WHY SELL CIGARS: Because cigars are a high profit margin item that attracts affluent customers. Most importantly, cigar fans are loyal customers that often need to replenish! MDC Wholesale Cigars makes setting up a cigar business almost as simple as you putting in a vending machine. Except instead of making 75 cents a sale, you'll make at least $10. Our cigars can be found everywhere from large cigar shops and vacation resorts to small liquor stores and local golf courses. We make it easy to buy wholesale cigars online.
IS GETTING STARTED EASY? You pick a humidor. We help you pick cigars and price them appropriately. Everything arrives at your business within 5 business days. You plug in the humidifier, put the cigars on display and start making money that same day. Our Retailer's Tips will ensure you start making money immediately!
DO I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CIGARS IN ORDER TO SELL THEM? You don’t have to! Most of our retailers didn’t know anything when they started. But we’ve spent an amazing amount of time creating a plug-n-play system that makes it ridiculously easy to become profitable on the first day. We provide staff training. The training is a simple process that utilizes basic rules of thumb and techniques designed to get staff selling cigars with confidence and always upselling to the higher priced cigars! We essentially provide the operations manual of a cigar franchise at no cost.
IS THERE RISK? CAN I EXCHANGE PRODUCTS? We guarantee our cigars! If it's not selling, we'll exchange it for another brand of cigars that will sell - so you have absolutely no risk! Absolutely no one else offers this kind of unlimited support. Read more here.
DO YOU OFFER SUPPORT? We are there for you in every way imaginable. No stone unturned. We personally help you choose cigars based on your type of business and customer demographic. Once you receive those cigars you will receive a concise training manual to help you and your employees learn how to sell cigars. Don't worry, we don't expect you to remember anything complicated at all. Everything you learn will be rules of thumb. And best of all - if anything isn't selling, we'll take it back! See details about our No Risk Exchange Program. Additionally, if your purchase size qualifies you to take advantage of our free perks for Elite Status Members, then you get even more perks such as free cigars, free cutters, free cigar baggies, discounts on all orders, one-on-one consulting, and much more!
IS IT PROFITABLE TO SELL CIGARS? In a word, yes! First of all, our true wholesale pricing cannot be beat. But that's just the beginning. We offer comprehensive staff training to teach you and your staff how to sell multiple cigars to each customer and to upsell to more expensive cigars in just a few short words. We will teach you the buzz words used to make that $20 cigar sale a breeze. Plus, since everything you sell will be marked up at least by double expect some impressive revenue! Even our smallest accounts such as small liquor stores make impressive profits! Even with little countertop humidors that only hold 12 boxes they generate over $2500 a month in sales with literally no effort! FYI, that little humidor only takes up 1' x 2' footprint. So you can imagine how much our accounts generate that carry 25, 50 or 100 boxes of cigars!
DO YOU HAVE THE LOWEST PRICES? Yes, we absolutely do! Many small businesses find a local cigar shop to buy cigars from. That cigar shop is buying cigars from a wholesale cigar distributor like us and reselling them to you for a profit. Essentially they are just giving you a small discount off of retail - so you are overpaying every time. By working with a true licensed wholesale cigar distributor (aka: us!) you will save at least 30-60% by buying your cigars for the same low wholesale price that cigar shops pay- so you get to profit from the extra savings!
When buying cigars from a nearby cigar shop your product selection is limited to what they carry in their store. Most cigar stores carry an average of 300 cigar boxes representing maybe 50 different brands or less. We carry over 300 brands!
Plus we take back any cigars that aren't selling. This policy effectively lowers our prices in a dramatic way because even if you have only 4 boxes of cigars that aren't selling well, that could be tying up $1,200 in lost retail sales.
If you manage to find better prices, all of those savings quickly get wiped out when you have $1,200 lost due to dead inventory. No other company will take their inventory back. We are the only distributor that takes back dead inventory - saving you piles of money in the long run!
HOW DO YOU CREATE YOUR CUSTOM PROPOSALS? We carefully assemble data about each business, factoring in customer demographics and their business profile. Our goal is to learn as much about their business as possible. We then utilize our internal sales data and aggregate them with the national sales data we purchase from the international trade organization for premium cigars. This data allows us to plug the businesses data in, resulting in a highly targeted inventory that will have the highest appeal to that specific customer base every time.
I'M ALREADY HAPPILY BUYING FROM AN ONLINE RETAILER: This is the perfect time to switch to take advantage of all of the benefits of working with MDC. They’ll never offer a no-risk exchange program. If you’re sitting on a few boxes of cigars that just aren’t selling, we will gladly take them back and replace them with other cigars that absolutely will sell. None of them will do this. If you are sitting on, (conservatively speaking) 3 average priced boxes of cigars that aren’t selling, that means that you have around $1,000 tied up in dead assets. Whatever amount of money you may have saved by finding slightly better prices online have now more than been wiped out by that $1,000 loss. Once you factor in all of the benefits of our Elite Status Membership you'll see why they fall short in so many ways.
WHAT ARE YOUR QUALIFICATIONS AS CIGAR EXPERTS? We’ve been in the cigar business for 16 years and we are involved in every aspect of the cigar business. We own retail stores, a high-end cigar bar, an online cigar store and of course this national wholesale business. So we’re intimately familiar with how to sell cigars from every possible angle - and we can provide lots of great assistance to make every cigar venture a hugely profitable one!
CAN YOU GIVE US A FREE HUMIDOR? Sorry but no wholesale company simply gives away humidors. That is basically a thing of the past - and it was very rare even when it did exist. In the past, cigar store owners would do that for businesses right in their area because they had an extra humidor that they weren't using. However, that is extremely rare to find and more importantly you always pay a lot more for the cigars since you're buying them from a retailer. Plus their cigar selections are very limited and they'll never give you their rare cigars (when they can sell them for full price from their own store).
So, the humidor isn't free even in that case because you pay for it by paying a lot more for their cigars. Then after a few short months, you end up spending a lot more than had you just purchased the humidor outright.
We work with the biggest humidor manufacturer in the world that is based out of FL. They just drop ship for us and we don't even markup their products. So you are getting the best possible price on humidors. You can see our selection of the best selling models here. If you're looking for a specific humidor that you do not see on our website, we can most likely get that too. Just let us know what you prefer.
DO YOU CARRY RARE BRANDS? Yes we do! Most cigar shops won't want to give you their best selling, hard to find cigars. Why would they when they can sell it for full retail to their customers? As a wholesale cigar distributor working on a large scale we have access to these ultra-premium cigar brands like Padron Anniversary, Graycliff, Ashton VSG, Ashton ESG, Fuente Hemingway, Fuente Don Carlos, Maximus, Diamond Crown and more. Even most established cigar shops don't have these brands on their shelves because they never get approved by the manufacturer. Most cigar stores will need to be in business for 3-5 years before these elite cigar manufacturers will even entertain opening an account. They also send out sales reps to assure that your store is a high-end cigar shop befitting of their brands. Any other type of business will never be approved. But now you can benefit from our leverage and buy these cigar brands at true wholesale prices.
DO YOU PROVIDE MARKETING MATERIALS LIKE POSTERS? The cigar industry is generally family run - unlike the large liquor conglomerates, so unfortunately no. Liquor manufacturers are known for providing marketing material and shelf talkers because of their massive market share. Cigar manufacturers are mostly too small to provide these types of materials. A good solution to this is to reference Cigar Aficionado’s website to obtain their cigar ratings. You can then easily create your own simple labels to affix to cigar boxes to advertise the ratings they’ve achieved. The good news is that you don’t have to overdo this. If you have a small selection you can easily do this for every cigar you carry. However if you have a large selection you can choose to only label cigars that are rated over 90 or even better, only those that are rated over 90 and are higher end cigars.
WHERE DO WE SHIP FROM AND HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE? We ship from Pennsylvania, so customers on the east coast should receive orders in a day or two. Midwest customers can expect to receive them in 3-4 days. West coast customers can expect to receive them in 5 business days.
WHEN WILL CUBANS BE LEGAL TO SELL? Current laws still does not permit the retail sales, or importation of Cuban cigars within the US. However, it is now permitted to bring Cuban cigars with you on a plane when traveling abroad. We are hoping that this changes before mid 2017. We will keep all of customers informed of these laws as they progress.
WHAT ABOUT TOBACCO TAXES? Normally a quick search on your local Dept of Revenue website will tell you if your state requires you to collect a special tax just for tobacco sales. However, MDC Wholesale Cigars is not a legal or tax advisor, so to be safe, please discuss the tax implications with your legal or tax professional for additional details.
For clients in CA or OH, we must collect these taxes on your behalf and build that amount into your invoice. Otherwise, you will be responsible for your own tobacco taxes if applicable. Don’t forget to factor these taxes (if applicable) into your cost when calculating your retail price.
Some small, local distributors collect tobacco tax on behalf of their clients. This is because they only operate either just within their own state (or just nearby bordering states). Since they are already submitting the tobacco tax returns for their own sales and are already intimately familiar with the tobacco regulations of their own state, it poses minimal additional work to file on behalf of their clients. However, as a national distributor, it is simply too cumbersome to follow the changing laws of each state. This is very normal for larger distributors and is actually preferable for you anyway. Why would you trust a non-legal professional to handle your money and prudently submit taxes on your behalf? There are dozens of law suits every year of local fly-by-night distributors that claim to be submitting your tobacco taxes, but are actually just pocketing them - hoping you never get audited and learn about their theft. There’s no reason to allow your business to become one of these statistics, simply submit your own tobacco taxes. It’s one simple form that you most likely only have to do quarterly, and takes less than 3 minutes to complete.
MY CIGARS APPEAR TO HAVE MOLD, WHAT DO I DO? Most often it is not mold at all, but rather plume. Quite simply, plume is good and mold is bad - yet both look quite similar at first. Plume is the desirable result of a cigar that has been well aged and the natural oils have risen to the surface. Plume is usually white or grey in color and can easily be wiped off with a quick swipe of a finger. Knowledgeable customers recognize plume as a sign of a well aged cigar and will gravitate toward these cigars. Our normal suggestion is not to wipe it off. Instead, we suggest you educate your non-well-versed customers about the desirability of these particular cigars. Think of them as the oldest bottles of wine in the cellar that are covered in dust. Mold on the other hand is quite rare and most certainly a problem. However mold is quite easy to identify as it is typically pale green and cannot be wiped off. It always leaves a pale green stain behind. If you received cigars from us with mold, please let us know right away so we can exchange them for you. However if your cigars have plume, educate your customers and watch them outsell your other cigars!