Archive: May 2024

Hi Everyone! I hope you had a great bank holiday weekend! We were as busy as ever despite the horrible weather in Norfolk!

On Tuesday, there were already lots of online orders to be packed, however Porscha and I still had a lot to pick! Once I finished my pickings I went into the packing department and packed as many as I could, my packing skills aren’t as good as they once were (for those who don’t know I actually started my career at Turmeaus in the Packing department) but any help is always appreciated. Once the packing department had caught up I helped out the Royal Mail booking team, to get all the orders I packed shipped out that day! So someone reading this may have had an order that I picked, packed and sent in the post! Meanwhile Porscha was serving all of our happy customers. It’s great to see her serve on her own as I know she struggles with confidence but I wouldn’t leave her to serve customers if I didn’t have confidence in her ability.

On Wednesday, I was mainly booking on parcels to the Royal Mail system. As it was near the end of the month, we send out our monthly cigar subscription so all of our subscribers would receive them by the 1st. So I helped book them all on, I also started researching for my next article for the C.Gars cigar library. Meanwhile in the shop Josh had a gentleman who had only started smoking cigars for around two weeks. He must be enjoying it spend over £500 on cigars! He listened to everything Josh said and had plenty of his suggested cigars, Josh was so happy he even kept the receipt! I remember my first big sale, It was a box of Partagas Salomones, the buzz you get from selling a box of cigars is incredible and knowing the customer has left happy is just the icing on the cake!

On Thursday, I was having a marketing day, so I wrote the article that I researched the day before. It’s all about cigar sizes for beginners, you can read it here. I also spent some time taking pictures for it and editing them. I also finalised all of the shop newsletters and scheduled them to be sent tomorrow. I almost forgot to do Norfolks newsletter! I am always so concerned about getting the other stores done on time that I always leave my own store until last! But with the help of the team for ideas I got it done fairly easily! This newsletter is based heavily around Father’s day.

On Friday, I was back in the shop with Josh. We had plenty of online orders to pick, I also had a lot of pipes to pick for the product listing team to take pictures of. They like to freshen up the pictures from time to time to try to make them easy on the eye and maybe even more noticeable. Josh served an elderly gentleman and his daughter, they always have a holiday to Norfolk every year and visit the shop every time! This time the gentleman went away with a box of 10 Montecristo no. 4 as well as King Edwards and a few Romeo y Julietas. In the afternoon as always we have the Cuban stock count, however this time there was a lot more stock to count! It seems that, after a few years of struggling to be able to get the stock, we can now order what we need instead of what we can, which is a great feeling! I have even seen some Cuban lines that I had never seen before!

I hope you have enjoyed this week’s blog and I hope to see you all in Norfolk soon.

So long for now

Oliver

Hi everyone! I hope you are looking forward to the bank holiday weekend! I think many of our customers were preparing for a nice long weekend as we certainly saw plenty of you come in and treat yourselves to a nice cigar or three. 

On Monday, as always it was Porscha and myself working in the shop, picking the mountains of orders made over the weekend! It seemed never ending but we got there in the end! Afterwards I had a giant stock up of our Cuban stock. Once we complete our pickings on a Monday, the shelves always look a little bare so we tend to spend whatever time we have, refilling the shelves and of course serving our lovely customers. Talking of customers I had one gentleman come in looking for a Cohiba, but not just any Cohiba, he was looking for the Cohiba red dot. A lot of you may not have heard about the Cohiba red dot but they are mainly available in the USA due to the Cuban embargo, however you may see some when travelling around the world. The Cohiba in question is a Dominican brand not available in the UK due to the clash with the Cuban Cohiba, so in the UK they are known as Silencio – the same brand just a different name! After telling the customer the backstory behind the names of some cigar brands he was amazed! He purchased a Silencio red dot and black dot and went away learning something new too!

On Tuesday, I spent my day completing my marketing. I started by making an article on the C.Gars cigar library about Casa Turrent cigars which you can read here. I also spent time taking pictures and the banner for it. I have recently been given a few tips on how to improve my photography skills and hopefully my pictures will stick out a lot more and look much better too! After article writing, I finished completing the shop newsletters for the other shops we have. I would love to have a tour of Turmeaus and C.Gars shops to see how they all look and operate. I also created a news piece about the Davidoff Maduro cigars, which you can read here. This is another aspect I need to concentrate on, as news pieces are really important to show our customers about new products as well as interesting ones. 

On Thursday, Billy and I had our regular New World cigar stock count, we were amazed by the amount of Gurkha cigars we have in stock! And they looked incredible! We were particularly fond of the Gurkha Beauty 25th Anniversary, the cigar in its tube looked brilliant and the box it was presented in was a thing of beauty! Hence the name I imagine! I reckon people would buy these for the box alone! 

On Friday, after my usual pickings, I served a gentleman who was about to go to Bucharest in Romania. He had found a tobacconist online and wanted to see if firstly we stocked the cigars he was looking for and compare the price to see if he was getting a good deal buying them in Romania. It turns out that surprisingly he isn’t saving much by going there. He then wanted to look in our humidors and was excited to find the Drew Estate Factory Smokes were in stock. I’m sure I have said before that many people have been excited to see these as they are so popular in the USA, so to see them in the UK is brilliant! In the afternoon I completed the Cuban stock count with Sarah who has improved her stock counting abilities massively!

On Saturday, It was a great day with Porscha and Josh despite the terrible weather! Once we had completed our online order pickings, we updated all of our prices and had a general stock up ready for the bank holiday order picking! 

I hope you have enjoyed this week in Norfolk and please remember all of our stores are open 12pm-5pm on the bank holiday Monday so you can still come and see us in store!

So long for now 

Oliver

Hi everyone! It was great to see some familiar faces and some not so local customers visit for the first time.

On Monday, Porscha and I were blown away by the amount of online orders we had to pick! The flash sale for the weekend, which was the Casual smoke sampler, was extremely popular! So much so that we ran out! Meanwhile I served a gentleman who was from Walsall! Which is not far from where I grew up! He was on the last day of his holiday and really wanted to visit our shop. I was very happy to serve him and was surprised to find out that his first cigar he smoked was an Aladino! Usually more experienced smokers tend to enjoy Aladinos, however to hear a relative beginner enjoy one really shows that there is no real beginner cigar as they all can be enjoyed whether you’re a novice or experienced. He treated himself to another Aladino as well as the H. Upmann Majestic. It’s safe to say he enjoyed our visit and I’m sure we will see more from him!

On Tuesday, I was joined by Sarah, we picked orders as usual and had a good tidy of the shop. Afterwards we continued our work on the till system, making sure all the cigars were correctly priced removing duplicates to ensure a more streamlined experience. 

On Wednesday, It was Porscha and myself running the shop again. Most of our regulars will be used to Josh being in the shop as that is his favourite place to be however, we have decided to train him up in other aspects of the job. So he was with Ciaran and learning the different aspects of pipe tobacco, how to pick them for online orders and also what tobacco goes in our samplers. Meanwhile I was helping Ben edit his pictures for the website, he is the man behind our tobacco samplers and wants to find better ways to promote them so he has been taking more artistic pictures and I have been helping to teach him how to edit them. I was also working with our general manager to find better ways to keep on top of our stock levels, ensuring we are ordering stock we need and overstocking in other places.

On Thursday, it was my day to concentrate on my pieces of marketing, however it seemed like I spent most of my time training other members of staff. To begin with I helped all of our retail staff understand our humidors a lot better. I trained them on what temperature and humidity our humidors should be kept at (69%-72% and around 18 degrees celsius for those interested) and what to do if they are high or low. I also spent time teaching them about plume and what to do if they see any as well as generic humidor maintenance. 

Afterwards I wrote an article for the C.Gars cigar library explaining about the history of whisky which you can read here. After this I was with Ben again training him on getting great pictures of his pipe tobacco. He has admitted that creativity isn’t his strong point, however with practise he will get there. We took a few pictures of different samplers and then spent some time editing them. After a few blips we got there and they are now on the website and he will be working through them all make sure you take a look! After spending time with Ben, I took pictures of my own, they are for next month’s cigar of the month of which I can’t reveal yet but they are ones that I have never considered trying but after reading about them I may have to treat myself! 

On Friday, I was back in the shop with Sarah, we were updating displays and having a general tidy up. As always in the afternoon we had our Cuban stock count, which we sped through incredibly fast!

I hope you have enjoyed this weeks going on in Norfolk and I hope to see you all again soon!

So long for now

Oliver

Hi everyone, I hope you had a great bank holiday weekend! The weather sure is hotting up and I am noticing a lot more larger vitolas are now in demand to enjoy in the sun! 

As always we are open on bank holidays, so Sarah, Porscha and I worked hard to pick all of the online orders of which between the three of us was a mammoth task! I do remember over the years that there was less staff working bank holidays meaning I had to pick every single order by myself! Luckily now we have many more people available to help. Between us we picked all the orders, packed loads and I even booked on Royal Mail as many as I could! This gives us an unbelievable boost ahead of the rush on Tuesday! Meanwhile Porscha served a gentleman who a few years ago sold all of his cigars to quit smoking, but has now decided to enjoy them again. He came in and bought over 20 cigars and then Porscha (very smartly) asked if he needed to purchase a humidor to put them all in, I thought that was brilliant! He ended up purchasing the Savinelli High Lacquered Yellow and Carbon Fibre Humidor, to go along with his cigars! An unbelievable suggestion from Porscha. As much as we are sales people, we won’t sell you something you do not need. If it suits you we will suggest it but we do not heavily push these sales, and I think that is why we always have returning customers.

On Thursday I had my fortnightly New World stock count. However, this time Billy was unavailable, so Sarah stood in for him and she did incredibly well! She has never counted the New World cigars before but she did a great job and seemed confident in what she was doing! We finished at around 3pm and I could see Sarah was worn out, it is very tiring counting the New World cigars, especially for the first time – I do think Billy and myself are used to the feeling now. 

On Friday, I was only in for the morning so I spent my time doing as much as my marketing as I could. I wrote an article for the C.Gars cigar Library, this one was all about Blackbird cigars, which you can read here. I unfortunately wasn’t able to find time to take the pictures but I found some that our brilliant marketing team had already taken. I also contacted the rest of our shops asking for their June newsletter content, I can’t believe next month is June! Before you know it I’ll be singing Jingle Bells. 

I also served a gentleman who years ago used to smoke a small cigar to help him get to sleep, so he wanted some half corona sized cigars to enjoy and help sleep. I looked more towards the lighter cigars like a Davidoff Traveller Belicoso, Rafael Gonzales Perla and a Charatan Petit Corona, maybe I should make this into a sampler and call it “the help you sleep sampler” what do you think?

On Saturday it was Josh, Porscha and myself who was running the show, we picked all the orders and stocked the shelves. We had some lovely customers come in who had been visiting for years, even when we were back in Rollesby! They asked about the staff back then, most of whom have left but they were certainly happy about the service we provided. 

I hope you have enjoyed this week’s shortened blog. We will be back to a full week starting from Monday.

So long for now

Olly

Hi everyone! How are you getting on? Life here in Turmeaus Norfolk is always great! I hope you can all come and see all of our friendly staff here very soon! 

On Monday I worked through my never ending stack of online orders! Myself and Josh (who was drafted in at the last minute to help) got through them as quickly as we could! Once I completed my pickings, I stocked up the humidor and organised the pipes in the pipe room. Later on in the afternoon, Ben, who deals with our pipe tobacco samplers, needed help taking marketing pictures of his samplers. He wants to improve the regular listing pictures and wanted them to look much better, so I gave my advice and showed him how to use my camera, and then there was the editing. He was completely new to our editing software so I showed him a few tips on how to adjust colours and effects that can really make his pictures stand out! What do you think? Later on I served a regular customer who always trusts my judgement! Whenever I let him choose his own cigar he isn’t happy but when I select one for him he enjoys it! He mentioned he was going to be having it with a peated whisky, so I suggested the Tabernacle David, as the fruity flavours would go well with the smokiness. Upon hearing my regular enjoyed peated whisky, I recommend trying the Stalla Dhu Islay, which has won numerous awards at the world whisky awards! He tried it and instantly fell in love to the point that he purchased a full size bottle! It’s safe to say he went home very happy.

I was back in the shop Tuesday with Sarah. I served a couple who wanted to buy some cigars for their Grandad, they didn’t know what to get at all and told me to get what I think would be best! So I suggested the Tabernacle David, Inka Secret Blend Red Petit Corona, Mitchellero Robusto and a tin of La Flor Dominicana Los Carajos. They then saw the Montecristo selection and wanted to treat him to a Cuban, they chose the Montecristo no. 4 which is always a reliable smoke! Safe to say they went home happy! Meanwhile I was also planning June’s New World Cigar Subscription and as always they are amazing! The amount of money you save is incredible! And you get to try cigars that you may not even know exist. 

On Wednesday, I was drafted in to parcel booking on! Ben was off ill and so I took over and I absolutely smashed it, if I do say so myself! This is the second time being left alone booking on parcels and although it is nerve wracking not having a more experienced person with you, sometimes you have to get through it and at the end of the day I felt proud!

On Thursday, it was my marketing day! I firstly had a meeting with the marketing team, coming up with ideas for the website and getting prepared for Fathers day! So you will see some changes very soon! Afterwards, I created an article for the C.Gars cigar library, all about Vegas Robaina cigars! Which you can read here, I didn’t know that they only started in 1997! That makes me older than a prestigious Cuban brand! I also started planning next week’s marketing as the bank holiday has fallen on a week when I am incredibly busy with stock takes! 

On Friday, I was back in the shop with Josh and we were stocking the shelves up to the max ready for the bank holiday weekend! Together we worked through the pipe tobacco and pipe room to make it tip top! We’re usually very busy in store and online over bank holidays so we need to keep the shop looking brilliant as always! As always I had the Cuban Stock take to complete, with the assistance of Josh, we got it done perfectly!

I hope you have enjoyed this weeks goings on and I hope to see you all in Norfolk soon, I have a coffee waiting for you!

So long for now

Olly