Hello everyone! It is almost Christmas! We have had plenty of lovely customers come in and online orders have been booming! We have had many people come in looking for gifts for their loved ones. This has been a great experience for Marcus as this has been his first Christmas with us. It has been interesting for me to see him serve customers under pressure and he has done a brilliant job!

Meanwhile, the Order Packing team has been packing a record number of parcels! Making sure we have them all sent out ready for Christmas!

Firstly, I was over the moon to see the latest release in the Orchant Seleccion portfolio. The Plasencia Orchant Seleccion Toro and Dominique Seleccion Lancero! We had these a few years ago and they were delightful! So I am very happy to see them make a return. Make sure you get them whilst you can!

In store, I served a customer who I haven’t seen for a very long time. He loves a Churchill sized cigar, but money was tighter and so I suggested some more budget ones. The first was the Flor De Oliva Churchill – Probably the best budget Churchill I could think of. He then wanted something a bit different and so we decided on the Regius Orchant Seleccion Peru 2025 Wide Churchill. He loved the idea of a sweeter tobacco. I also served a gentleman looking for his Christmas Eve, Day and Boxing day cigars. He wanted Cuban and he knew he liked the Hoyo De Monterrey Epicure No. 2, but decided to have 2 of the Epicure Especial this time. On this occasion the gentleman decided to try something else, so I suggested the H. Upmann Connoisseur No. 2 as it is a little sweeter than the rest of the H. Upmann range.

We have also had our regulars come on in and bring us some presents! Steven Ford, who is a regular Springbank customer of ours, came in to bring Josh and I a miniature each of a special bottling. I received Daftmill 2011 12 Year Old and Josh received a Springbank society club exclusive bottling. It’s safe to say we are both very happy. Further on in the week, another regular, who tends to purchase a few boxes of Regius Orchant Seleccion Nicaragua every fortnight, came in with a lovely box of Quality Street! We really have been spoilt this year, but we always appreciate it and to me, it shows how good we are at our job.

Despite the busy periods, I have been working through all of the shop newsletters as well as articles for the C.Gars Cigar Library – This month it included 5 Great Gifts for Cigar Lovers and What is a Pigtail Cigar? You can find them by clicking here.

I just want to take the time to thank all of our amazing staff for working incredibly hard all year. We have had some leave us and we have hired some new faces but we are truly a family here and we all look after each other.

Finally, I want to thank our brilliant customers! We appreciate each and every one of you, we love seeing you and answering all of your questions. I have had many customers say they are jealous of my job and my response always is “It’s brilliant as I get to talk about cigars all day and get paid for it”.

I hope you all have a great Christmas and New Year and I look forward to seeing you all in 2026!

So long for now
Oliver

Hello C.Gars! It’s felt like a long time since I have written a blog! I enjoyed a fantastic week at the House of Mouse and then I came back to the craziness of Black Friday! 

So last week, we certainly had many customers come in. I served plenty of customers, many of whom were excited to see me back. Then we get to Black Friday… We had an unbelievable promotion online which certainly made our customers purchase a lot! (Also a little note, C.Gars Plus customers got early access to the incredible deal, so make sure you sign up to be the first to hear about the offers we provide). Marcus, Josh and I picked all the cigar orders. We created a system where Marcus and I picked all cigars and Josh picked all accessories for those orders that needed it. Meanwhile, Lisa and Ben took care of pipe tobacco and general accessories. The rest of the team packed orders and booked on orders. It was incredible to see the whole team work together and we got them all completed by the end of the day! It was brilliant. I could not praise the team enough! During Black Friday, we all worked many different roles too – Myself? I picked, served customers, packed online orders and even booked a few on the Royal Mail system. I was a real jack of all trades.

So we come along to Monday… Cyber Monday. The amazing team from Saturday, picked and packed as many orders as they could. But Cyber Monday brought us loads of online orders! So it was the same system as Black Friday… Marcus and I picked cigars, Josh picked the accessories for those orders. Again we absolutely nailed it! We picked and picked until the very end of the day and then we packed. When Royal Mail collected our parcels, they were amazed at how many we had! (In hindsight, I wish I took a picture of them all). Meanwhile, during my lunch break, I sampled a Davidoff Escurio Mini Cigarillo – We have been updating pictures on our website and we had to open the pack, so now they are available to purchase as singles in our Norfolk Store. I purchased one and enjoyed it… A little bit harsh for me for a quick smoke but I can certainly see why people like the flavours. By the end of the day we were all worn out but again pleased with our hard work.

I had Tuesday and Wednesday off and so I came back in on Thursday. To which was a catch up day for me. Firstly, I helped pick online orders and then I completed January cigar subscriptions and as always they are a great selection of cigars for a great price! Afterwards, I organised a new Norfolk only competition. We will be celebrating the 12 days of Christmas early. From the 11th of December any customer who comes in the Norfolk Store will have the chance to open a door on our advent calendar, inside is a lovely prize, ranging from a nice discount to a brand new limited edition lighter. I’m sure it will be fun for all of our customers who get to participate.

On Friday, I was invited to a new training session all about communication. It was fascinating to learn and I took a lot from it and will be implementing it from today!

On Saturday I was working with Josh and Marcus. We firstly picked online orders as quickly as we could and then I started packing orders whilst Josh and Marcus completed the Cuban stock count. I also served a lovely gentleman who wanted to talk about whiskies, he just happened to pass by and saw we sold whisky and popped in. We talked about his exploration into Islay whiskies and of course I told him about the Stalla Dhu Islay, he had a small sample and loved it and then purchased the bottle.

I hope you have enjoyed this weeks goings on, as you could probably tell we were extremely busy online but don’t worry… We always have time for every customer that comes through the door.

So long for now.

Oliver