By Kevin Godbee
In Part II of my interview with Christian Eiroa of Camacho Cigars, Christian tells us how he puts himself in the customer’s shoes when he is developing a cigar, but there is also a point where professional blending overrules the opinion of the average guy on the street. Camacho has a reputation for producing very strong "balls out" cigars, as Christian refers to them, but his father helps balance things out with his taste for milder cigars. So there are mild and medium Camachos as well.

In this video, we get a behind the scenes dialogue on how cigars are created, from the initial idea, to blending different leaves and coming up with the next killer recipe for a great new cigar. Again, since Christian and I both love cigars and both love business, we really get into talking about cigar product development. I asked how he comes up with new blends after already having created so many, how do they decide which shapes and sizes they will make, and how is the blend adjusted to remain consistent in the different vitolas?

About 2/3rds of the way through, I put Christian on the spot. Camacho’s ad for the Camacho Corojo cigar claims that it is "The World’s Only Authentic Corojo". Several different cigar manufacturers make Corojo cigars, so I wondered if the ad headline was hyperbole. Find out the answer when you watch part 2 of the interview.

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By Kevin Godbee
I paid a visit to the Miami offices of Camacho Cigars last week for an in-depth interview with Christian Eiroa. Christian has been the driving force behind Camacho Cigars for many years. He loves to talk about the cigar business and is a great interviewee. It was a pleasure to sit for an hour with Christian while smoking two different prototype cigars that may or may not make it to market. They were both very good. I conducted an interview with Christian back in 2008, but this time through the benefit of video, you actually get to see who the real person is … and he is a pretty cool guy.

Christian has an MBA degree, and something that we have in common is that we both love cigars, tobacco processes, and we both love business. We talked about some of the obvious things, such as cigar blending, but we also discussed how the cigar business works. Camacho Cigars is a vertically integrated company, so we talked about the competitive advantages and the challenges of such. It was quite interesting hearing about the difficulties of the ’90′s cigar boom, a cigar box factory burning down, and the growth and evolution of the business. It’s also very interesting hearing about the challenges presented by the Honduran culture, and how Camacho has had a positive impact on it. Christian was extremely candid talking about past issues they’ve had in the factory, and how they’ve overcome them. I hope you enjoy watching the interview as much as Christian and I did making it.

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