Local B&Ms, is there any point?

T

The Bruce

ChestBeater
Here in Tucson I go to Anthony's Cigar Emporium. They have a nice place to sit and smoke and a very courtious, friendly and knowledgable staff. Great guys! I buy boxes from them fairly regularly and singles as well. Up to this point I've been eating the $50 to $60 extra it costs me to buy from them vs. getting the cigars online. I have been glad to eat it just to keep a local store working.

But should I be having to pay so much more? I've heard people say that they get better deals from thier local B&M than the public gets. Now I don't hang out there, but I do buy quite a bit from them. All I get is 10% off the per stick price. Is this out of line? If it's not then I see no reason to buy in town. I get all the advice I need here, I can break boxes up here to create samplers. Why pay $50 more a box?

My issue is not with the store or the staff. I am just pondering the need for me to pay $50 more per box.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Erik
 
50 or 60 on a box is nothing.

100 or so over msrp on a nice box is average, here.

On the other hand, there are a couple very nice shops here, I agree, hard to give them too much business due to governmental regulation and overtaxation.
 
If you are in to the game for the savings, order online!

I personally enjoy supporting my local B&M and although I will sometimes pay more per box there, it's usually fairly nominal. I like the company. I like the staff. I enjoy the people there. I like having a place to get away from the family sometimes and sit and smoke amongst friends. I like seeing the stock. I like touching the cigars in the humidor. I like to click the lighters I buy a few times before I lay down money. I don't want them to go away, so I will buy from them 75% of the time.

I buy online, too...but it's more of an experience going to the BM.
 
I've bought the majority of my stock over the internet but I still enjoy walking into a nicely stocked local store and looking at all of the different cigars.

There really isn't anything like walking into a big walk in humidor smelling the tobacco, looking at all of the smokes, picking out a few and talking with the shop keeper about cigars.

I'll pay the extra for a handfull of single smokes but when it comes to buying boxes I'll always ask for something close to what I can pay online. They'll usually get you pretty close.
 
I think I am lucky because taxes here in Texas keep prices way down. My main local BM- Serious Cigars (have internet orders here: www.seriouscigars.com)- sells low enough to where I spend the same, sometimes less if I am lucky, on a box than I would from an internet shop's regular prices and add in shipping.
 
That's the key to the price difference right there: tax. I'm sure your B&M doesn't like the fact that they can't be more competitive with the online community; but they're bound by the taxes. If you still want to do business with them, buy a few boxes on the internet and on the weekends grab a few sticks (or a box here and there) to keep supporting them.
 
CigarHoss said:
If you are in to the game for the savings, order online!

I personally enjoy supporting my local B&M and although I will sometimes pay more per box there, it's usually fairly nominal. I like the company. I like the staff. I enjoy the people there. I like having a place to get away from the family sometimes and sit and smoke amongst friends. I like seeing the stock. I like touching the cigars in the humidor. I like to click the lighters I buy a few times before I lay down money. I don't want them to go away, so I will buy from them 75% of the time.

I buy online, too...but it's more of an experience going to the BM.
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I agree with you CigarHoss! I love going to my local B&M. Anytime I go into the store there are always a few regulars and I enjoy hanging out and having a smoke there. I know I pay more in MI, but I like supporting Tim. I have bought some online, but not a lot. There is something about picking out the one you want to smoke and lighting it up.
 
12stones said:
That's the key to the price difference right there: tax. I'm sure your B&M doesn't like the fact that they can't be more competitive with the online community; but they're bound by the taxes. If you still want to do business with them, buy a few boxes on the internet and on the weekends grab a few sticks (or a box here and there) to keep supporting them.
Click to expand...

It can't be the Tax. Az has low tax on Cigars. It's $0.22 per stick. So for a box of 25 cigars the tax on the box is $5.50. I'm paying roughly ten times more. Now I am not asking a local B&M to match the online price. I understand a B&M has overhead it must cover. $5.50 is a lot less than $50.00. I'd be ok paying $10 to $20 more.
 
The Bruce said:
...I'd be ok paying $10 to $20 more.
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If that's what you'd feel comfortable with, then tell them that. If they can afford to sell to you at that price they will, otherwise just use them for individual sticks or something you want quickly, and as a hangout to smoke with your friends. Just my :2.
 
I go in to try new things that the B+M has but for most of my serious purchases I go online.

Do I feel guilty? No not really, then again taxes are low in TN which is a tobacco producing state. The states which have high taxes is where the small businesses get screwed.

So to answer your question in a few words B+Ms will not meet all of your smoking needs but a good one should meet some.
 
I support my B&M's as much as I can. A place you can smoke in is hard to find now a days and as long as I can sit there and hammer a cut I gotta toss em a few bucks as often as I can.
 
CigarHoss said:
If you are in to the game for the savings, order online!

I personally enjoy supporting my local B&M and although I will sometimes pay more per box there, it's usually fairly nominal. I like the company. I like the staff. I enjoy the people there. I like having a place to get away from the family sometimes and sit and smoke amongst friends. I like seeing the stock. I like touching the cigars in the humidor. I like to click the lighters I buy a few times before I lay down money. I don't want them to go away, so I will buy from them 75% of the time.

I buy online, too...but it's more of an experience going to the BM.
Click to expand...

That says it all for me. ;)
 
The Bruce said:
It can't be the Tax. Az has low tax on Cigars. It's $0.22 per stick. So for a box of 25 cigars the tax on the box is $5.50. I'm paying roughly ten times more. Now I am not asking a local B&M to match the online price. I understand a B&M has overhead it must cover. $5.50 is a lot less than $50.00. I'd be ok paying $10 to $20 more.
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Is that your sales tax or excise tax? Here in GA we have a 30% excise and 7% sales tax. And the best part is, they add the sales tax AFTER the excise is included! So in essence, you're paying tax on tax.
But even with that my local guy will beat almost any price I show him on the net. But I did have to buy a lot of stuff from him in order to get that deal.
 
Buy something other than cigars from him like a humidor, lighter, fuel, cutter, magazines, or whatever they sell that may work for you. My B&M knows I usually smoke cigars he can't sell, so I buy what I can to support them, and that includes recommendations (their prices are really good anyway).

Having people and traffic in the store is also quite important to their business, even if they aren't all buyers.
 
only reason to go to your local B&M is to support them. with online purchases, all you really care about is whose got the best price and reasonable shipping...you're a faceless customer buyin from a faceless vendor (this comment excluding the BOTLs of CS with their own shops).

i've yet to purchase a box from my local B&M, cuz droppin $50-75 extra per box is tough and there's a pretty high mark-up at my local shop with the a lot of the cigars i normally buy. i usually just buy a couple sticks here and there and chat with the owners, i always leave having learned something.

once my humidor opens up some space, i'm gonna go pick up a box of Tatuajes. they're no cheaper online than they are from most local shops...
 
The Bruce said:
It can't be the Tax. Az has low tax on Cigars. It's $0.22 per stick. So for a box of 25 cigars the tax on the box is $5.50. I'm paying roughly ten times more. Now I am not asking a local B&M to match the online price. I understand a B&M has overhead it must cover. $5.50 is a lot less than $50.00. I'd be ok paying $10 to $20 more.
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It costs a hell of a lot more to maintain a brick and morter for the volume of cigars they move. An online retailers might just have a warehouse that is ugly as hell in a low rent industrial area to maintain there shrink wrapped product. With a buyer and web admin being the only skilled staff.

A quality B&M has to maintain an attractive humidor, pay knowledgeable counter staff, maintain and opperate a humidor with open boxes and variable stock levels, deal with shoplifters, they usually buy in much smaller quantities (i.e. higher wholesale prices) and have to collect sales tax and pay high retail rents and taxes. It takes a lot just to break even for a small independent retailer. Thats why a lot of stores also have a secondary set of non tobacco related chothkie products that have higher profit margins to help them make their nut.

You have to be either a franchise and/or a big operation that moves a ton of product to get your costs down even close an online retailer if you are a B&M. Which means if you aren't in a good location in a top 20 population city in the U.S. you won't get that much traffic.

In Madison where I live there just isn't enough of a market for them to even consider competing. Most everyday smokes here are 2x or more, more expensive than online and rare ones if you can get them can be way more.
 
If my local has what I want and it is within a $30 range of what I would pay online, I will get it from them. My local has good prices, so I usually do get my boxes from them. There are just some things they don't have, and for some things I order online.
 
Well, if you have a B&M like mine, you would have a great reason to support them.

With all the legislation going on, the local B&M may be the last place in the world we can go inside and smoke cigars. And do so in a comfortable, well-ventilated environment, where I can herf it up with local cigar smokers. Where we can have official events. Where we can have Superbowl parties, Christmas parties, you name it, all where cigar lovers can have a party together.

I don't relish the thought of watching my local B&M go out of business. I would be stuck having to drive a long way, or, worse, buy my sticks on the internet and sit around home and smoke them alone.

I guess for me, it's all about community. My cigar shop has built a community, so I don't mind paying extra for my sticks. In the end, what's a buck more a cigar when I am getting a community??

I'm not saying I never buy off the internet. I do, but about 90% of my purchases are at the store. Most of the sticks I buy online are sticks I have grown to love that he does not carry.
 
gvarsity said:
It costs a hell of a lot more to maintain a brick and morter for the volume of cigars they move. An online retailers might just have a warehouse that is ugly as hell in a low rent industrial area to maintain there shrink wrapped product. With a buyer and web admin being the only skilled staff.
Click to expand...

Sure, but consider that most Online retailers have local shops and a lot of local shops sell online because it's a pretty much a free second store front. I understand the need to stay in business. But I also don't understand why people are so willing to pay $50 more per box which is a 10% off the per single price.

If these stores are staying in business by selling singles (which it seems to be the case) then why wouldn't a box be heavily discounted? If you are going to buy a single and sit in the store to smoke it then the singles price should reflect this. Since you most likely won’t sit in the B&M and smoke the entire box the box price should be discounted more than 10%.

For the most part what I am getting from people who are willing to pay the markup is:

1. They only buy singles so the hit is not too bad and they enjoy hanging out there.
2. They are willing to pay ~$50 more a box to subsidize the people who only buy singles and they enjoy hanging out.

Seems to me that the box buyers are a bunch of good guys/gals! :ss
 
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