"Let's do it" is Nestor Miranda's mantra. He arrived in the U.S. at age 16 from Cuba with nothing to his name, used his natural-born savvy to build a career in sales, and eventually built a family-owned multi-million dollar cigar company around his own Don Lino brand and as the U.S. importer of La Aurora cigars. He nearly lost it all, rebuilt, and is now celebrating an anniversary that almost never happened. His biggest lesson, perhaps, is to never sit still.
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[b]SMOKE: When you started Miami Cigar & Co., were you already in the cigar industry?[/b]
MIRANDA: I was not! I was in the liquor business. But it really helped me a lot. I learned direction and objectives in the liquor business. You implement the same things into the tobacco business.
[b]SMOKE: Was your family involved with cigars in Cuba? What was the connection?[/b]
MIRANDA: We had a bakery, nothing to do with cigars. But my grandfather smoked cigars all his life, and he lived late-into his high 80s or low 90s I would say. He usually had five Churchills in his guayabera, and was always smoking a big cigar. When he was finished with one, he'd take out another one. He always had a cigar in his mouth! So I guess I got the genes from him. I always liked cigars.
[b]SMOKE: Were cigars a much more important part of Cuban culture in that era?[/b]
MIRANDA: Oh yeah, cigars were the big thing in Cuba. When you played dominos, you had to have a cigar in your mouth. In Cuba, every city has a park, even the small towns, and on Sundays everyone would gather at the park. You actually dressed up to go to the park. In my city, called Holguín, Oriente, we had a big park. We usually took the long walk and there was a band playing music, it was packed, and it was fantastic. You had to be there. I would always take a cigar and light it up, just to show that I was a man. You're 16, 17-what could be nicer than a cigar?
[b]SMOKE: So that's when you started to smoke cigars regularly?[/b]
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MIRANDA: No, no; just Sundays. When I came to U.S. in June, 1962, I would buy a cigar just once in a while. I was 19 years old; I didn't have the money. I came here with nothing, so I started working in whatever I could find in Miami. My first job was as a dishwasher in a hotel that's no longer there. After that I moved up on to busboy and so on. In 1962, I joined the U.S. army for a conflict with Cuba, called the October crisis. They trained me for an invasion into Cuba. It never happened, I'm glad. But my girlfriend from Cuba-my wife today-left Cuba and went to Spain for a year and then moved to Los Angeles. It was 1963; at that time I had a 1955 Chevy that was so perfect, I drove it from Miami to Los Angeles with no problems. When I arrived in L.A., it's such a big city, I had no idea where I'm going. So I call up my girlfriend from my hotel and I say "Mariana, I'm in L.A." And she says, "L.A. is a big city," and I said "I know!" And she says, "Where are you?" and I look at the matches and I say, "I am at the Silver Lake Hotel." And she says, "I can't believe it. You are three blocks from my home!" So it was meant to be.
[b]SMOKE: You were married right away?[/b]
MIRANDA: The thing is, in order to get married, you need an apartment, you need some furniture, and we were not in a position to buy those things. I used to get two jobs. I was working in a Mattel factory making Barbie dolls. I'd finish by 4:00, change, and go to the Beverly Hills Hotel to be a busboy. I worked liked this for two consecutive years, seven days a week, making money, saving money for the marriage. I finally got married, but in the beginning it was hard. You do what you have to do, man. Only you can change destiny. You work hard in your life, set your goal, and keep going. There's a good chance you're going to make it, if you persist.
[b]SMOKE: Where did you get your first break?[/b]
MIRANDA: Finally I got a job with the American Linen Supply Co. driving a truck. They ask you if you know the city, you say, "sure, yeah," and they give you a route. Of course, I didn't know the city, and at that time I knew only a little bit of English, so I was always the last truck in and always late. But that meant overtime, which was good. They knew that when you're new it always takes time. They gave me the opportunity, and I learned a lot, to the point that they had a contest selling mop contracts, and every stop that I made, I showed them how to do it: "You mop like this, side to side. Use one this week, then the next week use the other one; by the time I come back, I give you two clean new ones. And they'd say, "I can't believe the floor is so dirty!" I didn't sell it without showing people how to use it. So I won the contest.
[b]SMOKE: That started your sales career?[/b]
MIRANDA: I think so. I think I developed that attitude and desire to do something. I was able to prove myself-the number one winner in the company. I'd been selling all the time, I liked it. Then, I knew I had to sell myself!
[b]SMOKE: Were you already in the cigar industry when you started Miami Cigar?[/b]
MIRANDA: I was not! I was in the liquor business. But that really helped me a lot. I learned direction and objectives in the liquor business. You implement the same approach into the tobacco business. I spent 10 years with Seagram and 15 years with Southern Wine in Miami, so almost 25 years in the liquor business. I learned a lot with those people.
[b]SMOKE: Don Lino was your first brand?[/b]
MIRANDA: I started with Don Lino in 1989.
[b]SMOKE: You created the brand yourself?[/b]
MIRANDA: It was a brand that was being handled by some other people, but there was nothing there, it was maybe a few boxes to certain people, that was it. It was nothing. When I saw the cigars and the owner talked to me about selling it, I said "yeah, let's do it." I love cigars, so why not? So my wife was doing nothing at the time, and she's the one who called accounts in Miami - liquor stores. I used to be a division manager so everybody knew me in Miami. And when my wife went into a liquor store, they opened the door right away. It was easy. She was selling cigars to liquor stores. They never had cigars before, so we opened that trend. Don Lino was the only cigar I had at the beginning.
[b]SMOKE: How did a small, new company in the industry become the U.S. importer for the Dominican Republic's oldest cigar maker?[/b]
MIRANDA: In 1990 I made an approach to La Aurora. We did a presentation in the Dominican Republic to Don Eduardo León [head of the company], and we got the business. We started selling La Aurora. That was really the very beginning of Miami Cigar & Company. In 1989, when we started, there was no cigar boom at all. We sold 89,000 cigars that year. We doubled the business in 1990 and we kept doubling the business every year after that. It was hard work- we had no rest. Every Saturday and Sunday we used to go out and open a route.
[b]SMOKE: Was La Aurora a well known brand in the U.S. at that time?[/b]
MIRANDA: It was distributed only in Miami, only sold in Miami.
[b]SMOKE: So your proposal was to…[/b]
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Self-made cigar man Nestor Miranda worked his way up from busboy to business phenomenon.
MIRANDA: …was to think toward the whole U.S. At that time, La Aurora came out with a cigar called Imperiales which is by León Jimenes and they sold only maybe 10,000 cigars. That's it. So when I obtained La Aurora, Imperiales was a beautiful Connecticut cigar. During the cigar boom, they ran out of Connecticut wrapper and they changed it to Cameroon. The demand was so fantastic, people didn't care if you changed it or not. There was a need. In 1994 we did 3.2 million cigars total. In 1995 we went up to close to 12 million.
[b]SMOKE: That's a very fast rise for someone completely new to the industry.[/b]
MIRANDA: Exactly. It was an amazing thing. And that's what happened. One day in 1995, I'm in De La Concha Tobacco in New York-that was my first account outside Miami-and they were talking about one account in Miami that did $14 million in sales. And I heard the guy saying that and I said, "you know, that account has been in Miami since 1949. That's good, but I just started in 1989 and I think I just did $19 million." So that is news. The other one is great, but that's not news. I am news!
[b]SMOKE: By then you were also distributing major national brands for UST; but just as your business was soaring, you were blindsided. What happened?[/b]
MIRANDA: In 1996, the UST company pulled their lines line from me, and they didn't make any more Don Linos, so I lost almost everything. I kept La Aurora, which I was doing about 4 million in cigars. So from 12 million to four, that was a drop. I was sitting at my desk, and I've got to give the news to my family and I told them, "you know something? When I came from Cuba I had 10 cents. So now, I'll start over again. I've got more now than before; people know me, they know Miami cigars, so we established a company, so let's start it again." So we started again. Then I came out with Tatiana, good things in the market place. Tatiana is now, I believe, it's the number one flavored cigar in the U.S., and that's my daughter's name.
[b]SMOKE: You didn't have any idea what you were going to do to start over?[/b]
MIRANDA: No, it was during the boom, so nobody could make any cigars for me. I approached people to try to make Don Lino because I knew if I could make them, I'd be in the market-I was doing 3 1/2 million Don Linos-it was easy. It didn't really matter where I made them, people would buy them. But nobody, nobody would make them.
[b]SMOKE: How long was it off the market?[/b]
MIRANDA: More than a year.
[b]SMOKE: And that was it?[/b]
MIRANDA: Forget it. I lost it. I sell Don Lino now, but it's not even close to what I used to sell. The brand is still there, people remember it; so I keep it. That's why I came out with Don Lino 1989.
[b]SMOKE: Originally Don Lino was made in Honduras, and later moved to the Dominican. So the Don Lino 1989 maduro box press marked the brand's return to Honduras?[/b]
MIRANDA: Yes, since we moved production to the DR, that's the first one back in Honduras-a full-bodied blend. We used a different cliché, a different band: they are more artistic, real nice looking box with a little prestige and class.
[b]SMOKE: You've recently created an entirely new line made in Estelí, Nicaragua.[/b]
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Some of Miranda's extended team: Eddie Ortega, United Tobacco; Rene Castineda, Vice President, Miami Cigar & Company; Nestor Miranda; Jose Blanco, La Aurora; and Eric Espinoza, United Tobacco.
MIRANDA: I made a decision not too long ago to come out with my name on a cigar-the Nestor Miranda Special Selection brand. So I went to Pepín García, but he wasn't ready for me because he was planning to open a new factory. Finally when he opened the factory, he called me, and we started making it with [his son] Jaime. Actually the first cigar they made in the new factory was Nestor Miranda Special Selection. So we were very lucky, I think. It was the wrong time to kick off the brand with this economy, but we already had everything planned, everything in order; and the cigar was excellent. My director of sales, Rene Castineda, and I sat down, and I said, "You know something? Let's do it, Rene. We're going to make it." And today, let me tell you, it's a winner.
[b]SMOKE: I guess it pays to be persistent?[/b]
MIRANDA: I think the Nestor Miranda brand has a legacy behind it. I've been in business 20 years, a lot of people know me, it's about time I had a cigar with my name!
[b]SMOKE: Are these all large ring-gauge cigars?[/b]
MIRANDA: We designed sizes like 4 1/2 x 50, 5 1/2 x 54, 6 x 60-those are big sizes. But because I always like lancero, I wanted to come out with a lancero. I had a lot of criticism, "a lancero doesn't sell." But it's elegant. Cuba has a Cohiba lancero which is very elegant. Is it a size that's going to sell tremendously? I don't think so, but it is going to sell. Sometimes you don't have the time to smoke a big cigar. Lanceros are a very difficult cigar to make because it's very slim, its only 40 ring size, so when you blend, you've got to be so careful to put everything together. We tried a 38 gauge-It was very hard to do. Pepín said, "Nestor let's go to 40." My lancero is very nice.
[b]SMOKE: You're also releasing a new 20th anniversary edition of Nestor Miranda Special Selection, which has special meaning.[/b]
MIRANDA: Correct. We talked to Pepín García and Jaime in Nicaragua, and Rene and I were there and selected a blend made by Pepín, and it was an extraordinary blend, so we decide to go with that blend. The cigar [20 Aniversario] is a 7 x 56 with a pigtail, limited to 2,000 boxes, in Habano Oscuro and Habano Rosado. By the time we do the kickoff in April, the cigar will have seven months aging.
[b]SMOKE: Have you ever done limited release cigars before? Is this a one-time production?[/b]
MIRANDA: No, this is the first time. Every year we're going to have limited boxes for the marketplace at a very good price. It won't be that expensive. We also have something new coming from Honduras-where we make the Tatiana Mocha. We sat down with Nestor Plasencia there and we designed a small cigar, handmade, 20 in a box, very small so you can put in your pocket, and it's going to be the Mocha Piccolino. Totally handmade, with the flavor of mocha.
[b]SMOKE: What are the biggest changes you've seen in the cigar business over the past 20 years?[/b]
MIRANDA: A lot of good cigars out there! I think the boutique companies are very strong in the marketplace, they've established themselves very well. I'm a boutique company-we are all doing extremely well. When you have a big corporation they may be too busy for the stores, but we're always in the marketplace, we're always traveling, seeing stores and going places, back and forth. I dedicate my time to tobacco shops. Whatever it takes, let's do it. I'm always involved in going to Honduras and Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic to develop new ideas; I'm always thinking about new ideas. But the ideas that we develop are ideas that the marketplace needed. Nothing crazy. Ask questions. Before we come out with a cigar we send it to a panel, so they can try it. It's not that I like it and I want to come out with this-I want them to like it. Because I don't make the decision in the cigar, they make the decision. So when we receive comments from people they know in the cigar business very well, we know we got something good. That's how we came out with Nestor Miranda.
[b]SMOKE: Is Miami Cigar & Co. ready for another 20 successful years?[/b]
MIRANDA: No question about it. I already passed the worst time, which is when you lose a line that means so much. I passed that, I can pass anything. We're stronger in the marketplace than before. Before I didn't have any in-house salespeople, now I have in-house people. So the only thing they sell are Miami Cigar, so we're ready. Enditem
