SCHIP This – By Arganese Cigars
5 August 2009 in Cigar NewsGene Arganese and our rep Rob came into town for a few events. During one of them, Gene showed off his newest creation, tentavily titled, “SCHIP This”. I was able to take a picture of it, but had to keep it under wraps until now.
What Gene has done is take two of his cigars and connected them with an additional wrapper. Nothing has changed in the blends and I did see one that had connecticut shade wrappers on them as well. The consumer will pay for 5 cigars, but really gets 10. All you have to do is cut the cigars apart and light them up. He says this way they only pay the tax on 5 cigars, but the consumer and shop make out in the end.
He did not have any plans to produce any fancy packaging for them. He plans to sell them as seen in the above photo. Pricing information was not available at the time, but I would suspect that it will be cheaper than buy 10 cigars. I would think the retail price would be closer to buying 6 cigars.
Is he crazy or is an ingenious way to work around the system? Will any other manufacturers copy this idea? Only consumers will decide if they like this idea. Will you SCHIP This?
3 Comments to SCHIP This – By Arganese Cigars
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I have to say it’s a pretty clever idea! It’s not as much extra work as a culebra (which I think also qualifies as a single cigar when sold), which keeps the costs down.
Will we see other manufacturers follow suit? Not likely. And if they do, probably for bundled smokes only. That is unless it’s a huge success with customers. I just don’t see the more traditional houses going this route even if it does make the cigars more affordable.
One more thought though, Gene might be in a little trouble if these SCHIP This cigars CAN’T be smoked a single cigar and the appropriate authorities find out. They might respond, “oh yeah, we’ll SCHIP that” and slap him with fines for back taxes or even tax evasion.
Anyway, speculation on my part. It assumes a competency that’s probably not reasonable to assume. My guess is he’ll have no trouble. Now he needs to get to work on finding a loophole in the ever expanding smoking bans.
Neat idea, but I think it will be limited to the already cheaper cigars.
Do you have any higher res pictures? Cant really tell what they look like in the little one
Mike