Spring 98 Volume III Issue 2

Julio Ramirez leans over the roller's bench, his dark hands delicately caressing a tobacco leaf into place. He finishes quickly, Lifting the rich brown corona up to the light, his keen eyes search for flaws. Finally satisfied, he clips the cigar's foot and sets it down on the large stack in front of him. His hands, his eyes. and the artistry guiding them are the key to the remarkable growth of the Little Havana Cigar Factory.

At 33 years old, Ramirez is a master cigar roller. Born in the Dominican Republic to a family of Cuban exiles, Ramirez is the heir to a cigar making legacy. He is a thin man. Wearing a "Rolled on the Thighs of Virgins" T-shirt, he looks like the other Hispanics working at benches around the factory but, as head roller and partner, the ultimate responsibility for the quality of the cigars is his alone.

There are six rollers working in the store on the morning I visit. Although only five months old, the Little Havana Cigar Factory looks like 1930s Cuba, with rough wooden floors, bamboo furniture, and tobacco leaves hanging from the walls. Them are bales of tobacco everywhere. This stylish shop, located at State and Maple Streets in the trendy River North area of Chicago, is the vision of Jim Limparis. "What Starbucks is to coffee," he says, "that's what we want to be in the cigar business. Anybody can walk into a store and buy the same cigar they can get at a gas station. Here you can see the tobacco and watch the rollers - it's an experience. You can't get that everywhere."

We sit in the lounge and talk cigars while Bachata music plays in the background. Limparis is young, with jet-black hair and intense blue eyes. "You can't open up your Mom-and-Pop tobacco store anymore and sell 50 different kinds of cigars, because that same type of store is at a hundred different locations within a two-mile area of downtown Chicago. The customer has got to be able to come into someplace different, appealing, that has a visual effect; that gives people something they can't get anywhere else." Limparis' knowledge of marketing and design has been fundamental to the success of Little Havana Cigar Factory. And his determination has seen the company through a number difficulties; from its rocky start-up through a meteoric growth to the brink of national expansion, in only five months.

Limparis' background is in restaurant and club design. Along with wife Laura, he got into the business trying to open a 1920s cigar parlor. They renovated a club and brought in Ramirez to roll cigars, but the city declined to issue them a liquor license, bringing the whole project, and all their dreams, to a standstill.

With their last money, and Ramirez' help, they bought more tobacco and set up a cart at Navy Pier. The first day they sold 20 cigars then 40 - then 100 - up to 400 a day. The Limparises and Ramirez were working 17-hour-days, seven days a week for two months. It got so busy they brought in three more rollers. Realizing they needed a place where they could make and sell their cigars, they opened their present store last September. It took off, selling another 600 cigars a day. Today, they employ 20 rollers, who will have made almost a million cigars by the end of their first year. In two years they hope to be rolling four million annually.

Chicago now had its own cigar factory and it was creating a stir. "Over the summer we had a lot of films being shot in Chicago," Limparis says. "It was like a parade in here. Joe Pantoliano, Mel Gibson, Tommy Lee Jones, and Wesley Snipes all hung out and bought cigars. Marcus Allen was in town for a book signing and it was through him that we met Mike Ditka. He [Ditka] liked the cigars so much he bought 5 percent of the company." The manager of the Hyatt Regency Chicago tried one and asked Little Havana Cigar Factory to open a concession, complete with roller and humidor, at the Big Bar in the hotel's lobby. And, since many of their customers were coming up from the financial district, the Limparises soon opened a second store in the Loop.

Continued on next page...

---