THIS^^^^
Better start supporting your B&M's. You're going to need them.
Better start supporting your B&M's. You're going to need them.
Los Angeles B&Ms: A Sad State of Affairs
- Thread starter Servant King
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The mindless destruction of businesses that they don't like seems to be the agenda of the California politicians and this is with full support of the people who live there. Quit whining, either relocate or stand up and tell they aren't going to do this.
I know you love to hate California but I've got news for you. It's happening all over the country.
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My objective over the last five years has been to be in a position to not be dependent on them. Mission accomplished. I like lower prices. If a face to face sales requirement comes into play, I am stocked up on more varieties of tobacco than the closest B&M around here has ever carried.
I've done the same, but newer pipe smokers aren't in that position and many can't spend a large amount in a short period to build a full cellar, whatever that means.
Supporting your B&M's a an important long strategy. If B&M's are gone and face to face sales are the only kind of sales allowed, it's going to be pipe shows or nothing and it will probably be nothing because blenders who can't sell product don't make product. Or, they make product to sell outside the US. Keep B&M's alive and you have that option. Gee, it will be the same as it was before the internet.
This is a sad state of affairs across the board. When I started in 2001 this wasn't even on the horizon, and had I known it was coming, it would have been hard to believe.
+1
I agree and don't see any way around it as a consumer. My local B&M is 95% cigars and the owner is less than personable. The last time I was in he really only had bulks that were renamed brands.
I want to stock my cellar as efficiently as I can, and having a family to support, every dollar saved is vital. If the selection was comparable or I could order through them with only a minimal price difference (perhaps maybe $11 online vs 11.50 or $12) I would.
The problem (for B&Ms) is getting wholesale for about what we pay, so your mentioned mark up is not going to help a B&M pay the huge bills that come along with paying a mortgage on a retail space.
This is happening in many aspects of B&Ms. The wholesalers are competing with the retailers. I can understand why a wholesaler would do this. I also understand why we buy the cheaper offerings. But, it’s a formula that kills downtowns. Plain and simple.
Real pipe and tobacco shops are single destinations like major art museums. Most storefronts with neon tobacco signs sell cartons of cigarettes, inexpensive cigars and cigarillos, vape gear, RYO tobacco, weed gear, and convenience store items. This is true in most of the boroughs of NYC and other large cities. Harking back to the good old days, when I was a child, my dad could buy a serviceable brand pipe and a variety of tobaccos, plain to premium, at newsstands in building lobbies and on the street, throughout downtown Chicago. Even our little suburban downtown had an independent pipe shop with a resident carver. I guess we all know times have changed.
That's simply not possible because B&M's pay more, including the excise taxes of the state in which they're located. As of now, online sellers are required to collect state sales tax, but don't yet charge excise tax. You can pay that yourself to your state, or ignore it and hope that your state is not subscribed to one of several networks states have joined for tracking purchases subject to excise or other special taxes. Late fees and penalties can really add up. You didn't want to own that house any more, did you?
I do my best to help the B&M outlet going here in Weatherford. He has plenty of C&D, MacBarens, and house blends, Peterson’s, Savinell, and estate pipes.
that happens so often people do more damage with their misinterpretation of laws then the laws themselves do. They go on assumptions and rumors instead of sitting down and reading the law.
That is simply not true, which has been explained multiple times on multiple threads on this and other forums. In Tennessee, out of state etailers are only required to collect and remit sales tax if they ship over $100,000 dollars in annualized sales to Tennessee addresses. Prior to October 2020, the threshold for Tennessee was $500,000. Other states have different thresholds, a few are higher, at least one state says any sales, tobacco and otherwise. in that state subject the seller to a reporting and payment requirement.
As far as excise taxes go, most states still only impose those on distributors and/or retailers. A few have recently imposed them on consumers, but they are still a minority. In Tennessee, there is absolutely no requirement imposed on me to pay our (modest) OTP tax, nor does it apply, at least for now, to out of state retailers.
State and local taxation of any variety is a real specialty. Tobacco even more so. There are even small boutique law firms that specialize in recovering excess tobacco excise taxes for the trade .
Unless and until Congress imposes some sort of unifIed requirement for sales tax Collection on out of state sellers, the only correct statement is that the requirement for an out of state seller to collect and remit sales and excise taxes will vary according to the state of residence of the purchaser.
No, if only because the shops I used to be able to find in less than major metropolitan areas that actually had decent inventories of pipes and tobacco simply aren’t going to come back. Too few pipe smokers these days. Knoxville has one good shop, Smokey’s, but my impression is that the owner probably devotes more space to pipes and tobacco than pure economics would justify. Who knows what will happen when he retires or the lease renews?
Most of the younger people I know who are interested in pipes would have plenty of money to spend on pipe tobacco if they didn’t spend so many $ laying in high dollar corn liquor, a/k/a Bourbon.
I get the impression this is a generational problem.
The weird thing is I can think of several independent retail chains that have grown exponentially after the E-Commerce boom, they stock a wide selection of niche items sold at low margins and still regularly open new walk-in retail locations at the same time as competing directly with the likes of Amazon.
If Tobacco B&M's are going under, it is their own fault for not modernizing.
The Internet has given us a wholly better way of doing business, anyone who didn't embrace that has missed the boat and is just a relic waiting to be buried.
Thanks for all the input everyone! Good stuff, lots to ponder over. As for the best way to do it...
...with bird-watching binoculars in hand, of course!
...with bird-watching binoculars in hand, of course!
I was being a bit facetious. The subject of this thread was the sad state of tobacconists in Los Angeles, to which I can attest since I live in the greater LA metropolitan area and have witnessed a once vibrant market disappear.
But let;s explore this a bit. Internet sales of tobacco get banned. Any sales of any tobacco product that are not face to face get banned. Why wouldn't a tobacconist see this as an opportunity to build trade, since the competition has been killed off, assuming the tobacconist haven't been killed off by a lack of support from their customers.
Ever been to the little town of Hilt? No? It's in northernmost California, 17 miles from the border with Oregon where liquor stores are run by the state. Prices on liquor are quite high compared to California. So the town of Hilt consists of All Star Liquors and a few nervous cows and sheep. The parking lot is always full when I drive past.
Point is, where there's an opportunity there's going to be an enterprising human ready to exploit it.
I get my main source of bulk tobacco from a B&M 2000 miles from where I live. The price is 2.75 an ounce and it is shipped to me without sales tax. The shipping is nominal and it is well below what I could buy it here in California. I do buy my pipes here at the local B&M. No extra Cal tax on them. As far as tins, I get them on line for the most part. And that has to do with selection more than anything. Now, when I do visit the local B&M, I will purchase several ounces of tobacco for playing with and trying something different. They do have some that I enjoy.
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