Weekend Poll: What percentage of your purchases over the past 24 months have been Cuban Cigars?

[GVan]

Pretty easy to go back and look at my spreadsheet. 98% Cubans prior to 2022 and at the rate of about 3 boxes a month. The only NC's that I bought were the 2021 Nudie Lanceros; the maduro was 🔥.  I think I have pack still buried in a coolidor -- have to go dig them out.  

Since then only one box of SCdlH Principe's in January of 2023 and that's all. I remember it clearly, it was a 115% increase in price from the last box that I bought in August of 2021. I rationalized that it was and still is my favorite morning smoke with coffee and pulled the trigger. Since then the price has gone up another ~ 20%. I still look but can't bring myself to pay that price. Instead I've focused since 2022 on filling out my NC collection. In 2023 and 2024 I've added ~ 700 NC's to my collection.

[foursite12]

These results seem to spotlight the bet Cuba had to make a couple of years ago and provide some insight into the success of that shift. Rob, maybe you've commented on this before, but do you feel that this sort of a poll from FOH members reflects what you would expect the rest of the world's cigar consumer population's responses to be?

[El Presidente]

1 hour ago, foursite12 said:

These results seem to spotlight the bet Cuba had to make a couple of years ago and provide some insight into the success of that shift. Rob, maybe you've commented on this before, but do you feel that this sort of a poll from FOH members reflects what you would expect the rest of the world's cigar consumer population's responses to be?

For the record, I forwarded the results on yesterday afternoon. Many thanks to all who took part. 

There will be outlier countries/regions, but overall, I believe that the bar graph would be representative of Europe, North America, much of Asia. China and Middle East, less so. 

[GVan]

@El Presidente  Rob, thanks for doing the poll - fascinating!!!  At first, I like many cigar smokers look at this and thought what are they thinking????  Then I stared at the pole for a while and realized that those whose purchases of CC's representing 0% to  20% of their cigars has actually gone up since 2022 by about 20%. What does that mean?  Interestingly, we all know that running a business is about first cash-flow and then profit margins.  It's also about creating a "buzz" about your product and then increased prices for scarcity and perception -- especially for Cohiba that has created the most buzz.

I did a short calculation that is purely hypothetical and I'm sure is not reality but as the "law of large numbers" would probably represent current conditions.  I compared the price of a box of SCdlH Principe's in 2019 with their current day ~ price as well as a box of Cohiba Robustos during the same two timeframes.  Assuming that the production cost was ~ 60% of the eventual sales price for each example and calculate an ~ gross margin.  Assume sales held relatively steady at 100,000 boxes of each per year (probably a low number).  It gives you an interesting picture:

• During this 5 year period - sales price rose ~152% for SCdlH Principe's and ~ 275% for CORO's.
• Assuming cost of sales held steady (probably didn't but it won't make a big difference), profit's from sales went up $241.8% for SCdlH and 462.5% for COROs
• Assuming just 100,000 boxes of each are sold in a year, total gross margin for just these two examples went up $127.7M 

I know this is a gross miscalculation but doing the numbers you can see why even if sales volumes of certain brands falls , Cohiba carries the day for Habanos.