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Four
generations and 126 years after its inception, J. C. Newman Cigar Co., is
America's oldest family-owned premium cigar factory. This is his story.
The Newman
family came to America from Koronc, Hungary, in 1886, and two years later
settled in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1895, Julius Caeser Newman, one of five sons,
barely 20 years old, opened his own cigar factory and, from then until his
death in 1958, he ran it successfully.
Despite the
troubled times that he had to live just a few years after creating the factory
(the Spanish-American War and World War I), the young businessman found a way
to make it prosper: he created his own cigar brands, made investments and
managed to consolidate his business.
During the
1920s, JC Newman experienced a great challenge: the growing popularity of
cigarettes overcame the habit of smoking cigars and the market fell
dramatically. Such was the impact that in 1927, of the 300 cigar makers that
had operated in Cleveland until recently, only two remained: J. C. Newman and
Grover Mendelsohn, who in order to move forward, partnered and continued to
produce under Newman's direction.
Another
challenge to overcome was that the cigar market became dominated by industrial
production, which meant that cigars became a mass consumer product, with the
consequent drop in prices. In order to stay in the market, JC Newman made the
decision to switch from artisanal production of cigars to producing them
industrially, but even so, after almost 60 years of success, he was about to
close his factory as a result of price manipulation by large manufacturers.
At the
time, he was faced with the difficult decision to exit the market or find a
niche in which to function without pressure from the big manufacturers. The
premium cigar market segment was the niche he decided to return to. That
decision meant moving the company from Cleveland to Tampa, Florida, called the
cigar capital because it was the epicenter of manufacturing, producing more
than 300 million units a year at the time. This is how, in 1954, at the age of
78, JC Newman moved to Tampa, from where the company operates today, although
it is not its only headquarters.
In 1958,
after the death of his founder JC Newman, control of the company was taken by
his son Stanford, who had trained for it. Under his leadership, his brands were
successfully sold, allowing them to gain prominence and recognition in the US
market. During this period, they acquired the well-known brands Cuesta-Rey,
White Heather and La Unica, owned until now by Karl Cuesta.
In the
early 1960s, the Cuban embargo wiped out the tobacco industry in Tampa, due to
the ban on importing the leaves from the island. Although many companies gave
up on producing, Stanford, who had just learned about Cameroon tobacco,
launched with a bold decision: he decided to produce the Cuesta-Rey # 95 (it
was already known before the embargo) using a wrapper from that African
country. This cigar was a true revolution in an industry that seemed to perish
without Cuban tobacco and was an emblematic premium cigar for decades.
In 1986,
almost 30 years after taking over the management of the company, Stanford and
his two sons took full control of the factory through the purchase of shares
from other members of the family. That same year, they partnered with Carlos
Fuente, the renowned manufacturer who had recently moved from Tampa to the
Dominican Republic and wanted to close down his machine-made cigar factory in
Tampa. This union was one of the many wise and timely decisions that the
company has made throughout these 126 years, since competition for the US
market by manufacturers from Nicaragua, Honduras, Ecuador and the Dominican
Republic, had begun to grow considerably. The agreement was that the
manufacture of the cigars would be distributed: Newman would manufacture the machine-rolled
cigars, while Fuente would manufacture the hand-rolled cigars.
The J.C. Newman and Arturo Fuente Cigar Company has been very successful and continues to this day as an unsurpassed alliance.
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