Happy New Year Everybody
Happy New Year everybody and welcome to 2021. And celebrate that we left 2020 behind us. Most likely the craziest year of our lives. A worldwide pandemic, lockdowns, the most heated political situation in the Western world in modern history. Not only in the USA, but in Europe as well. Conspiracy theories. Canceled events. Social distancing, wearing masks. It’s been insane, but there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Vaccines are coming to end the pandemic, so the most prominent problem is about to end. Underlying issues, to unite people and countries, will take longer to solve.
Negative effects of covid
Of course, the whole situation affects our beloved cigar industry. Both positive and negative. But let’s start with the negatives first. Due to lockdowns, many factories had to close temporarily. Due to social distancing, production capacity diminished. Factory workers fell sick, and an unreported number of people working in the tobacco industry passed away due to the virus.
On top of that came the limited ability to send products out. Most cargo flies with commercial planes, and without those flights, it’s hard to get cigars off to the markets. DHL and other transport companies gauged prices. Retail outlets got shut down due to lockdowns all over the world. As we write this article, all tobacconists in The Netherlands are closed due to a lockdown.
The two largest tobacco trade shows, PCA and Intertabac, had to cancel their trade show. All the large, and small, consumer events all over the world were canceled. And even though the cigar festivals took place this year, they are canceled for 2021. When the pandemic hit it also meant that none of the qualifiers for the Cigar Smoking World Championship could be organized.
And all these things together result in new blends being delayed. The number of newly introduced cigars is lower than in the years before. Either because they couldn’t be produced due to lower production capacity, or because of the lack of events supporting a new release.
Positive effects from Covid
There are also positive effects of this negative situation. First of all, a lot of people had the opportunity to work from home. That creates more time as if eliminates the travel time to and from the office. Resulting in more time to light a cigar. Or, if you are lucky and can smoke at home, even more time to light cigars. So the demand for cigars went up. Some people in the industry even talk about a mini-boom. Not just in the United States, but all over the world.
But the most significant positive result of the pandemic is that the very traditional cigar industry embraced modern technology. Virtual herfs, Facebook streams, everybody joined the bandwagon. Drew Estate has a weekly show on Facebook, Gurkha did a weekly virtual herf during the peak of the pandemic. Oliva works with local distributors for pairings. The British importer & distributor Tor Imports works with Robert Graham for pairings. Fuente & Meerapfel have a weekly show with Jose Blanco as the professor. Didier Hoevenaghel from DH Boutique Cigars hosted a weekly zoom session. The streams from Cigar Prop and Cigar-Coop are more popular than ever. And one of the early virtual herfs is turning into a fully online platform for trade shows and more. This is something that will never go away.
Other positive news
Very positive, but not Covid-19 related is the win of the cigar industry versus the FDA in America. Judge Amit P. Mehta struck down the FDA’s premarket review requirements for premium cigars. And what is even more important, he defines what a premium cigar is. Something that the industry wants as it helps in the fight against the nanny state.
So all in all we can safely say that 2020 has been a crazy year. But that overall it’s not been such a bad year for the industry when you look at the bigger picture. But let’s hope 2021 gets back to normal. That there will be instore events, trade-shows, plenty of new blends to try. We can’t wait to enter the CSWC again. Let’s keep the positive effects and get rid of the negative. The cigar industry can’t be stopped if we do that. Happy new year everybody!
