Michael Giordano, CEO and founder of Quality Importers, shares his insights
for retailers looking to increase accessory sales and humidors.
PCA Magazine: What is one surefire way a retailer can increase their store’s accessories sales like those offered by Quality Importers?
Michael Giordano: To understand that cigar accessories are the supporting role for the handmade cigar industry.
From what we have seen over 20-plus years is that retailers who balance best between selling accessories and using accessories as vehicles to move more cigars achieve the most success. Our Swag Bunker print facility helps create the vehicle. It provides the ability to have short run and quick turnaround for private labeled accessories and adds co-branding for the retailer to benefit from.
How can bigger ticket items like humidors and high-end lighters be made to be more appealing to consumers when they’re in a store?
Furniture-style humidors tend not to appear in most stores owing to space requirement issues. To have a cigar tower in a retail store filled with cigars is the best way to show any consumer how it would look in their home or office. Merchandising is the best way, and it’s convincing industry retailers to see it from that perspective. Those who do enjoy the results.
Retailers worry about having inventory that doesn’t move. How should they approach ordering accessories for their stores and customers?
By utilizing our transaction history reporting tools that help them keep what moves in stock, and by speaking with our sales team to discuss what will be best to bring in for their consumer needs. When there is a situation of slower or non-moving products, we have a discussion about how it can be better merchandised or create value-added kits to help move them.
Accessories are secondary to the cigar sale, so sometimes they are also not top of mind, and we are here to help with that.
Retailers want to buy what sells. What’s Quality Importers’ top-selling product that’s sure to offer the best profit margins?
All of our products offer a minimum of keystone margins, but in terms of popularity, some core items that every retailer should carry are XI-1 and XI-2 cutters, Cigar Caddy 5-count and 10-count travel cases, XIKAR HP butane, Palió Vesuvio and Pistola lighters, Old World humidors, and our Tower Humidor (HUM-2000), which we drop ship daily for retailers.
This story first appeared in PCA The Magazine, Volume 4, 2023. To receive a copy of this magazine you must be a current member of PCA. Join or renew today at premiumcigars.org/membership.