Smoking Out a Hot Product

By DAVID REYES

Nov. 22, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

ANAHEIM —

A little more than a year ago, Art Ford was cruising along selling hand-built acrylic fish tanks.

As a sideline, he starting selling cigars and making plastic humidors with a hockey puck-shaped gizmo that humidified the cigar boxes.

It was a time when cigar appreciation was booming, ushering in cigar bars, smokers and a public willing to spend from $1 to more than $20 each for a smooth smoke. Neither Ford nor his business partner, John Winn, 49, of Lake Forest, knew that cigar sales would reach nearly 3 billion this year, according to estimates by the Cigar Assn. of America, a Washington-based manufacturers’ trade group.

Needless to say, Ford doesn’t sell fish tanks anymore.

“I’m too busy making humidifiers for humidors,” he said during a recent break in his 16-hour day overseeing manufacture of the Ultimate Humidor.

How Ford, 34, changed from fish tanks to humidifiers reads like an entrepreneur’s primer: He found a niche and developed it. Without knowing anyone in the industry, he bought a copy of Cigar Aficionado, publisher Marvin R. Shanken’s cigar lover’s bible, and randomly hunted for cigar distributors.

“I saw the name of Sal Fontana with an 800 number,” Ford said. “I called, and Sal and I developed a friendship.”

Fontana, a well-known cigar wholesaler in Florida, liked Ford’s approach and agreed to ship him boxes of cigars to sell on the West Coast.

Ford’s first sale was at a gun show in Costa Mesa.

At the show, Ford noticed a fellow at a nearby table selling cheap cigars for 75 cents to $2.50. Ford, a longtime cigar smoker, suggested the man improve his selection and add some high-end smokes, but the seller scoffed.

“We had a few words and as I walked away, my buddy told me, ‘That guy just challenged you. He didn’t believe you could sell more cigars than he could,’ ” Ford said.

Ford returned a week later with 75 boxes of cigars, bearing dozens of labels, shipped from Florida. By the end of the day, he had sold out.

Ford spent the next few weeks selling cigars on the swap meet circuit until he decided that with his background in acrylics, he wanted to further cash in on the cigar boom by building and selling plastic humidors.

While most traditionalists prefer humidors with fancy wood exteriors with a Spanish cedar lining, Ford argues that glass and acrylic humidors can keep cigars fresher.

He says the key to each humidor isn’t a fancy exterior. It’s the humidifying system, which stores a solution of distilled water and helps keep fine Hyde Parks or A. Fuentes cigars fresh and moist.

While most humidors average $200, customers can often spend thousands for a humidor. Shanken recently upped the ante on humidors by paying $575,000 at Sotheby’s for JFK’s humidor.

When Ford began making humidors, he could not find a source for humidifiers. A French company that occupied most of the market with its Credo brand humidifiers could not keep up with demand, says Brad Weinfeld, chief operating officer at Hollco Rohr in Chatsworth, a major West Coast wholesale distributor of cigar and pipe products.

Ford decided to start making humidifiers. He turned to Fontana, who introduced him to Lew Rothman, president of J.R. Rothman, the country’s largest catalog dealer for cigars. Rothman lists among his clients Bill Cosby, Doc Severinsen, Milton Berle, Joe Pesci and President Clinton.

When the two connected by phone, Ford heard Rothman utter the magic words: “Give me as many as you can.”

Rothman ordered 5,000 humidifiers sight unseen. Not only did the two partners not have a humidifier completed, they didn’t even have a mold made yet. They are now pumping out 5,000 to 10,000 humidifiers a week. Retail, they sell for about $14.

Today, his humidifiers are sold around the world. Ford now has a standing “P.O.,” or purchasing order, from Rothman, and is in talks with wholesalers on the West and East coasts.

Incorporated just three months, Ford and Winn’s Mistic Humidifiers Systems has sold $210,000 in products so far.

And, instead of swap meets, Ford now attends tobacco and cigar trade shows, where he is given celebrity treatment in posh hotels and eateries.

“People line up to see our humidifier, which is great,” Ford said. “Now, there are people who want to buy my product and copy it so they can become competitors.”

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Stogie Story

Cigar smoking in the U.S. declined after the 1960s, when it reached a historical high of 7.7 billion per year. But since 1993, consumption has increased yearly, bringing the ‘90s annual average to 2.4 billion. Annual average cigar consumption, in millions:

Decade Average

1920s: 7,146

1930s: 5,304

1940s: 5,569

1950s: 6,070

1960s: 7,730

1970s: 6,105

1980s: 3,228

1990s: 2,363

1990s Average

1990: 2,335

1991: 2,234