kind of cutting edge in tech from those early days we were putting new features in as they were becoming available and as speeds increased you know you went from dial up to adsl to broadband whatever you know fiber just became faster and faster the ecommerce platforms became more robust more user-friendly more feature-filled we were always as a cutting edge on tech and we were taking a very dominant position in the cigar trade in the uk but it was still early days and of course the other cigar retailers were still very strong but i think they could feel the pain from us and probably around 2000 they decided to also have websites that's three years three years on and in sort of internet e-commerce terms it's 30 years too late um so we decided to reverse into retail at that stage and disrupt the market in retail because we'd already become the market leader on the internet online and we bought the second oldest actually at the time was the third oldest tobacconist name in the uk turbos tobacconist established 1817 in liverpool the previous owners had ruined the business literally buried it so we thought well it's a nice old name we're gonna see if we can bring it back to life and you know i think our competitors had a good laugh liverpool you know all the funny stories about liverpool shell suits and you'll have your tires changed but i'd gone to liverpool and had a look around there and had a pint in a nice local pub and i thought my god this is the most beautiful city nice pubs nice restaurants nice hotels very friendly people great architecture i was like yeah this is a city i want to be in so we bought this really crappy shop that was on his knees and we brought it back to life a couple of years later lease ended nightmare had to relocate bought two new shops refurbished them very small shops made them very beautiful the business boomed there and then we moved on into chester one shop two shops three shops la casa del habano a whiskey shop and we marched on into mayfair then we wanted to plant our flag in the west end of london tiny shop but it's lovely it's packed the cue to get in there i'm not getting the sampling lounge unbelievable busy from the minute we open now when we're reopening for lockdown we're taking bookings because it's got to be fair to people for sampling half an hour each that kind of thing but the queue to get in there it's unbelievable here's a question about setting up the online business because a lot of cigar smokers one of the key things that they enjoy doing is all it's almost like um it's it's almost a necessity to some extent where they need to come in sensory experiences yes they want to feel the cigar they want to check the pack they want to make sure that it's the exact cigar that they want to buy yeah how did you overcome that especially in 1997. this is like way before the internet was as popular as as it is now yeah so how did you overcome that challenge to get people to purchase online very difficult in the early days we put webcams in our humidors and if somebody wanted to be picky about what they wanted we'd hold the cigars up to the cam and they'd say they like the rapper they don't like the wrapper now we take uh we take requests if they've got a particular request for a shade of rapper leaf they want dark leaf light leaf colorado or anything in between and we'll do our best to select um but yeah it's very difficult because it's a sensory touchy feedy experience and in the early days people didn't want to do that and couldn't understand how you can order a box of cigars online so we'd say and we were the first to say no quibble guarantee if you're unhappy with your purchase for any reason or for no reason no problem we'll collect it or you can ship it back to us we'll even pay you return shipping and that's how we got over that sort of hump and you know um after somebody has received our service you know they could order at three in the afternoon it's there at nine in the morning or if they're in london they can have it within an hour central london areas when they get that experience to open the box it's english market selection it's been selected by our specialists who have been trained by hunters and francois or if it's a new world that might have had the davidoff training or the tour training and they open that box and see they've got that delivery faster than they could drive to a store and risk getting a parking ticket or a clamp yeah and it's fully guaranteed and they've got it cheaper than they could have bought it anywhere in the uk they're not going to go anywhere else there's nowhere else to go so that guarantee that you have no quibble that's always that from the beginning yeah we took the pain laura and i worked that out we thought we're going to take the pain it's going to eat into our margins dramatically in the early years but it's going to pay dividends later and that's what we did and we were the first and of course everybody copied us but on that matter everyone's copied us throughout our history well you say everyone i don't think everyone has that guarantee well a lot of retailers have that it's still quite rare well that's another good reason to come to us but we've been copied everything we did we were the first to do singles samplers online um all the features online autoresponders you know you name it whatever we've done everyone's copied us in the uk and abroad but that's fine because we figure imitation is the greatest form of flattery and do you know why i came in this business you want to hear the best story of all i came in this business because i went to all the competitors as many as i could london around the uk and i studied it in detail in depth and i thought i can do this much better than them they're all amateurs they may have been professionals in previous generations for the people that have been around a long time they may have been very professional great cigar specialist when they were younger but as they got older you know what their passion had gone their love for the game was gone and their expertise for keeping up with everything you've gone and i thought this is wide open i can do everything better than the whole lot of them you think they just became complacent and maybe it was an old boys network most of them are out of the business now we've made sure they're out the business one way or another death or retirement as we call it um so yeah i thought i thought at the time we could do a lot better i come from a hospitality background i was in the hotel business with my dad for many years this is like a huge customer service cleanliness merchandising all these very basic things you know marketing didn't exist didn't exist so we put it in you know have a look around our website have a look around our warehouses our our retail stores if they're not perfectly clean and organized and merchandised on my staff wearing suits and ties and badges with their names on and they're not reading books the whole time studying then i haven't done my job right but that is what what i've described is my business and you won't find that i don't think in any other competitor in the uk it's a rare thing it's a project it's a project it's an ongoing project lifestyle project absolutely ongoing well these so you had this thriving online business things were going extremely well yeah we disrupted the market you did you had your competitors scrambling to come online yep and you decided to kind of reverse things and go retail why not a seaguars retail store why was it termos because termos was an old name and back in those days of the internet um you needed to be bricks and clicks to give you the credibility so by saying we own turbos tobacconist established 1817. gave us a lot of credibility and it's quite fascinating because i think the year after we bought turmoils and made this big noise about we've been around since 1817 we'd more than doubled our internet business really so that was partly because obviously things were progressing with e-commerce but it was partly because it gave us a tremendous amount of credibility that is yeah it does i mean in 1817 as soon as someone sees that it's like oh this is a long term and channels is it has been around for that long and it's been trading continuously yeah it hasn't stopped as well and it was originally a havana cigar importer as well we have old paperwork and old photos where it says havana cigar importers so it's got a very good heritage and and you know makes us a serious um old business in the uk only jj fox down the road are older than older than us as a cigar retailer in the uk there was another um retailer they went out of business i think they were somewhere up north and now uh this escapes me blackburn i think it was but then they're gone so why is this store called seaguars um because the merger was in place yeah and we figured we needed a seaguars flagship store somewhere where i could actually um entertain my clients in terms of sampling events i i entertain my clients in my at our offices we have a sampling lounge um but that's like business clients it's very different so we wanted to be in an environment where um i could be facing the business and holding high level events for vintage cigars and ron could have high level events in london for very rare uh premium single more whiskeys and and rums so and we have a turbo's shop around the corner you do yeah which is a very different ethos because you know they have a very different vibe and brand totally different vibe and it's very much pipes and pipe tobaccos as well as obviously all types of cigars whereas here it's only havana cigars and orchard selection cigars there's nothing else and it and here it's it's the best of the best single malt whiskies as well as our own ranges and some rums and other premium spirits so it's the epitome of the luxury seaguars limited offering yes it absolutely is from like the store and you know you've got all of these businesses you've got all these locations you've now got belgium and everything but if let's say all of this was too hypothetical you were kind of starting from scratch and today with the internet and you know the world exactly how it is if you were to start completely from scratch now and to set up a business in a cigar industry how would you do it would you have it i wouldn't you wouldn't it's all over really yeah no one should ever get in this business they should buy a subway franchise instead to make money from day one there's there's no way of starting in this business profitably no one should ever do it so yeah it's a fact right single site location why is that why is that um [Music] partly because we took the dominant position a quarter of a century ago nearly and partly because the margins are very tight on both boos and cigars rents are very high staff costs are very high rates costs are very high the economics don't stack up it's it's stacked up for us because i was always i had an expansive policy so we got an economy of scale as the business grew and had different divisions as well as product categories but you know if i was starting up today i would never go in this business what business would you have gotten into if you're starting off today [Laughter] given advice from the businessman i actually have no idea we have absolutely no idea because the only things i've ever known about are property petrol and cigars um so the petrol industry well that went down the tubes for independents like me years ago um the property business is is a very complicated one that i'm actually still in but i wouldn't advocate anyone to just go in that and and i'm not going back into it full time either so don't know very difficult hard economic times very difficult youtube channel yeah absolutely absolutely no it's a very good question what would i do well i guess you don't need to you don't need to do i do supercar videos i think you've got a few you know you've got you've got a little collection of cars now which is uh quite an impressive collection very small very small let's not talk about that but you know so cigar business the scar industry it's become far too tough for any competitors to come in you've kind of taken over a lot of the industry and but what you've also done is you've you've made it great for the customers so you may not be it may not be great for competitors it may be pretty crappy for competitors but i think you focus more on the customers which is what we are essentially and what most people are it's been very customer focused but i probably haven't been bad for competitors because i think i've made more of a scene in the uk i've made a big deal about the uk market as being the mecca for havana cigars we have auctions every three months originally they were terrestrial auctions they were big industry events um well you've been great for cigar brands but not necessarily cigar retailers i don't know do you think no i i do think i've been good for cigar retailers i think i've brought more business into london and into the uk generally um no i think i've been actually very good for them um we could have done things differently and it would have been worse for the for the industry generally and better for ourselves but we didn't we chose that we wanted to be part of this network and work with our contemporaries and i i think in in our generation now this timing i think we've been very very good for them then we bought a lot of business to different areas especially london and to the internet so yeah we've made a big deal about the uk and london as being the mecca of the cigar world that benefits everybody because for example if a cigar comes out and i've only got 10 boxes and i'll sell them to my client he'll then go to our competitors so it's actually good for everybody i guess so yeah i mean you also supply a lot a lot of the uh hotels around this area and well we supply a lot of hotels around the uk around the uk yes so you supply a lot of hotels and a lot of these hotels they have their own sampling not sampling larger but they have their lounges or terraces terraces yes yeah the terraces some of them have sampling lounges and this has kind of you know grown the whole cigar scene far more than what it was yes people can and they help us yes because because guests that go into cigar terraces to try a cigar then want to know where to buy it and the sommeliers will either say well you can bark from us whilst we're open in the evening or you can go to termos or seagulls or whoever down the road um so yeah no that's that they're great we love hotel cigar terraces they're fabulous for all of our businesses on this street and and all around the uk it's not just the businesses though because what it's done is it's actually improved the whole cigar scene well it's a big cigar scene in the uk you know there's there's there's clubs and herbs and verves all over the country all the time there's people getting together pre-pandemic days on cigar terraces in cigar sampling events at cigar specialist stores it's a big scene this didn't exist 20 years ago ray's been part of a lot of the uh zoom calls and a lot of the verbs and you know race constantly on uh these uh get togethers yeah he's on our house as well a lot of events you know all kind of interesting events i'm usually going yeah even virtually before the pandemic i've been on many you know face-to-face events and and not only virtual of course but uh yeah it's uh it's been great to love it you know i've i've smoked cigars for the last seven eight years i reckon you know decent smoking not before that yeah once in a year or something yeah and the literally the last two three years opened my eyes i i used to meet a lot of people people like you people like you know other cigar aficionados other collectors and stuff and and sitting and chatting with people from the industry is just blind mining i've been doing this for 30 years i want to be part of the industry you know i i love the idea to chat with people about cigars i can talk all day about cigars mentioning anything else yeah anything else just cigars specific cigar specific blends and stuff it's so fascinating yeah it is just the industry of the i'm really happy that i'm in uk i live in uk and all that people right it's the mecca it's yeah i'm agree you know i've been in smoking around europe in different places being in germany in austria and belgium it's not the same the vibe it's a different vibe vibe is not the same you have a lot of people all day as well but uk and the vibe exactly the vibe it's a similar vibe in the us i've got to tell you i haven't been in us unfortunately very interesting very similar vibe not quite the same but you've got a lot of places you can go a lot of people you can see a lot of sampling lounges cigar lounges it's a very very good vibe over there but we are very lucky over here as i say we've got a sampling exemption for cigar stores a lot of good cigar lounges and stores all around the uk um not just our own ones you've got jj fox down the road there a bit further down the road 1a is opening uh havana cigar exchange they're going to have a lovely sampling area um dab it off up the road there where you can sample on the street they've got a pavement license and franco's loads of places termos up the road you can smoke there's the lovely store in newcastle cuban cigar club um there's a lot you know you can look at the hunters and frank our website and you can see all over the country hotel terraces cigar stores with um you know specialist sampling exemption and i think everyone should support their local cigar store whether it's mine or or others because use it or lose it yeah and if you go back to the um probably 70s every major city would have four or five specialist cigar stores specialist tobacconists pipe tobaccos rolling tobacco cigars and so on now we're struggling to find one in any major city and we've we've tried to reverse that a little bit but we're only obviously a small business other people have come in you know various locations there's some great actually there's some really good cigar stores that have opened over the last few years and good luck to them you know i'm i'm sure they're doing well for themselves and it's a great amenity consumers have to use them when they're in those areas they've got to use them otherwise the individual won't be able to keep this lovely thing going so we're lucky at the moment we've got a good spread of stores all over the uk um not so many good stores in scotland although there is um the guys casc they're very good retail yeah they're good retailers they do beers and they do whiskeys and they've got walking humidors and they're good guys in scotland so they're highly recommended as well so you know look on the hunters website because we've got a good scene here probably one of the best in europe i would say so why does the uk have such a good cigar scene in comparison to many places we're one of the oldest markets in the world for havana cigars i know 230 years we must be coming up for spain as well we have spain's old but that's a different scene as well we have the special show a few weeks ago about it you know the ems ldma stuff many many years ago yes english market selection absolutely despite now is completely different thing than years ago yeah before there's rapper colors and stuff like that now it's a it's just a another type of legit cigar yeah but uh yeah it's uh uk is one of the major importers of the last 100 hundred in 20 years in the cubans yeah 230 years yeah probably the first the first importers were late 19th century an incredible thing i mean considering how relatively small of a country we are compared to so many of the other european massive countries and we import such a vast amount of cigars we have such a huge interest in cigars significant market yeah we've got a history in cigars we've got prime ministers that were like you know uh thoroughly en enthralled in the world of cigars absolutely it's it's i mean the history is extremely rich and there's this almost like a tapestry it's just wonderful totally seeing it so the fact that we've got companies which are doing well now because there was a there was quite a dip in the industry for some time where um maybe maybe the industry wasn't growing and this is like a little while ago so since then i think it seems like it's not just recovered it's growing and it's growing quite a lot and it looks like it's the younger generation where we've got people between 20 and 30 which are really kind of coming into the industry yeah it's a different demographic for sure how do you manage that demographic um well we manage it because we recognized some years ago that that was going to be the growth area for the future so we reacted by um realizing that they weren't going to be so interested in havana cigars they were more likely to be interested in new world cigars and our our marketing prediction was that they would be buying a mix of as a new world we didn't quite get it right because we thought it was going to be 50 50. it's actually more new world than havana's so we introduced a huge range of new world cigars we were the first in the uk to introduce a huge and ever-changing and updating range of new world cigars and that's exactly how we addressed it and we were very successful in doing so so what's the split for the younger generation when it comes to cubans and new worlds it's 60 40. 60 40. yeah 60 is havana's 40 is new world do you think that is uh the younger generation used to buy more new worlds because of the price cost no more it's not priced no price okay nothing to do with price because a premium new world cigar and a havana cigar that are the same for today roughly the same price there's not much difference in it at all in fact sometimes the new world can be more expensive on a premium so it's definitely not price um i think the the social medias and social media you know huge amounts of someone you've got the pictures of nice looking cigars you want to buy them you want to find them go to the nearest shop they have them you buy them i think i think that's a huge influence and also you know there's there's a big difference between you old brands and havana brands there's no face of a havana brand if you think about there's no mr monte cristo but there actually is a placencia a fuente a padron on a lever um and i could go on and on and on and people like to listen to brand ambassadors people like that it's a family-owned business people like that story and that connection so i think the younger generation i think it resonates with the younger generation that much more than new world offering that's just that's my opinion you know it's great we have brand ambassadors for havana cigars as well yeah but it's different they are the brand ambassadors they don't own the business you know they didn't create the business it's amazing when i listened to nestor placencia for example talking about you know the leaf the factories his family the products it's for me it's it's it's mesmerizing one person a few a few days ago been on a crucible with literally the questions was all over you know they that was the first session for three hours which we have like 300 questions probably yeah to mr and it's the answer all of them there's nothing he doesn't know about the whole process he's in my opinion he's an absolute rock star i'm i'm i'm just so impressed by him i'm so impressed by cigar professor of the the professor it's very good and i'll tell you another fabulous character in the industry is jose blanco he's a walking talking encyclopedia of cigars and blending fantastic we're going to have him here to do an official opening actually because sorry one of the only brands we we carry other than havana cigars are fuente because we are the distributor of fuente in the uk yes and we love fuente um and jose will be here as the brand ambassador to do a fuente event yeah hopefully in a few months time as soon as it's legal to do so all the weather's great we'll schlep him over here you know and we'll we'll give him a nice big cigar a nice big whiskey and we'll maybe go out in the square and have a select audience 40 50 people and we'll do a terrific fuente cigar sampling so yeah these personalities behind the business you know they give a different perspective to the younger generation 24 to 32 i think was a demographic marketing told me they give a different perspective to the havana cigar smoker well what about the older generation how they shifted along with new world cigars has there been any change here's the change i'm such an old boy in this business i'm 56 now i've been full time in the business since i was 32. sadly a lot of my clients that started with me when i was they're already in their 70s then they're dead now i mean it's terrible and these were lovely guys that i really enjoyed i used to go around to a lot of their homes they used to deliver personnel used to have a cigar with them they'd buy one guy bought a box of punch punch every week from me i'd go around to his home i'd sit down he'd write out a check to me and say no what's i'm writing it out take up take us a go out the box and smoke it these these guys unfortunately passed on this generation but you know um i'm not just saying the older generation my age and above only spoke about it so guys i've got tons of clients who are younger in their 20s they wouldn't smoke another cigar but a havana it's horses for courses it's what suits your palate look i'm a i'm a i am the brand ambassador as far as i'm concerned for havana cigars i love them i've always loved them that's what i started smoking as a kid that's what i stole out of my dad's humidor when i was 15. loved him it was a saint louis ray regis i remember it well havana cigar i love them and i smoke them all day every day all day from the minute i wake up in the morning i get a coffee i get a cigar it's havana cigar usually an el rey demi test sometimes a particle short if i really want to wake up fast and i smoke them all through the day however i very much appreciate new world cigars and it's a bit like i love diet coke i drink diet coke every day sometimes i fancy a seven up a diet seven up it's something different it's a change of pace a new world cigar could be a change of pace change it up change it down on strength on flavor so you know it's it's it's a matter of choice and i think people should mix up the choices and educate their palate by smoking from all different regions nicaragua honduras dominica peru even other smaller areas they should try because it's the only way you're going to educate your palette different brands different sizes different regions of course so do you think would you say that people above the age of 40 or maybe above the age of 50 they kind of the split is skewed more towards cubans yeah would you say it's about 10 or more hard to drill down into the figures into any finite detail but yeah it's skewed towards cubans as you get older as you get older what then you've got the younger generation are more receptive to trying yes varieties and only cubans yeah until one day i tried royal jamaica i'd say okay that's nice cigar but it's not cuban why it's nice then everyone say the cuban cigars are the cubans here they see there's no other cigars you know back in when i was smoking yeah yeah and i started digging around the start i found there's a cigars made in nicaragua in dominican republic and i started trying different ones i say okay that's a good cigarettes as well so why i'm not trying more of them i already know the cubans most of them how they taste i want to try the new worlds and that's what i'm doing now i'm basically sampling new cigars all the time it's just the the the best part of the it is and i love the time new stuff i think i think the point is that people have to understand because i get asked this question on email 100 times a day what are best a cuban cigars best there's no best there's only different and it's what suits you for me cuban cigars are the best but i'll tell you something i smoked the fuente that i would say was one of the best cigars i've tasted in my life so then you categorize cuban cigars the best or there's other cigars out there that are as good it's just different that's all of course i'm i'm drinking it what am i drinking glen elgin yes the latest salad you that's the best of the jews that i've tasted this year well we did a ben nevis cast last year that was also the best it changes all the time can i tell you there you go yeah no i mean the the variety of cigars has kind of exploded in the last year sure has it's it's not only has it made new wilson glass kind of be more competitive in terms of how uh how good the cigars are but it's also made it so that customers have such a wide range of really really high quality cigars from basically every location yeah it's it's difficult it's now more difficult to find bad cigars in general if you if you're at a certain price point it's more difficult to find a bad cigar than it is um a good cigar and i think that's fantastic for sea glass markers absolutely in general um especially with like your range i mean i don't think you know how many different cigars you have in your range approximately um well i know one line in terms of overall skews of everything we sell there's about ten thousand skews yeah it's you wonder why my warehouses are growing all the time um i'm not sure how many skews of cigars i would guess it's probably something approaching a thousand a thousand but how to try different cigars that's how you train you're going into places like that keep sampling keep sampling exactly the best advice absolutely well it's been absolutely wonderful talking to you thank you it's been incredible really insightful i mean getting to getting to grips with how seaguar's kind of developed and then to what it is now thank you it's just it's been a journey it's been a ride it's been a gas it's ah it's absolutely wonderful seeing you and yeah i mean ray and i are extremely thankful for being able to speak to you about this pleasure thank you so much for having us here in this no better way to spend the day no no absolutely chocolate musty guys the man himself time you boys had a rum and a cigar in that case in the sunshine of saint james's is it still sunny outside yeah i used to smoking minus 14 right don't mind smoking in the cold weather so that's why i like england smoking nice weather it's nice thank you so much for your time extremely ugh come back again soon definitely we'll do it again absolutely we want to talk about uh your personal stash and what's the view in your stash yeah we want to talk about which probably not many people seen around for many many years i'm pretty sure you have interesting stuff that would be really really interesting we'll get you to norfolk turmoils next time in that case with mitchell that will be the lounge the lounge there is just uh it's gorgeous yeah wow we'll be reopening that later in the year oh it's a beautiful lounge thank you yeah definitely looking forward to that uh thank you all for watching our video typical stuff like subscribe share the video and uh we hope to see you all in the next one cigars yes yes as you're always saying don't keep your cigars in the boxes smoke them smoke them no art no pictures to look at them and show them to your friends there for smoking smoke them thank you

Channel: Cigar Inspector

Views: 36,823

Keywords: c.gars ltd, cgars, c.gars, usman dawood, building a business, business, start a company, starting a company, stand by meow to start a company, best business idea, best business advice, cigars, cuban cigars, best cigars, best beginner cigars, mba, the, cigar, cigar review, dominique london, biggest cigar, biggest cigar company, best cigar, best cigar 2021

Id: 7npkyJusg3I

Length: 75min 40sec (4540 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021