A. Fuente Agitation

[T.G]

Originally Posted by wayner123

Another thought I had is this; From what I can gather, in order for a B&M to get sent Opus X, they must be a Fuente retailer. And again, from what I have gathered, to be a Fuente retailer, one must carry all of the lines of Fuente. That's a lot of product and cost for a B&M to carry for the chance of getting sent Opus twice a year. So it might be that the reason there are less shops that have Opus, is because the Boutique brands are putting out great quality smokes and not requiring such cumbersome retail tactics.

That's pretty close to how Mark Just, "NorCalMark", the owner of Tower Cigars told it when we were talking about Opus X distribution once. There's an extra account level that a shop has to have to get Opus X, in addition to being a Fuente account, they have to be an Opus X authorized account. Mark / Tower has been an Opus X premiere account since the Opus X was first released and yes, you do have to sell such-and-such volume of certain certain lines to get others. For a long time, very few Opus X accounts were being added, so accounts typically got good quantities of cigars. All of a sudden, Fuente authorized more accounts, but production didn't seem to change much, so all of a sudden, accounts were now only getting a few boxes of cigars.

As for boutique cigar brands, actually a lot of them do have multiple levels of accounts and somewhat similar sales quotas which determine what a retailer can get from their line.

[wayner123]

Originally Posted by T.G

That's pretty close to how Mark Just, "NorCalMark", the owner of Tower Cigars told it when we were talking about Opus X distribution once. There's an extra account level that a shop has to have to get Opus X, in addition to being a Fuente account, they have to be an Opus X authorized account. Mark / Tower has been an Opus X premiere account since the Opus X was first released and yes, you do have to sell such-and-such volume of certain certain lines to get others. For a long time, very few Opus X accounts were being added, so accounts typically got good quantities of cigars. All of a sudden, Fuente authorized more accounts, but production didn't seem to change much, so all of a sudden, accounts were now only getting a few boxes of cigars.

As for boutique cigar brands, actually a lot of them do have multiple levels of accounts and somewhat similar sales quotas which determine what a retailer can get from their line.

Thanks for that Adam. I guess then the question for me is do the boutique brand accounts require as much $$ (sold or inventory) to get the limited editions? I would not think so, but that is only my opinion, not based on any hard evidence. From what I understood, Fuente makes retailers carry ALL of their lines from Fuente to Montesino, etc.

[T.G]

Originally Posted by wayner123

Thanks for that Adam. I guess then the question for me is do the boutique brand accounts require as much $$ (sold or inventory) to get the limited editions? I would not think so, but that is only my opinion, not based on any hard evidence. From what I understood, Fuente makes retailers carry ALL of their lines from Fuente to Montesino, etc.

Mark did mention some numbers/percentages of how many of "this Fuente / Ashton" you have to sell to get "That (high end) Fuente / Ashton", but, I don't remember any real specifics as to what they were to be able to say how they might compare to other cigar manufacturers numbers / percentages, say, for example, Tatuaje or Viaje as there are multiple levels of Tatuaje accounts and they are sales number & seniority based also.