Archive: October 2022

Hi everyone! Hope you’ve all had a lovely week! We had a very stormy weekend last week, the thunder was absolutely amazing! I have been on my own in the shop all week which means I get to serve everyone that comes in the door, regular or not. I had some lovely catch ups and was introduced to new customers who have ordered online and had orders picked by me but never made it into the shop. It’s always lovely to put a face to a name.

We’re all so excited for Halloween here that we are having a costume contest on the 31st! If you come to visit us you’ll see many staff dressed up in their scariest outfits all for a bit of fun. I’m still doing figures for the Subscriptions to try to provide you with the best cigars possible, if you have any suggestions please feel free to email me at [email protected] and you may see your favourite cigar in the next box! I’m also having a busy day stocking up the humidor to try to free up some more space for more New World cigars, we recently got in K by Karen Berger cigars and we have already sold 2 boxes! I may have to give them a try to see why they are so popular.

You will start to see some changes in our shop over the next few weeks of which we believe will vastly improve it visually. It may take some getting used to (especially for myself) but change is always good and you won’t even remember what it used to look like. The first change came with the main display you see, it was on a long table which I was always worried about people knocking over so we have a smaller round table which looks much better.

Friday started with a large amount of pickings! But once that was done I had an interesting encounter with someone who wanted to get a valuation for a cigar, for this it has to be sent off to Mitchell himself to value as he is the best at valuing rare and vintage Havanas. This cigar is one I never knew existed! It’s amazing to just look at, it was a Partagas Visible Inmenso and it was almost the size of my arm! This cigar was massive. Afterwards one of my regulars came in who i’m always happy to see as he drives around 100 miles round trip just to come to our shop. He purchased for himself a beautiful Vauen Paris pipe, I think Vauen is very underrated as a pipe brand, their pipes use top quality materials and most of them look very beautiful and unique. You should take a look at them by clicking here.

Saturday is always a fun day in the shop, we get many tourists who have never been here before and enjoy their experience as well as a few regulars but i do love serving the holidaymakers as they are always in awe of our shop and really enjoy their experience, but it also keeps me on my toes as with the regulars I get to have a casual conversation (while remaining professional) whereas with new customers I keep professional the whole time and answer whatever questions they have. The questions new customers have is what keeps my brain ticking and if i don’t have the answer I make sure I research it so I know it the next time someone asks. 

I hope you are all enjoying my blog and if you have any questions feel free to email me 

So long for now my friends

Oliver

Hi all, I hope you enjoyed my first blog, I received some great feedback and I do appreciate it. The traditional Monday again of picking online orders all day has arrived, such a mixture of different cigars really keeps me on my toes but I think I know our two humidors like the back of my hand now. The accessories however are a different story, without the help of my colleagues I would be struggling a lot more and vice versa as they ask for my help when it comes to cigars, you know what they say “Teamwork makes the dreamwork”. I managed to squeeze in writing my next article about considerations when purchasing a cigar, I’ve always seen ourselves as a company who likes to help out our customers with our friendly faces but also our advice, If you have been served by me in our Norfolk shop you will know that I never force a cigar upon anyone but I will steer you away from ones that I don’t think are right for you and I like to carry that on to my articles.

I had two amazing customers who had visited from Canada! They had been to our store in Mayfair and then made a visit to us in Norfolk. They really enjoyed themselves and found our pipe room incredible, they also mentioned that there aren’t really any shops like ours over there. They spent around 45 minutes looking at all of our pipes and in the end settled on two Peterson pipes as well as some tasty tobacco of which they can’t find in Canada. I also found out that pipe tobacco is in fact more expensive over there too! I really enjoyed talking to them about different pipes and I felt overjoyed when they took my recommendations too.

Interesting start to my Tuesday as I had a lovely lady who came in with a picture of Jethro (Many youngsters may not know who that is) holding a pipe and wanted one just like that for her husband, again this took a lot of my pipe knowledge to find one similar and in the end she went home happy which always makes me overjoyed. Nikki, our marketing planner came to me today to ask for two Adorini articles to be published over the next couple of months so by the afternoon I finished writing them and started taking pictures, I must say Adorini accessories look incredibly cool and beautiful, they might be my next purchase. 

Wednesday was a scheduled day off so moving on to Thursday and I spent the whole day stock taking our New World humidor with our new Humidor Supervisor Billy and we didn’t even complete it. Luckily I had my colleague Sharon working double duty covering the shop for me as well as booking on parcels for online customers! You will all see her soon enough full time in the shop from the 16th of November as we’re all having a little shuffle around (don’t worry I’m going nowhere). We had quite a few customers purchasing our vast range of pipe tobacco, when I first started I didn’t picture pipe tobacco being this popular! But honestly it flies off the shelf quicker than I can put it on the shelves!

Friday started with me picking orders and once I had finished picking it was back to counting the cigars in the New World humidor with Billy. It was a long and gruelling process but we got there in the end and now he is planning some new exciting samplers for you all to try, coming to the website soon!

Saturday I completed the Cuban humidor stock take so now we know exactly what cigars we have.  If you haven’t been in our shop yet then you won’t have seen our Halloween decorations! It’s a very spooky place muahahaha! The Halloween theme is also on the C.Gars website and we have special section for gifts to enjoy over this fun time of year which you can see here. I particularly like the new Peterson Halloween pipes, the orange stem is such a unique colour it really makes you stand out from the crowd.

Hope you enjoyed my blog

So long for now 🙂

Oliver

Hi everyone I’m Oliver and I work in our Norfolk Cigar and Whisky store, you may have seen me behind the front desk or even had the pleasure of me serving you! Welcome to my blog. I am going to be sharing with you everything I get up to and any interesting customer interactions I have. I can tell you this, there is never a dull day in our retail store.

A traditional Monday consists of picking online orders… all day! We get so many orders over a weekend that we spend most of our Mondays here just picking orders. I did manage to find some time however to write an article for the C.Gars Cigar Library about “The History of Japanese Whisky” which you can view here. We had a few of our regular customers visiting as well who I’m always happy to see. The biggest news this week is we have Mac Baren pipe tobacco back in stock!! Since lockdown in 2020 this tobacco has been extremely scarce and I wasn’t sure we would ever see again, so I was astounded upon picking orders when I noticed we had an order going out for it, this order has been on back order since December 2021! Waiting a year for his pipe tobacco, now that’s dedication, I’m sure he will be over the moon this week when it finally arrives.

On Tuesday I spent the first hour again picking orders (which is a common theme), afterwards I updated the images on the screens in our Cuban humidor to promote different brands to our customers, this weeks’ gems included the beautiful Orchant Seleccion cigars and some Adorini accessories. It was another busy day in the shop but in between customers I was able to start taking pictures for my next article.

On Wednesday once I finished my pickings I was needed by our Royal Mail team to help book on our online orders (Jack of all trades me), once caught up, I carried on with a task I have been doing on and off for months which is doing website pictures for cigar samplers, working alongside our humidor manager it helps me recognise cigars that I didn’t even know we had! At the end of the day I received the amazing news from our director that I would be in charge of the standard cigar subscriptions! Which means I get to decide which cigars our subscribers get each month! 

Thursdays are always an interesting day for me as I’m usually on my own in the shop so I really take the time to get our lovely shop up to scratch. This time I have one of our apprentices with me who is trying to learn the trade and gain as much knowledge as she can! Stocking up pipes and tobacco is a common theme on Thursdays and Fridays as our online orders take them in droves. However this Thursday I was learning how to edit the leaflets for subscriptions ready for everyone to see.

Friday, the best day of the week! Lovely seeing a few regulars pop in as each time you get to exchange stories and learn more about our customers lives and get updates on how things are going. Fridays always seem to be the busiest day of the week but I love it as I’m always on the go and the day flies by.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading what I have got up to this week and if there’s anything you want to know about feel free to email me at [email protected]

So long for now 🙂