Mac Baren / Sutliff / STG
Let's face it, the pipe smokers are a rare breed. Go to any brick and mortar and either they cursory offer some pipe tobacco and basket pipes or nothing at all. There are exceptions to that rule such as The Country Squire, J.M Boswell's, Watch City Cigars, Iwan Reis, L.J. Peretti, Ulhle's and even in my neck of the woods to a lesser extent, Pipe's By George.
The cigar world had a big boom in 1997 and during that is when I converted to be a pipe smoker. The cigars quality dropped and rolled and shipped as fast as possible. You buy a box and smelled like a litter box from all the ammonia being emitted. Cigars declined, Cigar Aficionado had great writers and articles that went the way of the do-do.
That trend has reversed and cigars are probably sold at a higher volume today then in 1997. Bricks and mortar keep the lights on with cigar sales. Not to say they don't struggle against online retailers that have little overhead and sell their cigars below MSRP. The successful shops succeed by becoming a community of enthusiastic smokers.
You see cigar stores open and expand due to driving demand. You don't see pipe shops opening and due to demand. So why not create demand? Well most brick and mortars typically don't know much about the pipe world to make a profitable run. Let's face it, selling a $20/tin of tobacco verses a $20 cigar is not as profitable as the pipe smoker can enjoy that $20 for a week or two whereas the cigar smoker gets an hour of enjoyable at the same price.
The successful pipe shops succeed because frankly, there is no competition. The successful shops have online stores, sell their own custom blends or have a nice inventory that is not discounted like pure online shops. Would that be the case if every local B&M stocked a well of tins and bulks? Probably not. Pressure from online retailers move a lot of pipe tobacco. If online retailers went away then sure the local B&M's would be wise to take advantage of the opportunity as a side revenue.
So where the hell is this article going? Well I am laying out the ground work of were the pipe tobacco industry is going. I just watch Leonard talk about the Mac Baren / Sutliff / STG changes and some interesting data points were discussed.
The pipe tobacco industry is declining 10% a year. The bulk of pipe smokers are committing to one blend and typically don't smoke anything other than Captain Black. Folks reading this article are likely to smoke a wide variety of blends and always interested in something new.
I think we are in "The Leopards Ate My Face" mode. Withing the pipe smoking community the folks that only smoke Captain Black don't have access to anything else and no exposure to anything else. This goes to the point of STG decision to cut Sutliff. It sucks, Sutliff was geared to small batch blends. Many of their blends didn't sell more than 100 lbs per year. When STG has capacity for large production and capacity to absorb the capacity of Denmark Mac Baren and Sutliff in Richmond you can see that small volume tobaccos have to go. That is just math, business and dollars. The fear is now we have one less tobacco manufacture in the United States. With only Cornell & Diehl left, one hopes the raw tobacco supply does not become a problem as farmers move to soy beans, corn, etc and forego growing tobacco.
In short, it isn't good but it is how it is. On a private cigar forum I find great joy introducing pipe smoking to cigar smokers. Really it these days it is the only way to grow the hobby as so many B&M's forego supporting the pipe smoking community as they cannot make a buck in the face of online retailers killing margins.
I again thank Robert Goff for his books on blending raw leaf as well as Ernie at Watch City Cigars that gave so much knowledge on blending and casing on Pipe Smokers Den. It is there knowledge and my experimenting that created this blog. I hope you all enjoy and try it yourself for it appears true small batch is either you make it or wait for Cornell & Diehl as the only recourse in the United States.
