Marketing Plan for a Cigar Holder

As Beirne (1999) observes, the confusing plethora of cigar brands and makers is "pushing cigar smokers back to the names they know, like Punch, Partagas and Macanudo. In that environment, a new player might be hard pressed to convince tobacco shop retailers to clear it some shelf space" (Beirne, 1999, 2). Beirne discusses the rigors endured by Gran Reserve, a division of Synergy Brands, which specializes in selling impulse grocery, phone cards and health and beauty aids. The market was glutted (even more so for cigar accessories which take more shelf space and move more slowly). As he points out:

The typical cigar market launching pad in the old school involves securing a product review in smoking magazines and waiting for word of mouth to kick in, but that cycle didn't turn fast enough for Synergy to break through the wall going up around tobacconists. So someone figured, if you couldn't go through the wall, go around it.

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rofits, since the channels for selling the Gartech are at maximum three deep, and even in those channels the margins are 30% to 40%. The lowest margins in the pricing structure are connected with The Adventurer. Consider the markups using a standard three-level distribution. Landed Cost of Adventurer $1.95 Suggested Retail $32.00 Gartech Price to Wholesaler $12.00 Wholesaler Price to Distributor $18.00 Distributor Price to Retailer $24.00 These markups allow substantial discounting, if necessary, in each of the channels. However, as will be discussed under "Place" this traditional distribution system might not be used, thereby creating greater margins. Place Because of the nature of the product, there are not a lot of retail outlets in which to sell the Gartech. Although many tobacconists and liquor stores are selling cigars, these are not the premium brands, and therefore it makes little sense to devote too much time or energy considering selling to these markets. A person who spends $12 for a box of Panatelas is not going to spend $32 to store them in. Because of the competition in the traditional gift industry channels, there is also not much sense trying to make any sort of penetration in those
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Quality Design, Association America, Synergy Brands, Product Gartech, Price Retailer, Introduction Gartech, Royce Bentley, Cigar Aficionado, Chinese Presently, Selling Gartech, cigar smokers, beirne 1999, sell gartech, cigar accessories, marketing plan, mott 1993, gifts cigar smokers, selling gartech, cigar smoker, cigar smoking, landed cost, women 1998 1, beirne 1999 2,
Approximate Word count = 1980
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)