Steve Richman specifically denied, in my presence and that of others at the first show where he distributed samples, that any of the Esoterica blends were “identical” to the Smokers Haven blends. All he ever claimed was that some were “similar.” My memory is that he said that Germain, while not doing business with SH at that time, respected their Intellectual property interest in the development of the recipes and would not make exact duplicates for anybody. There very well might have been some degree of “tweaking” that GLP and the other initial tasters contributed.
The few shops that I recall who really supported Esoterica in the 1990’s sold at least as much Margate as Penzance. Stonehaven moved slowly. After a few years, very few if any shops carried the full line, though if you wanted a bag of St.Ives they would order it. Steve and, later, Mike Butera were pretty flexible with minimum order requirements or so I recall.