I think more space can be bought, though probably not cheaply or easily in the UK.
We aren't talking about the wide open fields of the USA.
Gawith, Hoggarth, & Co. Importation Troubles?
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We aren't talking about the wide open fields of the USA.
Yeh, but what about tobacco supplies? Already pipe tobaccos use up the topmost tobaccos in the world.
I do understand that some of their equipment is a couple hundred years old.
It's a bit more complicated than simply pulling out a bigger bucket and filling it. This has been a topic with regard to Germain's as well. Capacity is tied to the plant and pipeline, which is operating at capacity. Change the pipeline and the characteristics of the blends change as well. GH&Co has been going through some changes to increase capacity over the last couple of years. How that will affect the blends produced? Who knows.
Your assumptions regarding what I've dubbed the Psychopathy Of Scarcity are on point, but applied perhaps a bit too liberally.
Scarcity often gets conflated with quality. If an item is scarce, it must be so because there's so much demand, because it's really good. Your cat, with its walnut sized brain, thinks the same way about what the other cat is eating.
But not all pipe smokers have walnut sized brains and some can separate scarcity from quality. And for most of us, availability is availability, and nothing more. If people can't find a particular blend that they like, they will find another one to smoke.
Also, the idea that GH&Co is somehow conspiring with the FDA to raise more return for GH&Co is novel.
Yeah but they are working with geneticists from multiple universities like Duke, Clemson, and Cornell on future hybrid tobaccos that mostly aren't tobacco at all and have almost no nicotine. Using iceberg lettuce, they are already able to pretty accurately replicate Virginias and Kentucky's. Good ones. From what I understand the issues facing them is any processing like forced drying, Cavendish, or flavoring just causes it to dissolve. In a few years, the whole issue of being out of stock due to leaf shortages will go away.
Have you seen the size of Kendal? There's barely 14 people in town. They'd have to dredge the countryside to hire more.
Must be their long history makes them able to source some fine tobacco that keeps them in the game despite the slim supply of their blends.
And when the geneticists get done modifying and patenting the human species then none of this will matter.
Or maybe the future humanoids will rebel at some point and raid the arctic seed vaults and regrow real tobacco.
There was a rather large shipment of SG a few months ago, which is now being distributed (Hansom, Stonehenge, etc.) and a small shipment of GH which is now being sold by retailers. No GH shipments to the US were planned until late Spring. I do not know the timetable for future SG shipments, but AFAIK, the paperwork for it is not an issue.
To have a source when online sales get inevitably banned.
Exclusivity drive me on to more readily available blends and manufacturers.
You have a very furtive, and apparently paranoid, imagination. There's zero logic to support any kind of conspiracy theory. If G&H had a year's inventory sitting on the shelves across the country, there could be a shred of potential in your theory. As is, it's absurd.
Nearly any and every business out there would love to be selling heaps of whatever their product may be to everyone in the entire world. There are myriad nuances to any business, especially those crossing borders, that can stand in the way of this happening. I promise you there are dozens of damn good reasons for anyone's products to be less available than they, or their customers would like.
Without being intimately familiar with the inner workings of any business, any guess as to what the particular barriers may be in any instance is pretty much pure speculation, but one thing I'm fairly certain of is that they likely DO exist. They are often more complex than any public statement such as those listed above may indicate, as nobody wants their customers to get spooked and EXPECT unavailability, and thus write off their products, but I'm sure whatever issue is going on is probably legit.
I've not heard of many business who make it a priority to have their supply fail to meet the demand. When it does happen, there is usually a very valid reason preventing them from doing so.
Without being intimately familiar with the inner workings of any business, any guess as to what the particular barriers may be in any instance is pretty much pure speculation, but one thing I'm fairly certain of is that they likely DO exist. They are often more complex than any public statement such as those listed above may indicate, as nobody wants their customers to get spooked and EXPECT unavailability, and thus write off their products, but I'm sure whatever issue is going on is probably legit.
I've not heard of many business who make it a priority to have their supply fail to meet the demand. When it does happen, there is usually a very valid reason preventing them from doing so.
Absolutley. I never called it a conspiricy btw, that was the hoosier. I call it knowing your business and marketing your product for longevity and demand.
A lot of the "Psychopathy Of Scarcity" is just human nature, but its crazy nonetheless.
I was by no means saying that those moldy 30 lb stashes of GH blends some have lying around are a bad idea. Youre gunna need them. All I'm saying is that the face value of those blends would decrease if they were too available. You don't have to be a paranoid person to see that, and I'm certainly not saying I know where that line is. Remember its their business, that they know well.
I seem to recall that GH/SG forged a new US distribution agreement this past summer. I may be mistaken, but, I believe it was with Kretek. There does not appear to be anything misleading and/or nefarious about this announcement. Stuff like this happens in this biz.
As I mentioned earlier, this also affects Sam Gawith blends as well.
I want more GH&co blends available as well, but I also know that when things made with care and diligence on antique equipment, it becomes a very different product when cranked up to mass produced levels. Quality of the sourced tobaccos drop to meet the higher production, the attention to detail gets lost, and it would just lose that "special" quality.
Pipe tobacco is not a HUGE industry, and the actual amount of pipe smokers is not very big. You'd probably fair better selling strap-ons for turtle molesters... JK. But, not far off. None of the tobacco companies are very big, not even as large as chewing tobacco.
Right now, it is merely the threat of the FDA, and it's all going to the fastest with the most funds to buy. And, I can live with that. Sure, I miss the ropes especially, but as soon as insurance companies and employers start testing all members for nicotine (or whatever obligatory, unthinkable thing happens), all of those hoarders will be dumping their stashes back into the pool for redistribution.
I've heard that the softshelled variety are more compliant.
Hard to catch, though.
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