Since the early part of 2016 I’ve had a theory about this year’s IPCPR Convention & Trade Show, one that was developed without any concerns about the impact of FDA regulation on the event. This year’s trade show is going to be a moment of reckoning. Over the last five years there have been three interesting trends developing in the cigar industry that all seem to point to an economic time bomb, or in more common financial terms: a bubble. While there’s no concrete data on any of these things specifically, none of these trends are things that I hear many people disputing, and I think most people in the business would acknowledge the following to be true: 1. The Consumption of Cigars in the U.S. Isn’t Substantially Increasing That is, the overall amount of cigars purchased by consumers from retailers hasn’t increased more than a couple of percentage points annually since 2011. While it might look like the cigar boom in terms of the amount of new product, it’s certainly not the boom when it comes to consumption, i.e. consumer level purchasing and in particular, the amount of new cigar consumers. 2. The Amount of New Cigars Coming Out ...
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