Tinder Box Visit Surprise

[mso489]

I was at the big mall getting my wife a summer watchband and stopped by my local Tinder Box. Huh? The pipe wall board with the clips was less than half full, and the tins of tobacco were down to less than half usual. I asked the man at the counter if they were scaling back on pipes and pipe tobacco. He waved off the question with assurances that management was about to send in a big order. This was clearly what he'd been told to say. I've been visiting the shop for literally decades; it's where I bought my first pipe that I still have and smoke. I have never seen the stock this low. I should have investigated the cigar humidor more closely, but a quick glance showed the shelves there were still somewhat full. Certainly this relates to the impending regs. As in the card game "Old Maid," no one wants to get stuck with unsellable merchandise, or maybe they are just wanting to run extra spare against uncertainty. Clearly, things have changed. I was kind of moved by the brave bluff of the counter man.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

As in the card game "Old Maid," no one wants to get stuck with unsellable merchandise

Speculation has been the name of the game on this forum since the FDA made its announcement. Skip at The Briary calls poppycock on that. He has been trying to get in everything he can, but his problem is that the wholesalers are out of product. He wants all of the new stuff, and he has a whole row of Lane's Vanilla flavored blends with cigar names, but he can't find any distributors who have any of the tried and true blends.

 

[deathmetal]

Regulations are designed to raise costs, in part through uncertainty.
I say full speed ahead. The old way of doing things has changed. Not by one "side," or any one person, but it seems there is a shift in outlook from culture itself.
It's a great time to be a pipe smoker. We should double, triple, quadruple and -- uh... whatever comes after quadruple -- quadruple down on pipe smoking, buying tobacco, growing it, curing it and blending it.
The more we have fun, the more join us, and then we can restore a golden age of pipe smoking yet again.

 

[oldgeezersmoker]

I used to know a few people in the industry, such as Gene Thompson, a long time management type at Lane. I would love to hear their reaction to the current pipe tobacco feeding frenzy. I have never seen anything like it Apparently Smoking Pipes blew through well over 200 tins of McClelland 40th Anniversary Mixture in a few hours. I don't know how much Cup O Joe's got, but a member posted that they had it in a thread, and it was out in a couple of hours.
And Esoterica used to gather dust on retailers shelves. Around 2000/2001, I bought all of the stock a retailer who was changing locations had for $12.50 a bag. The stickers said $25. There literally was dust on some of it. If Steve Richman, who was the original importer, is still alive I would love to hear his thoughts on this craze.
I don't know if there are statistics to capture this phenomena, but pipe tobacco has never sold like this.

 

[mso489]

I admit it didn't occur to me that the empty pipe wall and the meagre selection of tins might be the result of a sort of "land rush" on the inventory. Boy, I hope that's it.

 

[oldgeezersmoker]

@mso489, my musings were prompted by other thoughts in the thread, not so much the Tinderbox you visited. The old retail adage of "You can't sell out of an empty wagon" would seem to apply in spades if you are paying mall rent. I suspect there is something else going on with the store you visited.