Aristoff is a brand of

cigar A cigar is a rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco leaves made to be smoked. Cigars are produced in a variety of sizes and shapes. Since the 20th century, almost all cigars are made of three distinct components: the filler, the binder l ...

. The leaves ( wrapper, binder, and filler) are exclusively grown and cured in Nicaragua. The cigars are all hand-rolled in

Chinandega Chinandega () is a city and the departmental seat of Chinandega department in Nicaragua. It is also the administrative centre of the surrounding municipality of the same name. It is Nicaragua's 2nd most important city (economy) and 6th largest c ...

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the cou ...

and at the company's

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...

-based satellite factory. However, The corporate headquarters of this firm lies in

Fort Lauderdale, Florida Fort Lauderdale () is a coastal city located in the U.S. state of Florida, north of Miami along the Atlantic Ocean. It is the county seat of and largest city in Broward County with a population of 182,760 at the 2020 census, making it the tenth ...

, with their principal market being the American Eastern Seaboard. As a relatively new company, the brand was launched amid great fanfare in 2002. The company was marketed heavily on the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

and through a

viral marketing Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way tha ...

campaign. The great expectations fell flat, however, when the first few series of cigars did not meet with popular approval. Sales of the product fell 78% after the first year. Due to this plunge in revenue, the

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in the company was called off in April 2003. The company's new series of cigars has been more accepted among the cigar market. Sales have increased steadily since hitting a trough in 2004. Aristoff was originally created by Guy Benhamou, the CEO of OroAmerica in Burbank, CA and Ted Coulter, General Manager of LA Estillos in the Dominican Republic in 1996. OroAmerica at the time was the largest producer of Karat Gold Jewelry in the US. OroAmerica had jewelry operations i
San Pedro de Marcoris Dominican Republic
at the time and began to diversify into premium cigars in the mid-1990s. Benhamou and Coulter began developing Aristoff in 1996 and formed the company Cigar America which was a wholly owned subsidiary of OroAmerica. After investing a large amount of money into this product, they sold the brand and inventory to JR Cigars in 2000, which continued to manufacture Aristoff in Honduras. These cigars were made out of high quality tobacco but there was too much competition during the boom in the late 1990s. The original blend of the Aristoff used 100% Dominican grown tobacco for the binder and filler. For the wrapper, Aristoff used tobacco from several different sources including Brazil, United States (Conn Shade) and Cameroon. Aristoff had a state-of-the-art retail store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California, but because of
trademark infringement
he was not allowed to use the name "Aristoff" for the store name. Cigar America also developed a lower-priced brand called "Fuego Del Rey" which was produced in Jember, Indonesia. The flavored version of this cigar was rated by the Robb Report as the best-flavored cigar in the US market.

References

{{reflist
Weathering the Storm - Once Thought to be on the Road to Extinction, Boutique Cigars are Making a Comeback
by Andy Marinkovich

from smokeshopmag.com Cigar brands

See also

References