Um, should we follow your lead and bitch about people bitching instead of just bitching about the closure of Sutliff ? Sutliff is closing shop. People are going to bitch. You are making the choice to bitch about the bitching.
Questions for Leonardw
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I was curious about the fate of Newminster products. I get that they aren’t on the list so they must be leaving the US market, but will they continue to be produced for the EU? Or are they going away entirely?
I understand. Some of my responses come off as contradictory, partially because I do have to be somewhat cautious in my responses (publicly traded company, all that)."One of these things is not like the other..."
I just... I just don't get it (See my previous question... Summed Up: "Why not downsize rather than drop thermonuclear bomb?")
Here's a bit of a contradiction: The U.S. pipe tobacco market is still very profitable, AND the overall market has been declining in terms of volume for more than 60 years. As a result, manufacturers keep either closing their doors, or selling themselves off.
There are now very, very few companies on the planet capable of taking raw leaf and turning it into finished pipe tobacco. Another seeming contraction: Volumes keep declining, but there is now really only one company capable of keeping up with the global demand that remains.
Loosing that capability would be bad. More brands would be lost. Out-of-stocks would be rampant. Pricing would skyrocket.
One of the ways I make sure that capability remains is to ensure that pipe tobacco in the U.S. remains profitable for STG. In doing so I had to make some really unpleasant decisions.
The real contradiction: How does discontinuing profitable brands lead to increased profitability for STG? Factories, personnel, portfolio complexity and more all play a role. In any manufacturing situation, you do better making more of the products that more people want. What is the right number of brands and blends to balance our desire for variety with the realities of manufacturing? 25? 50? 150? 1,000?
I can't show the you the math, but yes, a large part of this is about making the math work. And by making the math work, I make sure we don't lose any more brands or blends.
Read more closely. I am suggesting that people respond to reality, which, given the quote that I took from Cosmic's post as the crux of the matter, is to buy the hell out of what you're going to miss.
If people want to go "wah, wah, wah" as some sort of therapy rock on but it changes nothing, so buy what you'll miss while it's still around to buy.
Exactly. I mean, I'm not at 100 but I've probably gotten like 25 in just the last month or so since I found out. In addition to what I already had and compared to what little they say is gonna be left I really don't see myself buying much of anything anymore other than a few C&D small batches here and there and maybe some stuff/what's left from places like Boswell/Country Squire/Peretti.
But I can pretty confidently say that other than some more TK-6 which is my go-to (cause god only knows if they decide to rethink their Lane line again should the wind change) I doubt there will ever be another STG product I purchase. Not out of a "boycott" or sour grapes but just sheer lack of necessity.
And actually I find Boswell's Bear blend to be pretty much TK-6 anyway yet now with more consistency.
This requires a bit of a history lesson that starts with Peter Stokkebye. STG had always produced the Stokkebye blends in DK, and sometime around the early 2000s (maybe earlier) STG purchased the brand.
Prior to 2011, the Peter Stokkebye brand was distributed in the U.S. by a company called Villiger-Stokkebye. When STG purchased Lane Limited from Reynolds in 2011, we now had a U.S. presence, so distribution shifted from Villiger-Stokkebye to Lane. Villiger-Stokkebye is now just Villiger.
In 2011 Villiger went to Mac Baren and asked them to attempt to recreate the Stokkebye blends. Hence the Newminster brand was born. It was always an attempt duplicate the Stokkeybe portfolio and only intended for the U.S. market.
Correction:
It APPEARS very "in vogue" on forums and YouTube videos and pipe shows from an echo chamber that represents what is apparently only 2-4% of the overall American market.
It bears repeating (for the umpteenth time): your own backyard may not even be representative of the average back yard, nor as big as you think it is, especially when you're only looking at your own backyard, or you aren't even aware of just how many backyards exist or where they exist.
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This is fair and reasonable.
The “nobody cares what you think” part of it rubs me the wrong way.
So it’s R.I.P. Newminster. Thanks for the clarification.
It's the basic reality of the situation. Did STG, or leonardw conduct any kind of public survey to see what people wanted? No. So no "caring about what you think" as a part of the decision making process. Why wouldn't it rub you the wrong way? Even so it's still the reality.
I mean, like someone else said here before. 2024's Carolina Red Flake was 18,000 units and it sold out in like what... 3-4 days? That's 2,250 lbs. Those seem like more than echo chamber numbers. They seem like STG/Leonard numbers lol. Could you do that literally every week? No. But C&D does it damn near every month.
I just can't believe that it along with only the most popular other blends (HH etc.) couldn't support a cut-in-half staff and produce a nice profit when the entire dang thing was already there (supply chains, farm relationships, blender contracts, equipment, IP, etc). Vs. the cost of nuking the whole thing in "the most profitable pipe market in the world".
Again I'm not bashing the guy personally and I don't have access to his numbers but I do perform accounting and logistics for a small/medium size business and it just seems like odd bigcorp-think to me looking in blindly from the outside.
I'm not pro-corpo bullshit but they don't need a survey to get a sense of what people want. They have hard sales figures that show what people want.
Thank you for answering questions @leonardw
I think that the shocker is in their definition of sales figures, given that they deal in mass market. Four goopers survive.
The other shocker is how many Sutliff blends were kept available even if they were marginal sellers. It's a boutique market approach rather than a mas market approach. Sales numbers can be read in different ways, depending on the company's objective.
Now people know what mass market numbers look like.
A question for Leonard: What is the US warehouse stock situation with some of the blends currently sold out at online retailers? Do you expect in the coming days and weeks another re-stock of, say, the HH tins and Mac Baren produced Capstan Original? Will the Mac Baren blends get one more production run this year?
And thank you for providing accurate information in a time of so much rumor and high emotion.
And thank you for providing accurate information in a time of so much rumor and high emotion.
The '<250lbs of HH ODF sold in Germany' is a pretty sobering figure and is helping me clear out some cognitive dissonance. I have personally bought around 3% of Germany's yearly sales of HH ODF in 2024. We might assume that HH ODF sells more than 1klbs a year in the US market, but probably not MUCH more than that. Really shows you the bottom line of how small a scale the 'discerning pipe smoker' sales probably are.
We are on a pipe forum so yes, there are a few irrationally emotional posts to news that substantially slashes access to pipe tobacco blends. It just comes off a bit sardonic and callous to essentially make fun of the emotional responses. Yes, some people are overly emotional but give them a bit of time to process the news for Christ’s sake.
Not to sound like some sort of new age hippy pussy or anything but it had to be said.
Not to sound like some sort of new age hippy pussy or anything but it had to be said.
I'll repeat myself:
It bears repeating (for the umpteenth time): your own backyard may not even be representative of the average back yard, nor as big as you think it is, especially when you're only looking at your own backyard, or you aren't even aware of just how many backyards exist or where they exist.
How much of that small batch was bought by what percentage of the overall market? Was all that 2,000-2500 lbs bought by just 2% of the visible and vocal community? How does that 2500 lbs compare to how many pounds of 1-Q is sold in the overall market?
It seems like big numbers only because we don't really have all the numbers. Even then, for a small outfit like C&D and Laudisi, that doesn't have to appease multiple shareholders, those may be good numbers, but they're absolute shit numbers for a large, publicly-traded corporation that has shareholders to contend with.
I'm not a corporate boot-licker, at all. But there's a lot more than just that. If it costs $100 just to fire up a machine, it's worth making large production runs so that the $100 base cost that exists regardless of how many you make in a run, is spread out across 10,000 lbs rather than 1,000. If a machine costs $10 to start, it's not as big a deal to do 1,000 in a run. C&D uses machines that take $10 to start, STG uses machines that take $100 to start.
Even then, what are the actual margins C&D makes on those compared to some of their other production? Furthermore, being smaller, if the margins are lower, it might be more worth it to C&D to keep doing it as a marketing strategy that doesn't make sense for a giant, multi-national, publicly traded corporation.
That's just one example, there's a wealth of other complicating factors in the math that we aren't privy to, as has been pointed out numerous times.
The viability is far more complicated than just 2,000 lbs of a specialized blend being sold out quickly, especially considering part of it's quick sale is due to collectors jumping on it partly because "limited run" (built-in "prestige" value to collectors/enthusiasts that doesn't matter to the majority of people).
Enjoyed a bit of that back in the dawn of time.
@leonardw i have a few question for you. Since many of the McBaren HH blends are being sold out on online platforms does that mean that what is sold out now Is all that is left or is there more to be manufactured that will be released over the coming months? I know many are purchasing blends, knowing they’re going away, but will some of our favorite blends still be released that are sold out right now? Bulk and tins?
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