I’m baaaack!

Despite the rather lousy London weather this week its really rather nice to be back in the office after almost 5 weeks overseas. The jet lag has been fun … not. But as I’m used to working till 3 a.m most nights it hasn’t made a great deal of difference although my cat seems to think its breakfast time every time she sees me. How that cat has not got a smokers cough yet is a miracle as she insists on sitting next to my keyboard when I am at the computer and smoking as always (that’s me, not the cat!) so if you get any funny emails from C.Gars Ltd… the cat typed them 🙂

As ever in my absence Michelle and Laura did a better job of running the business than I ever could do! And Michelle always likes to do some improvements whilst I’m away to surprise me so this time I found gorgeous new carpets in the office and lovely new office chairs 🙂 as well as even more new additions to our London shipping team – welcome new Girls 🙂

Our humidor has been steadily filling up with auction entries for the Winter auction which I’m looking forward to. I promise it will be a far warmer event than the last Winter auction when I nearly froze 80 bidders to death in the arctic conditions at Boisdale Belgravia cigar terrace ! The next auction will be held in a private dining room at Boisdale Canary Wharf with smoking on the heated terrace as well as sampling in the cigar library.

We had the pleasure of the company of three of our Norfolk sales team visiting our London office this week for some cross training as well as them attending Hunters and Frankau Cigar School. Great to see our lovely Sharni who is head of client services and David and Elliot who take care of IT / Ecommerce – these kids know more about computers in their little finger than I will ever learn in a lifetime, they are so intelligent. It’s such a pleasure to have such a young, vibrant and enthusiastic team.

I actually wonder if there is another Havana cigar merchant in Europe that has dedicated in house clients services personnel as well as ecommerce staff? All trained as specialists in Havanas so they actually have a good general knowledge on their subject.

I dare say we have more trained Havana cigar specialists in our Group than any Havana cigar merchant I can think of. Perhaps that one of the reasons why the Group has grown at such a constant and fast pace. We have a long way to go still though.

Sharni contacts almost every client in the UK following up their orders and checking if they are happy with the quality of the products as well as the service they have received, She receives tons of praise – you can see a few of them here – but this is a fraction of the messages we receive daily. Any comments, including any constructive criticism you can be certain that Sharni can resolve any problem… fast. Got a comment? Have a chat with Sharni at [email protected]

Our Operations Manager (in training!) Lawrence is getting his feet firmly under the desk. His passion for cigars is inspiring, his general knowledge increases daily and he never ceases to amaze me particularly this week when Ignacio from Hunters and Frankau (Cuban Director) popped in for a smoke and Lawrence started rambling away to him in Spanish! Lawrence will be at the London office for the next few weeks and then he’s setting up our Mayfair outpost for a few months before returning to head office. Lawrence writes a pretty decent blog too on our whisky site

I had a mammoth sampling session yesterday featuring 7 LFDC Shorties back to back – results? Fabulous – doesn’t get much better for a daytime smoke and of course they are exclusive to the UK market. Yes I am bias but I have smoked many regionals from all over the world and I genuinely believe that the UK gets the pick of the crop.

Today started off in style with a Fuente Opus X and is continuing with Behike 52 54 and 56… it’s good to be back!

Have a smokey weekend

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell