Hello everyone! This is a bittersweet post from me today. I am currently writing this on the last day of our Norfolk shop being open! It’s the end of an era and it has made me a little emotional. When I first moved into the shop in 2021, I went in with all of the intentions of improving sales, learning more about cigars and making our shop the talking point of Norfolk. I believe I have done that! And whilst the decision to shut the shop was devastating for me, I fully understand it and support it. Don’t worry about me though, I will still be here in a new role of Humidor Assistant. My experience with the cigars have not gone unnoticed and I am now the go to for our cigar stock.

In my new role, I have been learning a lot that gets done behind the scenes. Each day I will now be receiving emails of what products gone out of stock on our website – I will then check to see if any location has any stock before deciding if the stock should be placed back online. I also need to keep on top of what stock we have and order accordingly as well as general humidor maintenance. I will now be doing weekly stock counts of both New World and Cuban cigars as well as sending my stock lists off to numerous people for them to keep a hold of. It may sound boring on paper but in truth it is very exciting, I love administrative work so this is right up my alley. I am sure I will have more exciting developments as time goes on. 

In regards to the shop? Well it will be unrecognisable! We have already started clearing displays ready to make it into a warehouse. We plan on putting shelving throughout and be able to hold a lot more stock. Talking of more stock, we took the largest delivery of cigars I have seen! We received a lot of Orchant Seleccion cigars – ranging from Drew Estate to Oliva. You name it, we received it!

We have had many customers come in incredibly sad to see us closing, but we have to move on and mail order is certainly the way forward. I even had a nice group of lads who, when they first came in were completely new to cigars, I looked after them up until now, where they know what they like and we like having a chat about cigars, come in and surprise me by buying me my favourite cigar – The Alec Bradley Orchant Seleccion Skinny – I was almost in tears when they presented me with that. 

In case you have missed it, we will still be able to provide you with a click and collect service. So I may still be meeting you at the door with your order, but you won’t be able to come inside unfortunately.

So a rather short post today but I am sure there will be a lot more to come. There will be no retail but a lot more cigars!

So long for now my loyal customers. I hope to see you all around, make sure you order yourself a click and collect for the Norfolk warehouse and ask to see Olly.

Oliver

Hello everyone! It has been a very different week for me this week as I haven’t actually worked in the shop at all! I have had plenty of training, and I have learned a lot of new skills.

On Monday, instead of my usual picking of online orders, I was in the booking on department with Sharon. I have taught her lots in the shop and all about cigars and now it was time for her to train me fully. I always have been confident booking on Royal Mail parcels, however, it was time to learn to book on using different couriers. We use different couriers for different products, they include DHL, FEDEX and UPS – All of these on top of Royal Mail can become confusing. So I spent my day learning all of those different couriers services and i’d like to say I did really well.

On Tuesday, I was back to picking online orders. I have noticed a lot recently that people are purchasing the cigars that was originally a mystery one. For example last month the mystery was a Cusano Churchill and since then I would say I have picked lots since, it is great to see. Afterwards, I had a meeting with our SEO specialist, we discussed the C.Gars cigar library going forward and how it can be improved to help us be seen more on Google, which is always a good thing. He also showed me a very useful tool that shows me how many page visits each article gets as well as how far down the page they actually go. It’s really good to see how many people actually read what I write. Later in the afternoon, I started creating the newsletters for the other stores. I do enjoy working with the stores to see what they have going on and what they need promoting.

On Thursday, I was doing the New World stock count with Lisa. It was very interesting to see how much had changed as the last one we did was at the start of the year, just after Christmas, and you could tell we have had a big re-stock. We also received stock of a cigar that we had been highly anticipating – The Upsetters by Foundation Cigars. We had first heard news of them coming to the UK in August, but there had been plenty of delays since. So I quickly wrote and uploaded an article for the C.Gars cigar library introducing them to the UK – which you can read here. I am very interested in the Jamaican Cow Tongue tobacco that is inside them, it is a very rare tobacco to find and so I decided to purchase a cigarillo to try later down the line. 

On Friday, I was booking on parcels again… But this time by myself! I haven’t ever spent a whole day booking on by myself and so it was a bit daunting, but I got through it and got all the parcels sent by the end of the day. 

On Saturday, I was with Josh and Marcus. We quickly picked the online orders and then separated onto different tasks. Marcus made up some of the pipe tobacco samplers, ready for picking. Josh packed online orders and I used my recently renewed booking on skills to book them on. We were all a well oiled machine. 

I hope you have enjoyed this weeks goings on and I hope to see you all very soon.

So long for now.

Oliver

Hello everyone! I hope you all had an amazing Christmas! Mine was certainly Turkey filled, with a few drams of whisky too.

On Monday, it was certainly a catch up of online orders! Marcus and I had a big stack of orders to pick. As always we didn’t panic and we picked them at an extremely fast rate! Meanwhile, I served a lovely gentleman who wanted to get his son some cigars for his birthday! He specified that it had to be tubed cigars and specified a Charatan. I suggested the Charatan Churchill Tubed, as it was a birthday present it should always be something special. I then suggested the Gurkha Royal Challenge Toro Tubed – Gurkha make some fantastic cigars and I would say the Royal Challenge range is one of the best. The gentleman left very happy.

On Tuesday, I spent a lot of my time organising March’s cigar subscriptions. I can’t believe I’m looking into March already! But I will say these subscriptions are incredible! The amount of money you will save is brilliant! You may have noticed that I haven’t added an article onto the C.Gars Cigar Library for a little while – This is for two reasons – 1. We have been incredibly busy with Christmas and New Year, to the point where I couldn’t sit down for 5 minutes! And 2. We are changing the style of the Cigar Library! I will be working with an SEO specialist who knows how to get our website to number 1 on Google and so I will work with them to see how I can improve the articles so they come up before any other website. 

On Thursday, I spent my morning training another newer member of staff how to pick orders! Scarlett has been with us for around 4 months now and she has been exceptional at packing online orders as well as booking them on the Royal Mail system. But now was a new challenge, to learn your way around our humidors can be a difficult task but she did a brilliant job. I was very proud of her. Meanwhile I served two gentlemen who had travelled all the way from Hull! They wanted to stock up their humidors and spent a good amount of time going around our humidors and then left with a brilliant mix of Cuban and New World Cigars – One gentleman was particularly excited to try the Ramon Allones Edicion Limitada 2024 Absolutos and who can blame him! In the afternoon, I had another management training, it was all about communication and how to motivate your team to complete tasks that have been set out.

On Friday, I was continuing my work on the cigar subscriptions. I also served a regular gentleman who purchased a lot of pipe accessories, and many different pipe tobaccos. Luckily, I had Will to help me out by collecting all of the products for him. In the afternoon, I completed the Cuban stock count – I had recently been pushing this onto other members of staff as it is a great way to build up their skillset. 

On Saturday, I was joined by Marcus and Sarah. Together we picked, packed and booked on as many orders as we could. I served a regular who likes the shorter and thicker cigars. I suggested the Oliva Orchant Seleccion Chubby – It is smooth, nutty and a bit peppery – A great combination.

Now I have some sad news – The Norfolk retail shop will be closing towards the end of the month. We don’t yet have a confirmed final date, but as soon as this is known, I will let you know.

Moving forward, we’re excited to be transitioning into a full-time mail order warehouse, allowing us to focus on improving our online service and nationwide delivery. 

The good news is that we’ll still be offering a click & collect option, so you can continue to place your order through our website and collect it directly from the Norfolk location.

We’re incredibly grateful for the support shown to us at the shop and look forward to serving you in this new way.

I hope to see you all very soon.

So long for now.

Oliver