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Fathers and Sons, Part 1

By David Savona

CARLOS AND CHARLIE TORAÑO
For generations, the men of the Toraño family joined the tobacco business. "This is who we were," says Carlos Toraño, who learned about tobacco at the side of his father, one of the most famous figures in the tobacco world. The man lived, breathed and even died tobacco: he is remembered for bringing the first Cuban seeds to the Dominican Republic, and died after having a heart attack in a curing barn.

"I've always said the name of Toraño is synonymous with tobacco, because I could not recall any Toraño family members who were not involved in tobacco," says Carlos Toraño, 63. "I'm talking about cousins, second cousins, uncles, second uncles, everybody I knew in the Toraño family—everybody was in tobacco. Growers, manufacturers or dealers or something—everyone was in tobacco."

His only son, Charlie (his given name is also Carlos, but he goes by the nickname), broke that chain temporarily, becoming a lawyer for several years. His father was happy.

"I did not think that there was a future in the cigar industry," Toraño says, speaking of the 1970s and 1980s when cigarmakers seemed headed for oblivion. "Going to the RTDAs," he says, speaking of the annual industry trade show, "maybe there were 40 booths. And you would say…" he takes a dramatic breath, spreading his arms wide for emphasis "…this is the future." With sales falling and the outlook grim, the elder Toraño never encouraged his son to join the cigar business, and was pleased when he yearned to be a lawyer, like his maternal grandfather.

As cigar sales grew stronger in the mid-1990s, the Toraño family business once again had a future. Carlos's daughter, Carolina, 37, joined the business in 1995. A year later, Charlie decided he wanted to change careers, and broached the subject of working for his father.

"We were having dinner in Boca Raton, and it was with my wife and my mother, and my wife didn't even know I was going to make this statement," says Charlie, 38, a taller, slimmer version of his father with a slight goatee and longish hair. "I said, 'Dad, is there room for me at the company?' And he said, 'There's not room, there's a need.'"

Charlie closed his law books and joined the family business. (But not before having a fight with his wife, who didn't know he was going to make his dinner statement.) The cigar business has changed Charlie. "Most lawyers are encased in four walls. Doing a lot of reading, a lot of writing…you don't travel much, you don't see the world, and you tend to see more problems than opportunities," he says. "It took me a few years to make a bit of the transition of just looking at the pitfalls."

Getting used to the cigarmaker tradition of doing business with a handshake didn't sit well with him. "We do so much on a handshake, the lawyer part of me doesn't sleep sometimes," he says. His father, who wears a broad smile like a comfortable T-shirt, chuckles as he listens.

It's evident that Charlie doesn't miss wearing suits or staring at four walls. He now wears open-collared shirts and travels frequently to his company's factories. What he treasures most is the additional time he now spends with his dad.

"In many ways I was seeing a lot less of Dad in the years leading up to when I started working here," he says. "It's been a thrill ride, to be honest with you, both enjoying the tobacco business but also just working with Dad. As close as Dad and I have always been, I think there's a lot I would have missed [if I hadn't joined the business]."

Last year, Charlie became president of Toraño Cigars Inc. (His sister still works for the company, as chief financial officer.) Asked if he was now chairman of the company, Carlos smiled and replied, "Whatever."

What does Charlie's becoming president mean?

"He has more work now!" says Carlos, chuckling loudly. Adds Charlie with a grin: "The phone calls come in, and the ones Dad doesn't want to handle, he says, 'Talk to Charlie—he's the president.'" "Dad has been always very good about pushing me and pushing my sister out front," says Charlie. "When there's a clash between a father and son, in any business, unfortunately I do think it's sometimes a clash of ego. The father saying, 'Hey, 'I'm the man; as long as I'm on this planet, I'm the father, you're the son.' But Dad's never been that way…. And I think by him saying it's time to push you out front, I think that's very much Dad's personality."

"I've always had a very strong relationship with my family," says Carlos. "And that to me has been success. Now this is extra success. To be financially well, and to have my children working for me, that is a dream come true."

Chances are good that Charlie won't be the last Carlos Toraño to enter the cigar and tobacco business. "My son, he is also Carlos, is seven going on eight," says Charlie. "A couple of days ago he said to me, You know, Dad, I want to do part-time anthropology, digging for dinosaur bones, and part-time working in the cigar factory with you."

ROBERT AND SATHYA LEVIN
For nearly two years, Sathya Levin has been learning the ropes at his father Robert's Philadelphia cigar company, which owns the Ashton brands.

The company business model allows the younger Levin to get a complete picture of the cigar industry. The Levins not only distribute cigars, but they sell them: they own the Holt's shop in Philadelphia and have a considerable mail-order business. They also have a very close relationship with Tabacalera A. Fuente y Cia., makers of the Ashton brands and a minority owner of the business.

"He's doing everything," says Robert Levin of his 25-year-old son. "That's basically the idea." "I'm trying to learn everything that we do," says Sathya. He spends time at headquarters, he's worked in the shipping department, and he goes on the road with key members of the Ashton team, including the director of worldwide sales Chip Goldeen and the vice president of sales Manny Ferrero. (Ferrero is also part of a father-son team; his son, Tony, is an Ashton salesman.) "Sathya's young," says Levin, 59, who has worked in the business for more than three decades, following the route taken by his father. "He's kicking ass. Let's face it—he has the energy and the creativity that's necessary to move the company forward."

Sometimes, perhaps, too much energy.

"We talk business all the time," says Sathya, who lives with his parents. "We even talk at night."

"I can't relax and read a goddamn newspaper," Robert gripes. "Ten, 11 at night I'm sitting in my chair. He wants to talk business all the time. I can't escape it—24 hours a day."

The younger Levin dabbled in the family business for years, working in the warehouse, packing orders, and doing all kinds of things that sons traditionally do in family businesses. "I had to learn from the ground up," he says. A breakthrough moment came in the 11th grade. His school required all students to do a monthlong personal study assignment. Most opted for internships, and Sathya decided he would spend his month in the Dominican Republic with the Fuente family learning how his father's Ashton cigars were made, from start to finish.

"I lived with Carlos Fuente Sr.," Sathya says. "I learned cigar making. At the end, I was rolling. That's when I first started smoking cigars. It was a good month."

Levin's father was proud, but the school wasn't thrilled when the project was initially proposed, and Robert had to fight for its approval. "They didn't like the fact that he was going to a cigar factory—the school is very politically correct," says Robert. "I had to go talk to the headmaster."

Sathya is working on changing the Holt's cigar catalog, plays a role in new-product development, and even joins his father and Ferrero taste-testing new cigars. "He has a very good palate," says Robert of his son. The fatherly pride is clear. "He's doing a great job."

ALBERTO AND ALEJANDRO TURRENT
It's impossible not to be immediately charmed by Alberto Turrent IV. The white-haired gentleman always seems to be smiling. His easygoing nature manifests itself when he explains why his son, Alejandro, is the first Turrent male in five generations not to be named Alberto.

"Too many Alberto Turrents!" he says with a laugh.

Alberto, 64, and Alejandro, 33, run Tabaclera Alberto Turrent, Mexico's premier cigarmaker and cigar-tobacco grower. The Turrents, who operate in the San Andres Tuxla Valley, outside the city of Veracruz, make Te-Amo, Mexico's most famous cigar brand, and last August launched the A. Turrent brand in the United States. They grow what's regarded as one of the finest maduro leaves in the world, San Andres Negro, a stalk-cut tobacco that is used to make many types of maduro cigars.

The Turrents have farmed these soils since the nineteenth century. Alberto Turrent's great-grandfather migrated from Spain to Mexico in 1880 and began growing tobacco. His three descendants named Alberto followed in the family footsteps.

Alejandro began working with his father in 1998. He focuses on the manufacturing portion of the business and his father spends more time on the tobacco side, but there's never a question as to who is in charge. "We don't really have titles," says Alejandro. "He is the boss, and he is involved in every aspect of the business. Whatever is left, I am in charge.

"We get along perfectly well, even though we often have opposite points of view, but he is always supporting my ideas," says Alejandro. "His management style is very flexible, very open for new ideas; he is pushing his people all the time to [get] the best from them. He says that being constant and to love what you do will get you anywhere."

Alejandro's name may have broken one tradition, but was there ever a doubt that he would join his father in the factory and fields?

"Never," says Alejandro. "My father is the fourth generation, and I've loved this business since I was a kid."

JOSÈ ORLANDO AND JORGE PADRÓN
Josè Orlando Padrón, patriarch of Miami's Padrón family, was raised in Pinar del Río, Cuba's famed tobacco growing region. There, as a young boy, he followed in the footsteps of his father and learned the art of processing tobacco. When Josè Orlando came to Miami, following the revolution, he began rolling the leaves into cigars. It's impossible to imagine him doing anything else for a living.

"I'll never forget my father, when he took the tobacco down from the cujes in the curing barn," says Padrón, using the term for the long sticks that hold tobacco leaves as they turn from green to rich brown. "He said, 'Tobacco leaves are like women: the more you stroke them the better they get.'" He lets out his infectious, hearty laugh, a half-smoked, box-pressed Padrón clenched in his hand.

"When I was younger, my first job was to clean the seedbeds in Cuba," he says. As a young boy of 13 or 14, he would smoke cigars on the sly in a barn. "In Cuba, none of the children smoked [publicly] before the age of 18. They had a lot of respect for their parents and didn't want to smoke in front of them."

The Padróns, like many tobacco farmers in Cuba before Castro's ascension to power, traced their heritage back to the Canary Islands. Josè Orlando's ancestors came to Cuba in the late 1800s. Dámasco Padrón, his grandfather, was the first in his direct family to grow tobacco in Cuba. All the children worked in the family business, but young Josè Orlando clearly made a special connection with the rich, supple leaves grown in the Vuelta Abajo.

"When it was time to turn a pilón [a pile of fermenting tobacco], it was more interesting than to go see a movie," he says. "If you're not in love with this business, it's very difficult to do things the right way."

Josè Orlando has passed on his enthusiasm to his sons. Jorge, 38, is the president of the company, and Orlando, 49, is vice president. "We live, breathe and eat tobacco," says Jorge. "Ever since I've been little, I've always worked in this business."

After earning a master's degree in business administration, Jorge went on a few interviews, but never really doubted that he would soon be selling cigars for his father. The company was doing well in those days, but sales were concentrated in Miami. Sales on a unit level, if not by revenues, were actually higher for Padrón Cigars in the early 1980s than they are now.

"When I came into the business [in 1981–82] all the Cubans in Miami smoked Padrón cigars," says Jorge. "In 1981, my father sold six million cigars, practically all in Miami. I always knew that we had a good product, an excellent product, but I also knew we had many, many markets we hadn't tapped."

"For me," says Josè Orlando, "I saw it as an opportunity to expand the business, because he spoke English. Traditionally, all the interaction had been with Spanish-speaking people."

Jorge worked on expanding Padrón and, in 1993, took his family's cigars to the Retail Tobacco Dealers of America trade show for the first time. He found that his cigars' low cost and dark appearance were a detriment. Padrón cigars weren't an early hit, not until the 1994 release of the superpremium Padrón 1964 Anniversary Series. Since then, the only real problem has been making enough cigars to meet the demand.

For most of its 42-year-history, Padrón Cigars Inc. was run out of a cramped building on Miami's West Flagler Street, which served as its headquarters, the packing and shipping operations, and a small retail shop. The staff sat at desks crowded in the main room. Much of the staff is family, including Jorge's mother, Flory, his sisters, Lisette Padrón-Martinez and Elizabeth, his nephew Marcos Soto, and his cousin, Rodolfo Padrón, known as Crazy Rudy, for the time he picked up a bomb left at the headquarters.

Two years ago, the family relocated to a much larger headquarters around the corner. Space here is abundant: Josè Orlando has a large, corner office. Jorge and Orlando have spacious offices down the hall, but it's obvious from one look that they are rarely used. In Orlando's office, items sit in boxes, still unpacked.

Old habits and familial bonds are hard to break. The Padróns spend most of their time in the shipping area, near one another, or in Josè Orlando's office, talking, reminiscing and laughing. On this day, Jorge and his father are sitting in the chairman's office, smoking short Padrón Serie 1926 No. 35 cigars and arguing over Josè Orlando's complicated plan to restock owners of the Padrón Millennium humidor. Jorge thinks it's a bad idea. It takes more than an hour (plus the advice of two visitors and a call to a trusted cigar retailer) to convince him otherwise. Then it's time to discuss Josè Orlando's upcoming 80th birthday, and a cigar that will be made to commemorate the occasion. How about an eight-inch cigar? Josè Orlando scrunches his face. He doesn't like cigars that long.

The arguing is light hearted, sprinkled with good-natured ribbing. Jorge can't help but smile repeatedly, and gives as good as he gets.

"I did the same thing with my children as my father did with me in Cuba," says Josè Orlando. "I always hoped Jorge would get into the business. He was never disconnected from the business. In the back of my mind, I always knew he would end up here.

"I feel, in a way, lucky, and in a way very excited," he says. "Many of the people who were tobacco growers in Cuba, their sons went in different directions, away from the tobacco." He takes a puff, and pauses. "I've always been very persistent in maintaining the tradition, and passed it on."

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