Summer 96 Volume I Issue 3

Photographs by Michael I. Price

The screen saver on Kevin Doyle's computer in the Little Havana headquarters of Caribbean Cigar Company repeats continuously, "Never underestimate the pirate." And indeed, Doyle, president of the Miami-based company, looks like he might have been a pirate in a previous life. Barrel-chested, with brown hair that bristles and green eyes that tend to pierce, Doyle enjoys the swashbuckling image. "Living in the Keys, it's very easy to take on a pirate-like frame of mind," says 37-year-old Doyle, who until recently made his home in Key Largo. "It's the lifestyle--Jimmy Buffet, boats, the water, my love for rum." The image is mostly for fun, not for business. "If it carries over at all into my business, it's that I charge forward and don't worry about the ramifications," says Doyle. Charging forward is exactly what Doyle and Caribbean Cigar are doing these days. Ignoring the conventional wisdom that it's impossible to launch a successful premium cigar company in the U.S., Doyle and his partners have coupled modern working conditions and premium pay to attract a platoon of Cuban rollers from small factories throughout south Florida and Cuba itself. So far, the company operates a factory in the heart of Miami's Little Havana and three retail stores in southern Florida. If plans work out, Caribbean will offer

its stock for public sale this summer, thus becoming the first publicly traded U.S. company in decades whose sole purpose is to make and distribute premium cigars. That's quite an agenda for a company headed by a man who resigned as an air traffic controller at Miami International Airport in November of 1995. In the brief interim, Doyle has transformed his love for cigars into a burgeoning manufacturing and retail company. "This is the field of dreams," Doyle says, leaning back in his chair and smiling. Currently, Caribbean Cigar manufacturers three hand-made premium brands priced between $4.95 and $17. In the spring, Doyle began negotiating to purchase a factory in the Dominican Republic to make as many as four or five new imported brands. "I'd like to make a less expensive cigar suitable for the liquor store that is putting in a humidor and for the retail store that can't get its orders filled," Doyle says. The company's flagship cigar is the Santiago Cabana, which contains tobacco grown in Santo Domingo, Nicaragua, and Honduras, in a medium-brown Ecuadorian wrapper. In November 1995, the company started full production of its second line, the Havana Classico, a blend of tobacco from Santo Domingo, Mexico, and Honduras, with a rich,

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