Luciuswand

This thread has been fun to read. I have a tidbit to throw out as food for thought. My uncle is a fabric purchaser for a dress company in NY. He is responsible for getting the highest quality fabric for the lowest price possible. When necessary, he budges on quality for the price, or budges on price for the quality. His company was recently approached by Wal-Mart. This is a small dress company that makes several thousand dresses a year. Wal-mart, more specifically Sam's Club, asked them to make many many many thousands of dresses just for them. They also said that the dresses had to come in under a certain price. Well for such a large order, the company could afford to make certain accomodations. In order to fill the order on time, and on budget, my uncle had to go for lower quality fabric, in very large quantities. They had to hire new seamstresses, and speed up production across the board to complete the order. The end result was a different quality grade of dress, at a much lower price point, with a happy customer and happy manufacturer. Further down the line, you have shoppers of Sam's Club who get to buy a top notch dress label, for a Sam's Club price.

If a cigar producer that generally makes runs of a few thousand cigars is suddenly asked to make a million, the purchaser and the manufacturer will have to put their heads together and determine how best to accomplish such a feat. Corners can be cut, quality can be lowered. This is ok with both, and its ok with the end of the line customer as well since he gets a lower price.

This does not mean that B&M's are given the high quality stuff, while the internet stores get the crap, it means that the very very large stores will concede to a slightly lower quality to get the inventory they project for sales within the time limit they have set, and at the price the require to attract and satisfy customers while still meeting their bottom line for profit.

There is no conspiracy, its just how it works in some industries. For cigars, I seriously doubt that anyone is trying to dupe anyone by passing of inferior product, but rather some companies, on some orders being willing to take a slightly lower grade product to meet a demand.

Everything postulated above would only apply if the order placed by any particular company exceeded the present capacity of the manufacturer. If the manufacturer was capable of meeting the demand within the customers timeline, then there would be no need for any change. If however, they had to make accomodations to meet the order, that is where you may find a difference. I would guess though, even if such a difference existed, it would take an extremely refined taster to find it, and the primary difference would lie in the construction quality of the cigar since rollers would be asked to work faster to meet a deadline.