Samuel Gawith, EU and BREXIT
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As I said, it was the New Orleans Pipe Show, like five or so years ago. There were a bunch of us from the forum there. Russ Ouelette and Pappymac and quite a few others. He was showing us how they strip the leaves, and such. He had said that it takes a lot of mailing back and forth and waiting to work with Greg on getting it just right. And, Russ mentioned that this is why most blenders add more dark fire to VaPers, to pull out some of those unique flavors in his perique.
I assume this means that Mark is pressing dark fired and LA grown leaf, St. James or otherwise, together in the barrel. And not adding it afterwards to the perique after the perique has gone through the pressing process. Did I get that right?
Also, is dark fired the same thing as Kentucky Green River Burley from which most perique is supposedly made?
It also sounds like Mark doesn't sell perique that is made only from leaf from St. James parish.
The industry doesn't owe them squat? Are you sure about that statement.
When the squatters exit for a competitor or something different, what becomes of the industry. When a service can not be provided because an agreed upon price can not be agreed on, then the one providing the service is unemployed. The one seeking service goes elsewhere. They always do. The scales of economics enforce this reasoning. Governments, not customers, are to blame for this situation.
I hate to use words like greed. STG, which at least at one point was a principal supplier of raw leaf to a K&K and likely still is, is a public company. They aren’t getting rich on pipe tobacco. The stock trades on the Danish equivalent of NASDAQ. An index of that market over the last several years would have outperformed a STG shares.
This is a tough niche of the overall tobacco industry.
Right, but when the squatters are looking for freebies or making demands that would result in your economic destruction, what do you owe them?
It's a two way street. Buyers always drive the market even though many are not cognizant of it. Sometimes when they are cognizant of it they abuse their power.
I used to work in Visual Effects. It went from a small industry that worked on the occasional event film to a large industry that serviced an increasing number of effects laden films, many of which were the highest grossing films of all time. Some leaders in the VFX industry made the grievous mistake of pointing that out and within a few years, many companies were driven into bankruptcy by their clients demands. Some of that was intentional punishment for their "hubris". I watched that "race to the bottom" and got out, entering animation. Big FX films are still being made, but the workplace is much different, much tougher to survive. And a lot of it is no longer in the US.
If customers are not willing to pay what quality costs they're not entitled to that quality. If they think that companies "owe" them, they are mistaken.
I'm not a charity. I do what I do to make a decent living and to support a family. If I can't do that, I'm outta there. When I've had the occasional abusive client I've shown them the door with no regrets. Funny thing is, I've always had consistent work because I provide a good value.
Companies provide a service. If you are looking to gouge them they're not going to continue to provide you that service. If they try to gouge you, you are certainly free to look elsewhere. It's a two way street.
That was a much different (and before my) time.
Luckily for us Joe had the knowledge to absolutely nail that transition.
I started visiting one year into Arvind’s tenure, that’s pretty well a bygone era as well.
I automatically charge greed to business processes because it is my contention that the modern world is riddled with it. The American Dream to work hard and provide opportunities for your kids that you never had changed to by all means necessary acquire, and don't stop, because we all know that happiness is measured by an increasing share of goods and services.
Also true that good business, really the best business, knows how to steer toward both maximum profit and the value to be delivered at that price. But tell me that if you walk into a corporate board room how much profit is the focus and how much the value to be delivered for it.
I spent far too many years as a waiter in a private club in the building them known as the Sears Tower. Very, very expensive, and thus the only members that could afford it were the high-reachers in business. These type had a posture of one with a baton up his ass. They were so very careful to observe all the signals of money. Not bad people but maniacally about money.
Also I'm about six months into a new lease at a new complex. Unfortunately the corporate wizards who designed the housing didn't give a fuck about the insulation needed to keep the noise from one unit from being heard in another unit. More unfortunate are the disrespectful, and rude Haitians that live below me who could give a fuck about their noise. The only solutions is to kick their asses out. But oh no! management says, we can't do that. No, you won't do it as corporate might miss a few months rent.
Money is the spirit of the modern age. But it is not thus automatically true that it governs each and every business instance.
He didn’t tell us exactly how he blends it, or if he did, I didn’t get all of the details.
I’ve never hearf Mark say that he uses only St James grown leaf. I’ve only ever heard people say that on the forum.
I did hear him say that he can perique any leaf, and then Russ told us that he was working with Mark to perique some Virginias. And, a few months later, Russ released his RO series.
I love how you turn perique into a verb! It really works, endowing the perique process to whatever leaf applied.
Mysteries upon mysteries . . . I can see you growing a bunch of N. rustica and trying to talk Mark into periquing it.
I've never walked into a Corporate Board room meeting. I used to attend weekly management meetings at Warner Brothers when I was part of the studio's management. It's a constant battle between budget and product quality. The smart minds know that the two are entwined and the question is where is the tipping point? They tend to think more holistically. The not so smart minds are focused solely on a number, with no real thought to what kind of quality that number represents.
However, no one is interested in paying a cent more than is necessary. But what they consider necessary is partly based on a perception of excellence on the part of the people they engage to do the work. When you're running extremely lean crews with equally lean budgets, it comes down the the quality of output by those people on the crew. I think things really tightened up after the 2007-8 crash.
That's it, exactly, the upper levels of business soulless as redolent cadavers, all for the cause of money. And if you made X last quarter, you have to make X+1 this quarter. If by buyout you have acquired a number of companies, sell off those that won't achieve a minimum profitability. Don't sully your hands with anything less. If people loved the product, fuck 'em.
What the pipe tobacco niche is struggling with is trying to keep from making X - 1.
It's my understanding that Kentucky Green River Burley, periqued, is the same as Acadian Perique, and that 5-10 years ago someone made the decision that St. James perique would always be mixed with it. When that happened Pease vehemently supported it. In general the decision was made to stretch St. James to support the demand for it here and overseas.
I'd be surprised if that were true. Cigarette smokers aren't nearly as concerned about the quality of the tobacco as pipe smokers. Why would cigarette manufacturers pay extra for premium tobacco if their customers aren't demanding it? They're dealing on high volumes and looking to pinch every penny they can.
As Jeremy Reeves recently pointed out, on a pie chart the pipe smoking segment is invisible. Less than 1%. And a lot of what we think of as premium tobacco (African and Indian dark air and fire cured) is actually the cheapest leaf on the planet used mostly to beef up the nicotine in strong cigarettes and snuff. If they (cig and oral tobacco manufacturers) didn't use the leaf in their products, it wouldn't exist for pipe tobacco manufacturers because the farmers wouldn't grow it. We're a fringe market.
Here's his actual quote from the recent thread about red virginias:
"15% of the population of the US smokes / uses tobacco. That's about 49 million people. 97% of that group smoke cigarettes. The vast majority of the remaining 3% of the tobacco users chew or dip or smoke machine made cigars. On a pie chart of tobacco use for the US population, pipe smoking is not even visible. All tobacco, including Red VA styles and grades get used in all sorts of products outside of pipe tobacco. If that weren't the case, they wouldn't be available at all." - Jeremy Reeves
"15% of the population of the US smokes / uses tobacco. That's about 49 million people. 97% of that group smoke cigarettes. The vast majority of the remaining 3% of the tobacco users chew or dip or smoke machine made cigars. On a pie chart of tobacco use for the US population, pipe smoking is not even visible. All tobacco, including Red VA styles and grades get used in all sorts of products outside of pipe tobacco. If that weren't the case, they wouldn't be available at all." - Jeremy Reeves
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