US. Nat Sherman is celebrating 75 years as a family-owned cigar maker whose aim is to bring style and class to the art of smoking. At TFWA World Exhibition earlier this month, Vice-President Bill Sherman showed the latest exclusive cigar presentations to travel retailers at his signature wood-panelled stand harking back to 1930s New York, where the firm was founded.
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| Nat Sherman’s new Omerta cigars (pictured left) and the 1400 Series packaged in gold-tasselled oval boxes. Omerta is a box of six super-premium cigars | |
New products
The first new product is a box of six super-premium cigars called Omerta – named, somewhat mysteriously, after a word used by the Mafia. (Perhaps a nod to the Casa Nostra family connection – Ed.) Presented in a square black-and-silver gift box, the Nicaraguan cigars are 54-ring gauge and have a rich, full-bodied flavour, according to Bill Sherman. The duty free price is about US$45.
Second on the new product front – dubbed “very exciting” by Sherman – is the 1400 Series, a gold-tasselled box containing 14 individually wrapped Nicaraguan cigars in two different sizes: a 6.5ins cigar (44-ring gauge) and a 7ins cigar (48-ring gauge), described as a medium to full-bodied smoke.
Although designed as highly giftable, in eye-catching presentations, Sherman is convinced: “It all starts with the product.” He firmly believes the product must be right first of all.
Among the company’s current best-selling travel retail outlets are Korean Air and London Heathrow terminal one’s walk-in cigar humidor, where Sherman himself trains the staff. Both outlets carry the popular Nat Sherman Legendary Cigars travel retail exclusive box, presented at Tax Free Asia Pacific in Singapore earlier this year.
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| Bill Sherman at Cannes. “Innovative, different, approachable and fun” are the words Sherman uses to describe his company – and he has serious commercial intentions | |
About Nat Sherman
Fiercely proud of his family’s retailing and manufacturing heritage, Bill Sherman works alongside his father Joel, who is President and CEO, his sister, Michelle, and his younger brother Larry in the business, which produces its own cigarettes, as well as cigars and smoking accessories such as cigar boxes. His mother, Myrna, plays an active role, as of course does Bill’s sparky assistant, Helene Cohen, who isn’t a family member but she’s worked for the firm for 15 years or so and declares: “They treat me like family.”
“Innovative, different, approachable and fun” are the words Bill Sherman uses to describe his company – and he has serious commercial intentions. A flagship Nat Sherman store has been trading in Fifth Avenue, New York, since the 1970s. And a decade before that, the firm acquired the Alexiou cigarette factory in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and moved it to Englewood, New Jersey. The acquisition was a turning point for the company, which now produces all of its own cigarettes in-house.
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