A Study in Mombacho: An Analysis of Recent Cigar News Events
The year of our Lord 2021 has seen Mombacho Cigars thoroughly & completely unable to stay out of the news cycle for any real length of time. It all (mostly) began right up-top in January w/ its co-founder Cameron Heaps returning to the fold as Prez. This left Claudio Sgroi a then Former Prez, but still on as blender & partner. The next month, Jared Ingrisano is brought on board as the new Director of Global Sales. So far so good 'nuff but maybe not because...
The year of our Lord 2021 has seen Mombacho Cigars thoroughly & completely unable to stay out of the news cycle for any real length of time. It all (mostly) began right up-top in January w/ its co-founder Cameron Heaps returning to the fold as Prez. This left Claudio Sgroi a then Former Prez, but still on as blender & partner. The next month, Jared Ingrisano is brought on board as the new Director of Global Sales. So far so good 'nuff but maybe not because...
February brought news that Claudio Sgroi, after ten years, would be leaving the company. Zoinks!, right? No blender. *poof* Then we sleep-skate thru the month of March because even Usain Bolt couldn't keep this particular pace for too long. & then boom... Indiana Ortez is hired on as GM come April. Still in April, our mass-much beloved Jessi Flores is named Mombaco's creative director. In the video announcement, he mumbles something about maybe blending or something. I can't find the video to watch it again but I seem to recall birds chirping quite loud in its festive background.
At least now we can cool down & digest, yeah? Excitement is in the air, a new day looms nigh on this old day's horizon. A social media online marketing wiz in Ortez, exhilaratingly young & fresh and set to team with a middle-aged graffiti artist and we're gonna see progress like progress is going out of style, fam. Fam! Except, no new blends but new packaging & catchy campaigns for sure. & w/ steady-pro Jared micro-handling adulting stuff while Razzle & Dazzle doth play. All this under Heaps mainly watchful mostly interested eyes.
It's a double-edged sword and if--if--a cigar brand death pool (say) was being kept, It'd probably be decided by the books to stop taking action on Mombacho for a spell. Sure, exciting things seem bound to occur but going tits up to this sun can at times be rather hair-raising & knuckle-whitening. To be clear, there is no cigar brand death pool neither real nor imaginary, and as far as you know. But I do like to think it'd be Barry Fitzgerald in The Quiet Man, waving off the wagering punters. "Gentlepersons, Gentlepersons. Decorum!" He'd admonish drunkenly.
Also, !!! it's now the 20th of April and Aganorsa has just sued Mombacho over its use of the Mombacho name!!! Fuuuuuuck. The final key to this locked-room mystery, & ain't every mystery a locked-room mystery since the air has been poison for 13 months now? Time to deduce.
Sgroi sees the writing on the wall, bails. I mean this name gripe has a legal history to it & one that's been in Aganorsa's favor. But big whoop. Cameron was already back in and we don't need a blender--we don't need new shit, it's the last shit we need-- we need REBRANDING to move old shit. A new name, new packaging, a ground-up new direction. Cigars, we got. I mean it's not like they've been hard to keep in stock flying off the shelves. My offering up all that, I suppose begs my thoughts on handicapping the future. I like Jared and hate to see him soon suffering ulcers and maybe nervous facial ticks.
This team is/was built for this.
A new name, sure. LOUD BRIGHT... no, LOUDER BRIGHTER super cool packaging and some super cool #hashtags but not much or enough more movement--just Heaps of cigars stacked up high but not so much let fly. This could be spectacular--with no one to really, really blame. Traction is hard and really-really tricky and even the best stuff often fails. Add in a name change and ouch. There's no mis-step or at least no better option not taken. This "new" company, we'll call it Camp Granada Cigars ["Hello Muddah, hello Faddah. Here I am at Camp Grenada." - Allan Sherman.] will, however, be pivotal regarding all mentioned.
How so? Winners & losers... woof. I'm really doing this, huh? OK. Heaps loses because he's already playing the David role and Goliath only lost that one time, a long time ago--he's a martyr in waiting. Jared wins because: have wits (and Tums, Valium) will travel. Indiana wins just on account of the experience gained but has a hole to dig & re-invent herself out of, will--after a time. Flores has the least to lose but loses that much in this experimental effort. I don't see it bothering him, tho.
There it is, all laid out. Time will tell.
::: very :::