I’m sitting here on my balcony in sunny Miami overlooking the water as the sun goes down, smoking a Partagas P2 and sipping some HC15.
I get the English newspapers every day out here and read the doom and gloom about the economy. I watch the news on Cable and it’s mostly economical doom and gloom but how accurate is all of this doom and gloom reporting?
I’m not sure but then I know little about politics and economics as I am only a simple cigar merchant. What I do know is what I see with my own two eyes. So lets start with the West End of London 2 weeks ago before I left for the US. The roads from my office in North London all the way to St James’s were packed. This was not due to roadwork’s but was in fact sheer weight of traffic.
The amount of “Supercars” that I counted was literally staggering. Porsche and Bentley were common as muck, Mercs and Ferraris plentiful……and the stores were jam packed with shoppers. The pavements ( sidewalks) were jammed with shoppers. The restaurants crowded.
Maybe London is a bit more isolated or insulated or maybe we are maxing out our credit cards but I couldn’t see any sign of recession. Sure the price of petrol is up at £1.20 a litre and the property market going nowhere but I do wonder about what I read in the newspapers
Fast forward a few days and I’m in Las Vegas…and now in Miami. You guessed it, lovely cars in plentiful quantity, crowded shops and restaurants along Deco Drive, Shopping Malls…packed. Plenty of lovely cigars shops and all have plenty of customers…..gas is apparently “expensive” at 4 Bucks a gallon and the property markets in the crapper.
So my American friends complain about $4 a gallon gas whilst we pay nearer to $10 a gallon…go figure.
Meantime what of the cigar business? Well it could truly be recession proof as all of our trading divisions (retail, mail order, international, aged&rare, humidors) are reporting an increase in sales so far in 2008. Interesting….maybe my clients are “addicted” to cigars. Nope, that’s not it as cigars aren’t addictive in the way we recognize a tobacco product like cigarettes for example.
Perhaps we are staying at home more during these recessionary times and spoiling our selves with more good food, drink and cigars. Quite possible as my specialist whisky shops in Scotland also report an increase in trade this year.
I’m just not sure that we should believe all we read in the papers.
I’m back in London in August and planning a series of monthly Tuesday evening (complimentary) cigar tasting dinners at Boisdales. If you would like to be put on the guest list drop me an email [email protected] should be good fun and I’ll probably invite some industry personalities along as well….and we can all discuss “recession” over a good cigar and drink!
Have to get back to the sunshine and my P2 🙂
Peaceful puffing
Mitchell