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Home > What's New > Manning to Make Ashton Humidors
Manning to Make Ashton Humidors
Posted: Monday, March 08, 2004
By Michael Moretti
Big name cigarmaker Ashton is entering the world of desktop humidors. Respected humidor maker Manning of Ireland is forfeiting its name to partner up.
Manning of Ireland ceased production of its Manning brand humidors as of early February and is now devoting itself solely to making Ashton brand humidors, said John Harding, owner of Manning. All Ashton humidors will be made in the Manning workshop in Ireland.
It is fairly unusual for a cigar company to market its own brand of humidors. The rare exceptions are J.C. Newman Cigar Co., which joined with Reed & Barton in 1995 and began making Diamond Crown humidors, and Davidoff of Geneva, which has been producing Davidoff humidors for many years now. Even behemoths like Altadis and General Cigar do not produce their own brand of humidors. C.A.O. International started off with humidors before ever making cigars and then shifted into cigars, phasing out the humidor production completely.
According to Robert Levin, president of Ashton Distributors Inc., the venture with Manning is part of a strategy to expand the Ashton name worldwide. "I have always wanted a top-quality Ashton humidor but could never find the right formula. Our good fortune with Ashton cigars opened up opportunities to grow the name in other related areas and now we hope to slowly build the new Ashton humidor line into the top brand worldwide," Levin said in a press release.
"It's [the joint venture] a good combination," said Harding. "It enables us to focus in more on design and manufacturing, and it will improve the quality of the humidors." He said both companies have the same goal: "to make the best humidors in the world."
"Manning," Levin said in an interview, "did not have the sales and marketing force. He [Harding] is a manufacturer in Ireland and he was selling everything himself. He didn't have the time or the capabilities to service the [global] market." Under the Ashton name, the humidors will attempt to reach a global market.
Ashton humidors will be the "highest-end," said Levin, and will try to tap into a niche market. "High-end humidors are not going to sell in the multi-thousands. It's a limited market -- we know that going in -- but we are going to service that market to the best of out ability."
Holt's Cigar Holdings, Ashton's wholesale company, will continue to sell its lower-end humidors, made in China, under the Savoy name.
Ashton cigars have become a big hit since their release in 1988, combining the sales and distribution skills of Holt's with the manufacturing knowledge and expertise of Carlos Fuente Jr. and Tabalcalera A. Fuente y. Cia.
The formula used to produce the Ashton cigar is similar to the plan for the Ashton humidor. Working with rare woods, Manning has been making cabinets since 1887 in Bagenalstown, Ireland -- a small town 60 miles outside of Dublin. It started making humidors during the 1990s cigar boom. Fresh to the market, their humidors did extremely well from the outset, earning an "A" rating in the December 1999 issue of Cigar Aficionado -- on par with such brands as Daniel Marshall and Elie Bleu. In the 2003 humidor review Manning again scored at the top of the list with a B+ rating.
Manning craftsman have begun work on the new line of humidors, which are set to be released at the 2004 Retail Tobacco Dealers of America conference in Las Vegas.
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