Brands and branding
It’s no surprise the companies pay massive amounts of money to build, maintain and defend brand names. I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the price for many products was the cost of the brand name. Sometimes you find generics that are just as good. Once, we bought a lot of wireless cards shipped into the country and sold before the Cisco labels were applied, a fast 75% discount. In that spirit Lou from JR Cigars bought an entire warehouse of cigars in the Honduras before the labels had been added, all of these smokes were destined to be premium branded, handmade cigars, but instead they were packed up in 50-cigar kraft paper wrapped bundles. No label, no $$ for the brand name, and if you know anything about cigars the name can add $5+ on up to the price. That’s the main reason I buy on taste and not what name is on the cigar. Whatever, these things are awesome, Big Mike is gonna crap we he gets to Cincinnati next weekend and fires one these puppies up.
It is true that companies put alot of effort into protecting thier brand name.
ReplyDeleteIn economics, we call it differentiating your product from another. The cost of the product does not rise so much in part because it costs so much to protect the name, its more due to the fact that customers will pay more for a brand name that they are familiar with, even if the products are the same
Anyway...great cigars! Hopefully you guys will enjoy them!