Perdomo (cigar brand)
Encyclopedia
Perdomo is a brand of cigars primarily grown and produced in Nicaragua
and sold worldwide by Tabacalera Perdomo. The company, launched and headed by third generation cigarmaker Nick Perdomo, Jr. in 1992, is based today in Miami Lakes, Florida
.
, about 17 miles (27 km.) southeast of Havana
, where company patriarch Silvio Perdomo was raised. Perdomo went into the cigar
industry as a young man, serving his apprenticeship for Cuesta y Cia in the early 1930s. Silvio left that company's employ in 1937 to go to work for H. Upmann, where he remained until 1945. In 1945, Silvio Perdomo left H. Upmann to go to work in a managerial position at Partagas, where he stayed until 1959.
Silvio Perdomo's son, Nicholas Perdomo Sr., followed his father into the cigar making trade, beginning his apprenticeship in 1948 for Marin & Trujillo. Following the completion of his apprenticeship, Nick Senior joined his father as an executive at Partagas. He eventually went to work as a top executive at the H. Upmann factory, the largest cigar manufacturing facility in Cuba.
Following the Cuban Revolution
of 1959, Silvio Perdomo was arrested by revolutionaries and imprisoned at the Isla de los Pinos prison, where he was held in harsh conditions for three years. He was then transferred to captivity at the La Cabana fortress overlooking Habana Bay. He spent the next 12 years in prison at La Cabana and four other facilities as an enemy of the revolution of Fidel Castro
. Silvio was finally allowed to emigrate to the United States in 1974.
Nick Senior was also targeted by revolutionaries. He later recalled "The political views of my family and I were very anti-communist, and President Fulgencio Batista
used to visit the factories frequently. Batista didn't smoke cigars but, because it's one of Cuba's main exports, he was very interested in what my father and I were doing with the different cigar shapes and styles we were experimenting with." Nick Senior fought as a guerrilla against the communist forces during the revolution. He was shot twice in a fire fight and later removed from the hospital on a gurney to escape summary execution.
After recovering through the aid of a friend, Nick Senior emigrated to the United States via the Uruguay
an Embassy with the help of a sponsorship of the Catholic Church. Nick Senior settled in Washington, DC, his connection with the cigar manufacturing industry severed. Alone in Washington, DC, he began his life as an immigrant to American working as a janitor in a mental institution for $11 per week, eventually rising to become one of the biggest general contractors in the state of Florida
.
so that they could be closer to relatives there. Nick Junior attended school in Miami before joining the U.S. Navy, in which he served as an air traffic controller
. Following completion of his military stint, Nick Junior gained employment in the same field at Miami International Airport
.
Nick Junor determined to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather as a cigarmaker, although all he knew about the product firsthand was smoking them. In August 1992 he launched a home business in his garage, the humble beginnings of today's Tobacalera Perdomo. The new company in Miami was named "Nick's Cigar Co."
Nick Junior initially retained his well paying job as an air traffic controller and worked at his startup cigar brand in the evenings. In its initial phase the tiny company employed just three rollers, with Nick Junior and his wife Janine working as packers. Perdomo chose to buck the prevailing trend in the cigar industry, which was skewing towards mild cigars, by making a full-bodied product using wrappers from Ecuador
and fillers from Central America. This decision proved to be a sage one, as the flood of new cigar smokers of the 1990s predictably came to develop a taste for a spicier product.
In his first year, "Nick's Cigars" produced and sold just 9,400 cigars, but the business expanded rapidly. By 1997 he had reached the limits of production at his small Miami facility and a move was necessitated to Ybor City, near Tampa
, a historic home of American cigarmaking. This facility proved unsatisfactory, however, due to the prohibitively high cost of production in the United States.
Perdomo also expanded production abroad during the cigar boom
of the 1990s, with Nick Senior coming out of retirement in 1997 to help open a production facility in Estelí, Nicaragua. This move "really saved our company," Nick Junior retrospectively recalled. The company sold 1 million cigars for the first time in that year.
This facility was rapidly outgrown and was replaced with a custom-built facility in the same city in 1999.
In April 1999, Perdomo was approached by Cano A. Ozgener, head of C.A.O. International, with a proposition to produce its C.A.O. L'Anniversaire line, patterned after the legendary Partagas Serie D No. 4. Ozgener was losing his manufacturing plant, Tabacalera Tambor of Costa Rica
, manufacturer of the Bahia brand and needed a new partner to keep his popular product in production and Perdomo was chosen over other suitors. A mutually beneficial partnership resulted which aided in the expansion of the Perdomo operation.
By 2001, Tabacalera Perdomo was employing 622 people in Central America
as well as 24 in the United States, who were projected to make 10 million cigars for the year.
The company produces a wide range of handmade cigars ranging from entry-level bundled products to its flagship, the Perdomo Patriarch. In addition, Perdomo produces a wide array of products on behalf of other companies, including retailing giant Thompson & Co. and cigar distributor Philips and King.
.
Over 2,000 people were employed by the company in 2010, according to the company's website. Among those who have worked for the company is Ernesto Padilla
, a Cuban-American graphic artist that worked in the Perdomo marketing department before leaving to establish with his brother Carlos their own eponymous brand of cigars in 2003.
Nick Perdomo, Jr. remains as President and Chief Executive Officer
of Tabacalera Perdomo, while his wife, the New Jersey
-born Janine Perdomo, serves Vice President of Operations. The couple's son, Nicholas Perdomo III (born c. 1992), is being groomed as heir to the Tabacalera Perdomo throne, being taught every aspect of the cigar making process from planting to packaging during 13 summers in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
and sold worldwide by Tabacalera Perdomo. The company, launched and headed by third generation cigarmaker Nick Perdomo, Jr. in 1992, is based today in Miami Lakes, Florida
Miami Lakes, Florida
Miami Lakes is a Miami suburban incorporated town and former census-designated place in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The population was 22,676 at the 2000 census. As of 2004, the population recorded by the U.S...
.
Forerunners
Today's Tabacalera Perdomo traces its roots to the town of San Jose de las Lajas, CubaSan José de las Lajas, Cuba
San José de las Lajas is a municipality and the capital city of the newly formed Mayabeque Province of Cuba, after the segmentation of La Habana Province in 2011. It is located in the center north of the province, and is bisected by the Carretera Central....
, about 17 miles (27 km.) southeast of Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
, where company patriarch Silvio Perdomo was raised. Perdomo went into the cigar
Cigar
A cigar is a tightly-rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco that is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines, and the Eastern...
industry as a young man, serving his apprenticeship for Cuesta y Cia in the early 1930s. Silvio left that company's employ in 1937 to go to work for H. Upmann, where he remained until 1945. In 1945, Silvio Perdomo left H. Upmann to go to work in a managerial position at Partagas, where he stayed until 1959.
Silvio Perdomo's son, Nicholas Perdomo Sr., followed his father into the cigar making trade, beginning his apprenticeship in 1948 for Marin & Trujillo. Following the completion of his apprenticeship, Nick Senior joined his father as an executive at Partagas. He eventually went to work as a top executive at the H. Upmann factory, the largest cigar manufacturing facility in Cuba.
Following the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
of 1959, Silvio Perdomo was arrested by revolutionaries and imprisoned at the Isla de los Pinos prison, where he was held in harsh conditions for three years. He was then transferred to captivity at the La Cabana fortress overlooking Habana Bay. He spent the next 12 years in prison at La Cabana and four other facilities as an enemy of the revolution of Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
. Silvio was finally allowed to emigrate to the United States in 1974.
Nick Senior was also targeted by revolutionaries. He later recalled "The political views of my family and I were very anti-communist, and President Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was the United States-aligned Cuban President, dictator and military leader who served as the leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution....
used to visit the factories frequently. Batista didn't smoke cigars but, because it's one of Cuba's main exports, he was very interested in what my father and I were doing with the different cigar shapes and styles we were experimenting with." Nick Senior fought as a guerrilla against the communist forces during the revolution. He was shot twice in a fire fight and later removed from the hospital on a gurney to escape summary execution.
After recovering through the aid of a friend, Nick Senior emigrated to the United States via the Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
an Embassy with the help of a sponsorship of the Catholic Church. Nick Senior settled in Washington, DC, his connection with the cigar manufacturing industry severed. Alone in Washington, DC, he began his life as an immigrant to American working as a janitor in a mental institution for $11 per week, eventually rising to become one of the biggest general contractors in the state of Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
.
Establishment
In 1976, Nick Perdomo Sr. and his family, including son Nicholas Perdomo Jr., moved from the city in which they had lived, Washington, DC, to Miami, FloridaMiami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
so that they could be closer to relatives there. Nick Junior attended school in Miami before joining the U.S. Navy, in which he served as an air traffic controller
Air traffic controller
Air traffic controllers are the people who expedite and maintain a safe and orderly flow of air traffic in the global air traffic control system. The position of the air traffic controller is one that requires highly specialized skills...
. Following completion of his military stint, Nick Junior gained employment in the same field at Miami International Airport
Miami International Airport
Miami International Airport , also known as MIA and historically Wilcox Field, is the primary airport serving the South Florida area...
.
Nick Junor determined to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather as a cigarmaker, although all he knew about the product firsthand was smoking them. In August 1992 he launched a home business in his garage, the humble beginnings of today's Tobacalera Perdomo. The new company in Miami was named "Nick's Cigar Co."
Nick Junior initially retained his well paying job as an air traffic controller and worked at his startup cigar brand in the evenings. In its initial phase the tiny company employed just three rollers, with Nick Junior and his wife Janine working as packers. Perdomo chose to buck the prevailing trend in the cigar industry, which was skewing towards mild cigars, by making a full-bodied product using wrappers from Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
and fillers from Central America. This decision proved to be a sage one, as the flood of new cigar smokers of the 1990s predictably came to develop a taste for a spicier product.
In his first year, "Nick's Cigars" produced and sold just 9,400 cigars, but the business expanded rapidly. By 1997 he had reached the limits of production at his small Miami facility and a move was necessitated to Ybor City, near Tampa
Tâmpa
Tâmpa may refer to several villages in Romania:* Tâmpa, a village in Băcia Commune, Hunedoara County* Tâmpa, a village in Miercurea Nirajului, Mureş County* Tâmpa, a mountain in Braşov city...
, a historic home of American cigarmaking. This facility proved unsatisfactory, however, due to the prohibitively high cost of production in the United States.
Perdomo also expanded production abroad during the cigar boom
Cigar boom
The Cigar Boom is the name given to the resurgence of cigar consumption in the United States during the years of the middle 1990s. Beginning in 1992, imports and sales of premium cigars began to rise dramatically and manufacturers struggled to keep up with demand, leading to industry-wide shortages...
of the 1990s, with Nick Senior coming out of retirement in 1997 to help open a production facility in Estelí, Nicaragua. This move "really saved our company," Nick Junior retrospectively recalled. The company sold 1 million cigars for the first time in that year.
This facility was rapidly outgrown and was replaced with a custom-built facility in the same city in 1999.
Development
Perdomo created a stir during the cigar boom of the 1990s with the introduction of the Perdomo² ("Perdomo squared"), one of the first box-pressed cigars of the period.In April 1999, Perdomo was approached by Cano A. Ozgener, head of C.A.O. International, with a proposition to produce its C.A.O. L'Anniversaire line, patterned after the legendary Partagas Serie D No. 4. Ozgener was losing his manufacturing plant, Tabacalera Tambor of Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
, manufacturer of the Bahia brand and needed a new partner to keep his popular product in production and Perdomo was chosen over other suitors. A mutually beneficial partnership resulted which aided in the expansion of the Perdomo operation.
By 2001, Tabacalera Perdomo was employing 622 people in Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
as well as 24 in the United States, who were projected to make 10 million cigars for the year.
The company produces a wide range of handmade cigars ranging from entry-level bundled products to its flagship, the Perdomo Patriarch. In addition, Perdomo produces a wide array of products on behalf of other companies, including retailing giant Thompson & Co. and cigar distributor Philips and King.
Company today
Today Perdomo's manufacturing operation is based in an 88000 square feet (8,175.5 m²) facility in Estelí, Nicaragua, known colloquially as "El Monstro" (The Monster). The building is the second-largest cigarmaking facility in Nicaragua, trailing only the factory of Nicaraguan American Tobaccos S.A. (NATSA), also located in Estelí. Headquarters are located in Miami Lakes, FloridaMiami Lakes, Florida
Miami Lakes is a Miami suburban incorporated town and former census-designated place in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The population was 22,676 at the 2000 census. As of 2004, the population recorded by the U.S...
.
Over 2,000 people were employed by the company in 2010, according to the company's website. Among those who have worked for the company is Ernesto Padilla
Ernesto Padilla
Ernesto Padilla is a Cuban-American artist, graphic designer, and cigar maker. He is the son of Cuban poet, Heberto Padilla.-Early life:...
, a Cuban-American graphic artist that worked in the Perdomo marketing department before leaving to establish with his brother Carlos their own eponymous brand of cigars in 2003.
Nick Perdomo, Jr. remains as President and Chief Executive Officer
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
of Tabacalera Perdomo, while his wife, the New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
-born Janine Perdomo, serves Vice President of Operations. The couple's son, Nicholas Perdomo III (born c. 1992), is being groomed as heir to the Tabacalera Perdomo throne, being taught every aspect of the cigar making process from planting to packaging during 13 summers in Nicaragua.
Perdomo products
- Perdomo
- Perdomo² (squared)
- Perdomo Edición de Silvio
- Perdomo Fresco
- Perdomo Gran Cru
- Perdomo Habano
- Perdomo Inmenso
- Perdomo Lot 23
- Perdomo Moments
- Perdomo Patriarch
- Perdomo Reserve 10th Anniversary
- Perdomo Reserve Golf
- Cuban Bullet
- Don Rios
- Genuine Cuban Counterfeits
- La Tradición Cabinet Series
- Nick's Sticks
- Tierra del Sol
External links
- Tabacalera Perdomo homepage, perdomocigars.net/ Retrieved September 14, 2010. Age verification required.
- Perdomo Cigars Facebook page, facebook.com/ Retrieved September 14, 2010.
- 1000 Hands, Perdomo factory tour video. youtube.com/ Retrieved September 14, 2010.
- "The Perdomo Factory Tour uncut trailer," facebook.com/ Retrieved September 14, 2010.
- The Wine Wench, Interview with Nick Perdomo Jr., Blog Talk Radio, August 19, 2010.
- Perdomo Cigars Australia, perdomocigars.com.au/ Retrieved November 29, 2010.