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SHOW & PATEL

he next time you visit your local Rouses Market, be on the lookout for a display case of cigars unlike any you have seen

Tubeaux, there has never been a compact way to display cigars in humidors.” The idea came to him when he was in his office one Sunday night several years ago. While working, he was idly tapping a slender protective cigar tube called a “tubo.” He turned around for a brief moment, and when he returned his attention to the work on his desk, he noticed that the tubo was still standing upright. The solution to the cigar display problem struck him immediately. “I thought to myself: a display for tubed cigars, just like candy or cigarettes in conve- nience store vending machines work,” he says. “They would be displayed vertically and pushed out.” It was a eureka moment. Howard has always preferred cigars that are sold in tubos because of the versatility the slender tubes provide. A cigar in a tubo can be kept in your pocket, the cupholder in your car or the console of a boat, all without the smoker needing to worry about the cigar inside being damaged. He figured that someone provided the sort of compact humidor that he was envisioning, and he began scouring the Internet. Such a thing did not exist, he discovered. So, he decided to make one himself. Which wasn’t easy! Where does one go to manufacture something that doesn’t exist? How does a person explain what that “something” is without saying what it is because the invention—so elegant in its simplicity—would be transformative for the $18 billion global cigar industry? And a very easy idea to steal, at that. How does one do all this and not sound crazy to the people and companies approached? It took some doing, but Howard finally found a company willing to sign a nondisclosure agreement and talk specifics. And right away, the company agreed: this thing was a killer idea. “They immediately devoted all their resources to help me over the next two-and-half years to get the product to the marketplace,” Howard says. Product research and development alone took 18 months. They tried dozens of different springs and designs to account for the hundreds of different types of cigars and tubes. Some tubes have screw caps on the bottom. Some hatch open in the middle. Some are made of glass. Some are aluminum. The weight and size of the cigars inside the tubes vary. “Ultimately, I wouldn’t bring the product to market until I acquired

By David W. Brown

before. The colors will be the first thing you notice. Rather than the typical drab, upright coffins the color of paper bags, you will notice sealed, translucent boxes featuring dozens of premium brand cigars in vibrant, vertical tubes. The personality of each cigar will be as distinct as the bottles of wine on our shelves. The display cases are, in fact, sophisticated, revolutionary humidors made by a company called Tubeaux. You'll see them first at our stores because Tubeaux was invented by a Rouses team member: Barton Howard, an executive at the company. “It was birthed out of necessity,” says Howard. “We needed a way to be able to display the merchandise in our premium tobacco program, but we didn’t have enough space to do it properly. Before

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