The Saga of Lew Rothman

[jmowreader]

(There's no link to this; it's a combination of what I could glean off the Internet and personal reminiscences from some of Rothman's long-term customers...)

Lew Rothman is a nice Jewish boy from the mean streets of New York. In the 1970s, Mr. Rothman was running what was probably the world's smallest cigar store. It was in Manhattan, and it was 14 feet wide by 21 feet deep. In front of it was a sign: "World's Largest Cigar Store." Its name: JR Cigars. (IIRC it's named after his dad, but it could have been any of his relatives because the Rothman family has always had a deep love of cigars.)

In the 1990s there was to be a renaissance in cigar smoking. This wasn't that time. Instead, Rothman fell on hard times as people walked past his store, or stopped in to buy a few cheroots on their way to the track.

If Lew Rothman would have listened to today's teabaggers and Republican deficit wizards, he would have moved out of the Manhattan store to, perhaps, a smaller one in Queens. He would have cut back on his inventory. He would have slashed prices to attempt to attract more business. And he would have been just another forgotten, failed businessman because none of those things work.

Lew Rothman went another way: He spent money. Tons of it, most of it borrowed. This fucking guy looked in a road atlas and discovered halfway between the population center of New York and the tourism center of Florida is North Carolina. He got in his car, drove to North Carolina and bought 50 acres at the intersection of Interstate 95 (the east coast's most important north-south corridor) and US 70 (a very heavily traveled road as it's how you get from the Research Triangle to the bedroom communities of Smithfield and Selma). And he proceeded to build the world's largest cigar store. (If you're looking for it, it's I-95 Exit 97.)

Now, every MBA in the world, every Republican and every "I'm not a Republican, don't ever call me that!" teabagger would tell you what Rothman did is a recipe for disaster. This is the full result of that disaster:

There are three JR Cigars superstores in North Carolina, plus two in the New York Metro area. These places are combination cigar emporia and closeout warehouses, offering everything from towels to fine perfumes to unusual foods. (Rothman once said he wanted to open a chain of stores called Viceworld, where he'd sell all the stuff everyone said was bad for you. He's almost there now.) There are also "retail outlets" selling only cigars in Detroit, New York and Washington, DC.

He owns a 120,000 square foot cigar warehouse in Burlington, NC. Close your eyes and imagine a largish Home Depot or Lowe's store, and you know what he's got. Because cigars must be held at constant temperature and humidity, this building is maintained at 70 degrees and 75 percent humidity all the time--which is more a function of air conditioning than heating because the warehouse, after all, IS in North Carolina. At this point it would be good to imagine a Home Depot store, with 16-foot racking spaced out about as evenly as it is in a Home Depot store, full of cigars. What do you think, 40 million boxes of cigars? For Lew Rothman, that's nine days of supply. Between his stores, his very popular Internet cigar site and his wholesale division, Lew Rothman is either the dealer or the middleman for at least 80 percent of the cigars smoked in the United States today.

The JR stores are also retail magnets. The popularity of his original store caused a giant "outlet" mall (which has had a few names and is now "Carolina Premium Ourlets") to be constructed on the other side of the Interstate. All the JR stores have similar retail clusters around them...in Burlington, the traffic pulled by the JR store heavily influenced the placement of the Home Depot.

So what's the moral of this story? We have two ways to go at this juncture in our nation's history. We can go into permanent austerity mode, like England did. But if we replicate England's economic program we can expect to achieve England's results--a once-popular bumper sticker in England read "The Americans have Johnny Cash and Bob Hope; we have no cash and no hope." Or we can invest money wisely, like Lew Rothman did (this means infrastructure, not building bombs you really hope you'll never have to use) and get rich.

Unfortunately, our Republicans' vision is almost as short as their dicks, so expect America to also have no cash and no hope.

[earthside]

1. From a very pleased customer ...

... of JR Cigars, thanks for the great story and message.