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

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