Questions for Leonardw

[HeavyLeadBelly]

@leonardw-if PipesAndCigars is going to be your online retailer, much improvement needs to be made. Over the past two years Tobaccopipes’ service has been excellent for me, whereas P&C has been so unsatisfactory that I quit using them (even when their prices were significantly better).

Agreed. That they try to sneakily get you subscribed to magazines is just a bad business practice that turns me off to the point where I won’t shop there regardless of their frequent sales. Plus their website in general is horrendous. Love SP because it’s very clean, easy to navigate, and in regard to the pipes, each one besides the corncobs are photographed so you know that what you’re looking at is what you’re getting.

P&C needs to hire a web architect and redesign their whole website.

 

[Terry Lennox]

My go-to's right now are SP, 4Noggins and Country Squire. There are other good ones too.

 

[Sobrbiker]

Agreed. That they try to sneakily get you subscribed to magazines is just a bad business practice that turns me off to the point where I won’t shop there regardless of their frequent sales. Plus their website in general is horrendous. Love SP because it’s very clean, easy to navigate, and in regard to the pipes, each one besides the corncobs are photographed so you know that what you’re looking at is what you’re getting.

P&C needs to hire a web architect and redesign their whole website.

I used the comparison to tobaccopipes as a better platform, seeing as it’s now owned by STG-they already have a better site in hand for pipe tobacco.
That is, if improving customer satisfaction is actually part of their model….

 

[HeavyLeadBelly]

I used the comparison to tobaccopipes as a better platform, seeing as it’s now owned by STG-they already have a better site in hand for pipe tobacco.
That is, if improving customer satisfaction is actually part of their model….

Yes, agreed. While the functionality of TobaccoPipes website isn’t as great as SP, it’s leagues above P&C’s website.

 

[Terry Lennox]

I used the comparison to tobaccopipes as a better platform, seeing as it’s now owned by STG-they already have a better site in hand for pipe tobacco.
That is, if improving customer satisfaction is actually part of their model….

One of the things I love about Tobacco Pipes is they have a photo of the tobacco out of the tin so you can get a good look at what you're buying if you're trying it for the first time. Also, the lightness of the page design compared to the clutter of P&C.

 

[sdcowboy]

Leonard, this is a long thread. I haven’t seen anything about Seven Seas blends. They’ve become a new favorite, and the wife appreciates the aroma. Please tell me they’re not going away.

 

[lazar]

@leonardw P&C has long been a joke on the pipe forums. The general feeling is that if they can find a way to screw up an order (or a promo), they will. There are endless examples.

Even worse, their selection is seriously limited compared to literally all their competitors. No Kopp brands aside from Rattray's, no DTM, HU, etc. They mostly stock (and push) Sutliff, H&H, Seattle Pipe Club, and Standard Tobacco of Pennsylvania which maybe gives them some kind of identity -- but if those are all being discontinued, what will P&C even be selling? Is it just going to be a greatly reduced portfolio of STG and Mac Baren, plus C&D and occasionally Gawith?

Now combine that with the reliably abysmal customer service and hassles of ordering from them....

 

[ReformedPiper]

I am very curious about Mac Baren's coin-cuts. Stockton is my favorite and is only available once every year or two. There are some similar blends from MB that I also love. Wondering if these will be lost forever, or if they'll continue to be made. Maybe Stockton could even be made continuously available.

 

[KruegerFlap]

And anytime you shop with Pipes and Cigars you have to pray you don't end up in "backordered" purgatory even when it says the item is in stock when you checkout. I never understood why they couldn't send the other items on your order that aren't backordered. Instead they hold the order up forever and then unceremoniously cancel the ENTIRE order and you get nothing but a waste of your time. P&C definitely could use a complete overhaul before I trust them. Smoking Pipes gets around 99% of my business these days because they are great.

 

[sablebrush52]

@leonardw While I personally experienced no significant problems with P & C, they got my orders largely correct and shipped in a timely manner, their horrible packing standards never changed, unprofessionally sloppy packing resulting in dented tins.
Eventually I needed to terminate my account with P&C for two reasons. First was the abominable way they treated several members here. Second was the level of operational incompetency that made them an online security concern to me, so I delisted them as an account. If anyone is ripe for getting hacked it's P&C.

 

[Zamora]

The takeover of Mac Baren by STG probably means the end of square flake tins. Capstan will come in a round tin like Peterson Flake once they change factories I suspect.

I never thought about it but that's probably true unless they decided to keep the square moulds. There's still a few non Mac B brands that have rectangular tins like Sillem's and Rattray's but that's about it.

That's an improvement.

Yeah I've always heard the circular ones retain moisture better.

 

[krizzose]

One other factor that hasn’t been mentioned is processing.

Going back to the “why didn’t McClelland sell their recipes” idiocy is the reality that much of their results depended on their processing, something that Mike McNeil didn’t share with anyone because it was his judgement not just running the tobacco through a pipeline on autopilot.

It’s why Germain’s keeps repairing their ancient equipment rather than scrapping it for modern replacements.

It’s why batches vary as much as changes in sourcing.

Change the equipment, change the results. Change the people guiding the equipment, change the results.

It will take some tinkering to get a similar result from a different pipeline.

Exactly. I’m convinced that the Mac Baren blends will be considerably different when manufactured in Assens

 

[lazar]

And anytime you shop with Pipes and Cigars you have to pray you don't end up in "backordered" purgatory even when it says the item is in stock when you checkout. I never understood why they couldn't send the other items on your order that aren't backordered. Instead they hold the order up forever and then unceremoniously cancel the ENTIRE order and you get nothing but a waste of your time. P&C definitely could use a complete overhaul before I trust them. Smoking Pipes gets around 99% of my business these days because they are great.

Except for the time when they did ship most of my order, but backordered a single pack of pipe cleaners...which they finally sent to me 3 MONTHS later. In a huge box.

 

[Snook]

Except for the time when they did ship most of my order, but backordered a single pack of pipe cleaners...which they finally sent to me 3 MONTHS later. In a huge box.

Classic P&C

 

[Mike N]

One of the things I love about Tobacco Pipes is they have a photo of the tobacco out of the tin so you can get a good look at what you're buying if you're trying it for the first time. Also, the lightness of the page design compared to the clutter of P&C.

This. TP’s photos of the pipe tobacco out of the tin actually make you want to grab some slices you might otherwise pass up. Although SP’s website is far more consumer friendly, this is one idea they should co-opt from TP.

 

[Hohepa]

So the good news is, nothing from either the the STG or Mac Baren portfolios is being delisted in the UK. As far as why Mac Baren never introduced the HH blends in the UK... I don't have any true insight there. Prior to the acquisition, STG actually distributed in the UK on Mac Baren's behalf. Mac Baren would have dictated the portfolio. I can only assume they didn't see much demand.

You're killing the entire HH range, why not just be honest

 

[sardonicus87]

I had smoked a pipe for 15 years before I joined STG. I had never heard of a pipe forum, a pipe show, or a pipe club before that. Folks who are engaged with the hobby like the folks here probably represent 2%-3% of all pipe smokers.

This is one of those things I try to explain to people all the time... not here or specifically regarding pipe tobacco, but in general about all things (laws cultures, politics, sociology, etc).

Way too many people think the whole world looks similar to their own back-yard, or thinks their own back-yard is a bigger player than it is, or more representative of the whole than it is. There's probably a good 20-30 related cognitive biases and fallacies around this kind of thinking.

But people always tell me I'm wrong because they have eyes or some other nonsense. But because I'm just a [non-academic, non-professional "philosopher"], it doesn't matter how good my argumentation is and even if I went and did the research (which I can't afford... side-note if anyone tells you they "researched it" and aren't in an industry/part of a company, then no the hell they probably didn't, good actual research takes a lot of people, time and money that no individual has, all they did was Google search a confirmation-bias prone prompt), nobody would still listen, even though reality catches up and I'm very often proved right.

Nice to see someone with actual access give actual numbers. I'm just glad all these threads exist, I'm feeling super vindicated lately. A small consolation prize for being a failure and a loser in life.


More to the topic of the thread, I'd be interested in any other interesting statistics you may have access to regarding the broader pipe tobacco industry?

 

[Sigmund]

Id smoke my rkitchen garbage before I paid money for the crap STG is continuing from the Mac Portfoilo.
Calling it a portfolio is really a coutesy to leo

 

[yardjocky]

I doubt @leonardw is gonna show his face around here for a while

 

[Sigmund]

It will change nothing if he shows or doesnt.

there is no spinning this news.

The only good news about the demise of pipe tobacco is that STG will also go broke.