ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are a lot of people to thank after a project like this, especially the many I bothered while chasing down a term the industry uses constantly and defines suspiciously.
Special thanks to Fred Rewey, who told me the idea sounded worthwhile and then immediately took a phone call. In hindsight, that may have been the cleanest possible assessment of the project.
Special thanks also to John McTavish, who immediately began talking through data methodology, collection structure, and how to parse the information properly. Then I took a phone call, which feels about right for serious research in the premium cigar industry.
My thanks to everyone who answered questions, offered quotes, challenged assumptions, corrected my thinking, made suggestions, or gave me enough material to make the problem more complicated than when I started.
Dr. Paul B.K. Garmirian and Lew Rothman deserve a separate thank you. Both gave this project something a modern market snapshot cannot manufacture: historical memory from men who watched the premium cigar business change before much of today’s boutique vocabulary had settled into common use. Their perspective helped keep the paper from treating the present as though it invented the past.
That, unfortunately, was the point.
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Hector J. Alfonso Sr., CLEA
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