On Running a Cigar Company That Sells Nothing

SmokeDaddy Cigar Company has, at the time of this writing, sold zero cigars to the public. Both of our flagship releases — the Schleien No. XXVI and the Schleien Reserve — are listed as permanently sold out. The waitlist grows by a few hundred names a week.

This is, on paper, a strange way to run a company. But it is the only honest way to run this one. Production really is capped. The roller really does only make twelve cigars a day. The 1985 Estelí leaf in the Reserve really is finite, and once it is rolled, there will be no more.

We could have made the cigars more available by stretching the blends, accepting younger leaf, hiring a second roller, cutting corners no one would notice individually but that, together, would change what the cigar was. We chose not to.

A waitlist is not a marketing trick. It is what happens when honest scarcity meets real demand.

— Eric Schleien