Episode 67
Part 2: Legacy, Boveda 25th Anniversary | Box Press EP. 67
"We gotta put our pants back on. We'll be down there in a minute." Business start-up tip: even if you're already in your pjs, you get dressed when Carlos Fuente, Jr. invites you to a late-night dinner to talk packaging cigars exclusively with your new two-way humidity control.
2022 marks Boveda’s 25th anniversary! Learn how the award-winning innovation for humidors and cigar packaging came to be from Sean Knutsen, CEO and Tim Swail, EVP of Sales with Box Press host Rob Gagner.
Website: https://www.bovedainc.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bovedausa/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/bovedainc
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bovedainc/
Rolls-Royce, Ichiro Suzuki and Boeing are just a few big names who've used Boveda for its moisture protection. Listen to the highlights:
00:43 Carlito just called, put your pants back on
04:29 Fuente's exclusive deal with Boveda
08:43 Visiting the Fuente factory and estate—Opus A
10:47 Boveda Sean Knutsen’s best cigar moment
11:25 Be prepared for nausea when you tour a cigar factory
14:18 Boveda revolutionized the cigar industry
18:25 How to work your way into a cigar trade show
20:09 Using an RV for guerrilla marketing
22:37 Apple started in a garage, Boveda began in a house in St. Paul
23:47 Smart tactics to get into an industry trade show
25:36 Boveda revolutionizes humidor seasoning and cigar storage
28:52 Why did Boveda change its name from Humidipak?
30:48 The world’s first two-way humidity control for desktop humidors
30:53 How do you pronounce Boveda?
31:57 How to properly store and age cigars at home
32:06 3 steps to protect cigars with Boveda
35:04 To enjoy the dynamic character of tobacco, care for cigars properly
36:20 Rolls-Royce Phantom humidor and Boveda
37:44 Subzero wine cellar humidor and Boveda
38:12 MLB baseballs and Boveda
40:56 Ichiro Suzuki and Boveda
41:48 MREs, alligator eggs, airplane parts and car components and Boveda
Transcript
- [Rob] There's a story inside every smoke shop,
Speaker:with every cigar, and with every person.
Speaker:Come be a part of the cigar lifestyle at Boveda.
Speaker:This is Box Press.
Speaker:(relaxing music)
Speaker:- [Tim] 9:30 at night.
Speaker:So we're hopping into bed.
Speaker:And then the phone rings.
Speaker:And like, it's Carlito.
Speaker:He said, "Okay, I'm gonna be there in 5.
Speaker:I'm gonna be there in 5 minutes.
Speaker:- [Sean] Or he says, "I'm here," maybe even.
Speaker:- [Tim] He might have even said.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah, he was here.
Speaker:"I'm down below.
Speaker:I'm here to pick you guys up."
Speaker:- [Tim] Yeah.
Speaker:- [Sean] I'm just laying there, I'm in bed.
Speaker:I got my sleep shorts on.
Speaker:Tim's sitting there, he's got his sleep shorts on.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:All right, Carlito, well, we're here.
Speaker:We'll put our pants back on, and we'll come on down.
Speaker:Like, "What, did you just say that right now?"
Speaker:- [Rob] I mean, I mean we're ready. We'll be right down.
Speaker:- [Tim] Yeah, didn't really filter through what it
Speaker:sounded like.
Speaker:- [Rob] Well, you had to get dressed.
Speaker:You guys got ready for bed. - [Tim] But hey, here we are.
Speaker:Well, I think I said something like,
Speaker:"Yeah, Sean's right here. We gotta put our pants back on.
Speaker:We'll be down there in a minute."
Speaker:- [Rob] He's going, "Who am I getting in business
Speaker:with here?"
Speaker:- [Sean] They're not ashamed, putting in the work.
Speaker:You know, people eat dinner at 6 o'clock
Speaker:or, you know, whatever.
Speaker:So this is probably going on 10 o'clock now.
Speaker:We were like, "Holy cow." We're like,
Speaker:you know, you're getting groggy.
Speaker:You're now starting to like-- - [Rob] Right.
Speaker:- [Sean] All right, I'm kinda looking forward to
Speaker:going to bed now, after a full day of traveling.
Speaker:- [Tim] Traveling.
Speaker:- [Sean] You travel through New York
Speaker:or Miami, wherever we went to.
Speaker:- [Rob] Exhausted.
Speaker:- [Sean] And we were beat.
Speaker:And it's like, "Oh, man."
Speaker:- [Rob] Yeah.
Speaker:- [Sean] And so
Speaker:so we went, we scrambled.
Speaker:And we went down, we met with,
Speaker:remember the name of the restaurant?
Speaker:It was
Speaker:Paparazzo?
Speaker:- [Tim] Paparazzo.
Speaker:- [Sean] The restaurants down there,
Speaker:there's a handful of maybe 3, 4 in Santiago,
Speaker:high-end restaurants.
Speaker:They are good, they are top-notch,
Speaker:because down there, the factory owners and so forth,
Speaker:they're wealthy people, very wealthy and so on.
Speaker:It's a third-world country,
Speaker:but there are some restaurateurs down there,
Speaker:these small, little boutique, privately-owned restaurants.
Speaker:And this was one of the happening spots down there.
Speaker:And by the time we got there, it was probably 10:30
Speaker:at night, and place was packed.
Speaker:- [Tim] Jam-packed, absolutely.
Speaker:- [Sean] I mean, people driving up in their Mercedes,
Speaker:getting dropped off.
Speaker:We ate dinner with Carlito, of course,
Speaker:his dad, Carlos Fuente Senior,
Speaker:and then Juan-- - [Tim] Sosa.
Speaker:- [Sean] Juan Sosa, who was Senior's right-hand man
Speaker:at the factory.
Speaker:And so it was just the 5 of us.
Speaker:We were like, "We're with legends right now."
Speaker:- [Tim] Yeah.
Speaker:- [Sean] We were like, "Holy cow."
Speaker:- [Rob] This is happening.
Speaker:- [Tim] This is happening, yeah.
Speaker:- [Sean] And we were, like, fired up.
Speaker:I do remember aspects of that dinner.
Speaker:I remember the brick walls in the restaurant.
Speaker:And the steak was one of the best steaks
Speaker:we've probably ever had.
Speaker:I mean, who knows, maybe it wasn't.
Speaker:Maybe it was a bad steak.
Speaker:But at the moment, that thing was so good.
Speaker:- [Rob] The setting, the experience, the company.
Speaker:Same thing with cigars.
Speaker:- [Sean] Smoking cigars, smoking Opus
Speaker:right there in the restaurant.
Speaker:And this is the time of day where the smoking bans,
Speaker:even in Minnesota, even in the U.S.,
Speaker:maybe only California had a smoking ban, nowhere else.
Speaker:New York, no smoking ban nowhere.
Speaker:I mean, so smoking during dinner was just normal,
Speaker:especially in the Dominican Republic.
Speaker:- [Rob] It's the best thing, to be able to smoke
Speaker:while you eat.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah. - [Tim] Yeah, we enjoyed it.
Speaker:But the other part of the experience is,
Speaker:is all the other cigar, you know,
Speaker:some other cigar makers were there.
Speaker:And I can't remember who came by,
Speaker:other than Cynthia was there eating.
Speaker:She came over and said hi.
Speaker:- [Rob] Carlito's sister.
Speaker:- [Tim] Yeah, Carlito's sister.
Speaker:We got to. - [Sean] Remember that.
Speaker:- [Tim] The first time we got introduced to her.
Speaker:but other people would come by their table
Speaker:and pay respects, say hi, and.
Speaker:- [Rob] Because this is like the godfather.
Speaker:- [Sean] Oh yeah, Carlos Fuente Senior, I mean.
Speaker:- [Tim] Yes. - [Rob] Yeah.
Speaker:- [Sean] Really, but they're equal partners starting out,
Speaker:when they both got going.
Speaker:So I mean, yeah, but Senior.
Speaker:- [Rob] No, I meant the other cigar makers are like.
Speaker:- [Sean] Oh, going to, yes, pay their respects.
Speaker:- [Rob] If I saw Carlito, yeah.
Speaker:- [Sean] No question about it.
Speaker:- [Rob] I'm not gonna walk by and not say anything.
Speaker:I'm gonna say hello.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah. - [Tim] Oh yeah.
Speaker:- [Rob] Goodbye, you know?
Speaker:- [Tim] Yeah. - [Sean] Oh yeah.
Speaker:- [Tim] It's kinda the who's who of the night, yeah.
Speaker:- [Rob] Kiss the ring, you know, whatever.
Speaker:- [Rob] So you're sitting there, it's 10:30.
Speaker:- [Sean] We had great wine and scotch, I mean, cigars, meal.
Speaker:- [Tim] And it's like, this thing is happening.
Speaker:- [Rob] And is there any business talk?
Speaker:Are you guys talking business,
Speaker:or is it just getting to know him?
Speaker:- [Sean] Well, we were talking exclusivity.
Speaker:I remember that part of the conversation.
Speaker:I remember one of the, I think it was this dinner,
Speaker:and it could've been a different one.
Speaker:It's like, all right, Carlito.
Speaker:We can head-start or whatever, you know?
Speaker:Small company exclusivity rarely is good, you know?
Speaker:That kinda hurts, and we need that kind of growth.
Speaker:So he kind of understood that, you know?
Speaker:But I'm kinda stepping out here.
Speaker:So okay, great, well, what about Cuba?
Speaker:Let's leave Cuba available.
Speaker:If we're able to somehow do a deal there to get in,
Speaker:which we did try, by the way, but that never.
Speaker:- [Tim] Never happened.
Speaker:- [Sean] That's a different story altogether.
Speaker:But he says, "That's a great idea, no problem.
Speaker:Yeah, you can get Cuba, that would be good.
Speaker:Fuente, and if Cuba,"
Speaker:so we were kinda gaining some agreement in that.
Speaker:- [Rob] But you gave him the exclusivity basically for.
Speaker:- [Sean] Couple years.
Speaker:- [Rob] Couple years?
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah. - [Tim] Started it at 12.
Speaker:And then we extended it as things were.
Speaker:- [Rob] 12 months.
Speaker:- [Tim] 12 months, yes.
Speaker:- [Rob] And extended it.
Speaker:- [Sean] 12 more. - [Tim] Another 12.
Speaker:Things were going good.
Speaker:We had a good relationship with them.
Speaker:We had the humidor bags that were selling very, very.
Speaker:- [Rob] Did you have people calling you? Wanting-
Speaker:- [Tim] Yes.
Speaker:- [Rob] And you were turning them down, saying, "I can't."
Speaker:- [Sean] And the same people who said, "I don't need this.
Speaker:All my cigars sell fast enough.
Speaker:Why would I put this in?
Speaker:It's way too expensive.
Speaker:Nobody knows what it is anyway.
Speaker:Why would I do this kind of thing?"
Speaker:And then, you know, Fuente puts it in there.
Speaker:"Hey, you know, we kinda like to look at that."
Speaker:- [Rob] That sucks though, that you had to say no.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah. - [Tim] Yeah.
Speaker:- [Rob] Okay.
Speaker:- [Tim] So that night, you know, dinners take forever.
Speaker:They don't just sit down and wolf down a steak
Speaker:and get outta there, I mean.
Speaker:- [Rob] This is not an hour ordeal.
Speaker:- [Tim] No, we were, I think until 1 o'clock, 12:30.
Speaker:- [Rob] 1 o'clock.
Speaker:- [Tim] I mean, it was pretty late.
Speaker:- [Sean] One o'clock, yeah.
Speaker:- [Tim] I mean, you sit down by 10:30.
Speaker:And then, you know how it is.
Speaker:You have a two-hour, that's already 12:30 right there.
Speaker:That's not hard to do. - [Sean] We're 30 years old.
Speaker:We're talking about the plans.
Speaker:We're putting together our business.
Speaker:- [Rob] I'd be done at nine.
Speaker:- [Sean] Hey from 1:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.,
Speaker:we were putting together our future business
Speaker:plans with Carlito.
Speaker:- [Tim] That's right.
Speaker:- [Sean] We couldn't sleep at-
Speaker:- [Rob] 9 or 10 out of 10, man I'd be in.
Speaker:- [Sean] We couldn't sleep at all. No, no, no.
Speaker:We were, and we were, yeah, we gotta have,
Speaker:them come up to our offices in Minnesota.
Speaker:We, he, when he dropped us off, we were gonna,
Speaker:we were gonna just go to bed and it's like, hey,
Speaker:do you wanna have another cigar? Yeah,
Speaker:let's have another cigar.
Speaker:So we walked into the, sat down in the casino area,
Speaker:you know, not ton, you know, not busy at all.
Speaker:Just, just,
Speaker:just relaxed and just to unwind from the dinner and how
Speaker:exciting it was.
Speaker:And just talked about, you know, things that, you know,
Speaker:look at, you know, talked about the future and wow.
Speaker:This could be you know, really a, a catalyst to,
Speaker:you know, get some momentum and, and so on and time flew.
Speaker:I mean, next thing you know, it it's like, all right.
Speaker:Probably had a couple too many scotch, you know, just in,
Speaker:you know, got lost track of time and,
Speaker:and probably didn't have 1 cigar, probably had 2 or
Speaker:3, you know, throughout that time.
Speaker:- [Rob] Knowing you guys. Yeah.
Speaker:2 or 3, maybe 4.
Speaker:- [Sean] And it's like, you know, Carlito's gonna
Speaker:pick us up here in a few, you know, a little bit here.
Speaker:We better.
Speaker:Maybe we should just go to bed right now.
Speaker:And I think we, they don't close.
Speaker:Okay. I don't think they close.
Speaker:They didn't at this time. They do nowadays.
Speaker:When you go there, you can't even do that.
Speaker:You can't even smoke in the hotel anymore.
Speaker:You can't smoke in the casino anymore, but back in the day.
Speaker:So that's what we, that's what we were doing.
Speaker:We were truly planning the future of being in the boxes.
Speaker:What are some, how do we leverage this thing?
Speaker:And you know,
Speaker:we gotta get Carlito to come and visit us in Minnesota.
Speaker:I remember that kind of, you know, talking about that,
Speaker:we're be we're, we're like this now, you know,
Speaker:we're thinking.
Speaker:And so we were, we were on cloud nine.
Speaker:We were, we were, we had, we,
Speaker:we had too much adrenaline to go to sleep.
Speaker:There's no possible way we could go to sleep at that time.
Speaker:And we were, we were on cloud nine.
Speaker:I don't, I don't remember.
Speaker:I mean, that's one of the, I think the peak enthusiasm,
Speaker:enthusiastic times that I remember, you know, period.
Speaker:- [Tim] Oh yeah.
Speaker:- [Sean] And when we got, we got to bed and when that,
Speaker:then I think the phone rang, you know,
Speaker:because it rang the other night at 9:30.
Speaker:This time it rang at 9-
Speaker:- [Tim] 9:00 a.m.
Speaker:- [Sean] We probably got, you know, two and a half hours
Speaker:of sleep. We needed about 18 hours.
Speaker:Just on that one.
Speaker:- [Tim] Part of our enthusiasm was knowing that, okay,
Speaker:he's gonna pick us up and we're gonna go to Fuente factory
Speaker:and we're gonna, you know, see where Opus X is made and,
Speaker:and just, we're hanging out with him next day, all day.
Speaker:- [Rob] The curtain is gonna be pulled back a little bit.
Speaker:- [Tim] All day, you know?
Speaker:He's just a great.
Speaker:- [Rob] So he picks you up. You're a little hungover.
Speaker:- [Sean] Might be the most hungover I've ever been.
Speaker:For myself,
Speaker:at least that's how I felt. Just didn't feel good.
Speaker:You're in a third world country just got there. You know,
Speaker:did you drink any of the water,
Speaker:maybe some got in when you're brushing your teeth, you know?
Speaker:So they're all kinds of things that are working on the
Speaker:system.
Speaker:And so, and plus the way that they drive in the D.R.
Speaker:It is just like this stop, gun it, stop. I mean,
Speaker:it's like this doesn't work. This isn't, you know,
Speaker:I'm just in the back seat, just like just kind of like.
Speaker:- [Rob] Crossing your toes,
Speaker:hoping to God you can just hang on to it.
Speaker:- [Sean] Let me just please try to take some breaths
Speaker:so I don't, you know, ruin his car and we got in there,
Speaker:we got into his office and he knows, I guarantee you,
Speaker:he probably kinda knew this.
Speaker:He handed us and I remember it, we're and he was,
Speaker:they were renovating their office. So he, this was his old,
Speaker:old office not renovated yet. And we're sitting right here.
Speaker:We,
Speaker:we sit down and we spent the whole morning and he's right
Speaker:there and we are right there. He's got his computer here,
Speaker:he's on the phone talking to us at times, computer at times.
Speaker:And we're just like sitting right here. And,
Speaker:and as soon as we sat down, he handed us a, an Opus A.
Speaker:I mean, this is a awesome from the mid nineties,
Speaker:probably mid to, you know, 90 ish.
Speaker:We're thinking this was, you know, well, in hindsight we,
Speaker:it's probably 95, 96, 97 era of the cigar.
Speaker:Of this Opus A and even being,
Speaker:not feeling the best and feeling nauseous and, and,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:part was it from the night before the car ride over?
Speaker:Not really sure, but it was like, man, this is like,
Speaker:just got off the tilt-a-whirl. It doesn't feel the best.
Speaker:And that's cigar, even in that environment was like,
Speaker:this cigar is spectacular.
Speaker:- [Tim] Oh, it was amazing.
Speaker:- [Sean] It was, that might be the best cigar experience
Speaker:I think that I, it's up there and it might be the best.
Speaker:- [Tim] Yeah. Sitting in Carlito's office.
Speaker:He hands you a Opus A, and you sit there
Speaker:and you smoke it in his office having a
Speaker:conversation with him. And it's.
Speaker:- [Sean] By the way, about 10 years later in, you know,
Speaker:the Connoisseur Corner in Cigar Aficionado
Speaker:where they rate old cigars?
Speaker:This 1997 Opus A
Speaker:got like a 98 or 100. I mean, one,
Speaker:one of those.
Speaker:- [Tim] A really high rating.
Speaker:- [Sean] It was up there.
Speaker:It was like, which was probably the vintage that we,
Speaker:he gave us
Speaker:at that time.
Speaker:And so I, I remember it's like, you know, it was,
Speaker:it was tough going through the factory.
Speaker:And when you're in the factory,
Speaker:a lot of people who are the first time in the factory,
Speaker:they throw up because of the amount of ammonia that all the
Speaker:processing and the tobacco it's all factories are like that.
Speaker:And so just that process you get, it's just a different.
Speaker:- [Rob] Yeah. Very astringent.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah, you don't, you don't, you don't feel good.
Speaker:I'm telling you,
Speaker:especially when it's your first time and you add up
Speaker:everything, you know, no sleep and you know,
Speaker:the car ride and drinking the night before and,
Speaker:and everything. It was a tough, tough day.
Speaker:Here's the greatest day, you know,
Speaker:at that moment in business.
Speaker:And, and enjoying it so much,
Speaker:but yet feeling the worst you ever felt because of the,
Speaker:the hours, the night before.
Speaker:- [Rob] Right.
Speaker:Love it.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah so he, he, he gave us a personal tour of that.
Speaker:We spent all day, then we got in the car and he picks up,
Speaker:we drove out to the farm.
Speaker:- [Tim] We get to go to the farm for the first time. I mean,
Speaker:there you are at Chateau De La Fuente,
Speaker:which is really spectacular. I mean,
Speaker:it looks like a Disney World now compared to what it did
Speaker:then. But back when we went, it was, it was like,
Speaker:that. I mean to us, it was unbelievable.
Speaker:- [Rob] Right.
Speaker:- [Tim] It's like, here you are.
Speaker:And they've got, you know,
Speaker:the tobacco barns and it's got the fields and all these
Speaker:rocks that line
Speaker:the roads that are painted in white and he is got a gazebo
Speaker:where you can go and sit and smoke and takes you up to the,
Speaker:up to the top where there's a helicopter pad and,
Speaker:and around another gazebo. So you kind of go and see,
Speaker:and you get up on the top and you look around and see all
Speaker:the mountains and all the fields and the river.
Speaker:- [Sean] All the roads are paint or have lined
Speaker:with rock that are painted white.
Speaker:He's got on the hillside,
Speaker:a bunch of rock in different colors showing the Opus X band.
Speaker:I mean, it's immaculate, you're out in the middle of,
Speaker:you know, how long an hour outside of the city?
Speaker:- [Tim] About an hour and a half, half hour.
Speaker:- [Sean] Hour and a half outside.
Speaker:- [Tim] Yeah. But it's just beautiful.
Speaker:Like Sean said,
Speaker:in the side and he's since expanded it now, but he had,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:rock designs out there in green grass and then the Opus band
Speaker:in, in full color, you know,
Speaker:the reds and the blacks and the golds. And it just,
Speaker:you know, outlined in white, it just popped, you know,
Speaker:it was just, it was just a great experience.
Speaker:- [Rob] Had you guys gone to TPE or RTDA at that point?
Speaker:- [Tim] We had been, yes,
Speaker:because our first one was 97 where we didn't have the booth.
Speaker:We had the RV, we did get into the next one.
Speaker:So this was when the launch officially happened was in Tampa
Speaker:2001.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah.
Speaker:- [Tim] So we're talking, you know,
Speaker:this was a couple year journey here to get to where we were.
Speaker:- [Rob] Yeah.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah. It was four years after our founding.
Speaker:But one, one more story really quick back when,
Speaker:after we went to Malio's and we went back down there,
Speaker:we were, now it was official.
Speaker:We're going in all of the boxes.
Speaker:And we had a chance then that we were in Carlos Fuente
Speaker:Senior's, the factory he's in.
Speaker:And he came out there with his head agronomist and his head
Speaker:agronomist didn't speak any English,
Speaker:very well educated though
Speaker:in agronomy and understood tobacco and,
Speaker:and understood all the things that we were learning in our
Speaker:lab in terms of water activity, moisture content,
Speaker:oils, and sugars,
Speaker:and how do you get the cigars to improve over time and,
Speaker:and all of that, and this idea of removing moisture.
Speaker:And so when, when we were, you know, Carlito's dad,
Speaker:when we were, you know,
Speaker:we were talking through this and he then would speak in
Speaker:Spanish to the head agronomist, his right-hand man,
Speaker:the guy and the guy really influential over there. And his,
Speaker:this agronomist started speaking Spanish back to Senior.
Speaker:And he, Senior said,
Speaker:he just told me that this is like going from a horse and
Speaker:buggy, the way things are done now, to the automobile.
Speaker:With this technology, this is revolutionizing.
Speaker:This will change the industry.
Speaker:And that was the head of agronomy. I thought, okay,
Speaker:that's pretty cool.
Speaker:- [Rob] We're onto something.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah. - [Tim] Yeah.
Speaker:Good affirmation.
Speaker:- [Sean] So we, we were, this is when, when Carlito took it,
Speaker:this was when we had already been designing two-way humidity
Speaker:control.
Speaker:If we're the world's first two-way humidity control,
Speaker:that must mean everything else is one-way.
Speaker:We'd have to say that it kind of conveyed that in,
Speaker:in the design, the way we defined it.
Speaker:And so then we started to pick up some momentum with
Speaker:communication in the marketplace, and he's,
Speaker:he sent a nice letter to all the retailers and so forth
Speaker:talking about, hey, you know,
Speaker:these cigars are gonna be like capturing the, you know,
Speaker:the climate that's in Chateau De La Fuente.
Speaker:And so you know that by having the water drop on the box.
Speaker:And so we always told them, you know, first of all,
Speaker:resources are limited and this is a custom product.
Speaker:So we need to get half that. When we get an order,
Speaker:we need to have a lot of lead time.
Speaker:So we need 4 months before film can get ordered,
Speaker:then it's get printed.
Speaker:It goes to the factory to get formed and filled and sealed
Speaker:into a product. Then,
Speaker:then it's gotta take on the container and it's gotta go down
Speaker:to, to Tampa.
Speaker:Then from Tampa,
Speaker:it's gotta go on down to the Dominican Republic.
Speaker:You need 4 months for that scenario to happen.
Speaker:And so somewhere after a little bit of time,
Speaker:that lead time was lost on the purchasing side in there.
Speaker:And so we got an order and you know, maybe in 90 days,
Speaker:like we need this in 90 days.
Speaker:- [Tim] They need fast. Yeah.
Speaker:- [Sean] We scrambled, we, we couldn't ship it in time.
Speaker:So they had to start shipping box product to the marketplace
Speaker:without Humidipak inside and without the water drop.
Speaker:So we got a call from Carlos Senior and said,
Speaker:what in the hell is going on? You don't ever, you know,
Speaker:do this again, you know,
Speaker:like we need product here to show up on time. It's like,
Speaker:well, okay.
Speaker:And we know that, and retailers were actually saying, no,
Speaker:I don't want these.
Speaker:I want the ones with the water drop on the box.
Speaker:And so, because that's what my customers are,
Speaker:are looking for.
Speaker:They want to have the one with the water drop.
Speaker:- [Rob] You don't turn down Fuente product.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah.
Speaker:- [Tim] So one of those one way calls back in was from
Speaker:Senior that day.
Speaker:And you know, in his raspy voice says, you know,
Speaker:I really like you and your brother, you know,
Speaker:he always called us brothers,
Speaker:always thought we were brothers.
Speaker:And he goes, but if you ever don't ship on time.
Speaker:- [Sean] We're not doing this.
Speaker:- [Tim] We're not, this business is over.
Speaker:- [Rob] Fire the machines back up. Wow.
Speaker:- [Sean] We started to print extra. And just.
Speaker:- [Rob] Yeah, I was just gonna say that.
Speaker:- [Sean] Held it in inventory at that point.
Speaker:- [Rob] A little overstocking won't hurt you.
Speaker:Good.
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker:So obviously just even breaking the ground in the
Speaker:marketplace to consumers,
Speaker:you gotta go to RTDA, the biggest show in the world on this,
Speaker:you know, then it was IPCPR, and now it's PCA,
Speaker:but we know today, but you guys couldn't get in.
Speaker:You had no tickets.
Speaker:You had no space.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah. This was going back to what.
Speaker:- [Rob] You couldn't even get in as consumer-based tickets.
Speaker:- You couldn't walk the show.
Speaker:- [Sean] We were incorporated July of 1997.
Speaker:So remember back in the story of the dinner, that dinner we
Speaker:had was April of 1997.
Speaker:So May, June, we, we were 90 days,
Speaker:less than 90 days from the trade show.
Speaker:By that time, during the boom years, you couldn't get,
Speaker:the booths are all sold out.
Speaker:The hotels are sold out.
Speaker:So what did we do? We called they had, I think I,
Speaker:I remember 900 or something exhibitors.
Speaker:We called virtually every single company.
Speaker:- [Tim] We split the list up between the 3, 4 of us.
Speaker:And we just started calling every exhibitor.
Speaker:- [Rob] Can I, can I get space in your booth?
Speaker:- [Tim] Can we borrow? Can we, yeah,
Speaker:can we share it? Can we get a little spot?
Speaker:We want to get into the show.
Speaker:No, no, no, nothing.
Speaker:- [Sean] Zero.
Speaker:- [Sean] Zero.
Speaker:- [Rob] And they weren't having the big mega booths
Speaker:that they have now.
Speaker:It was all very small.
Speaker:- [Sean] Well, there were some mega booths, you know,
Speaker:you had General Cigar, that's a mega booth, you had
Speaker:Consolidated Cigar that.
Speaker:- [Rob] But for the most part, everyone's pretty just.
Speaker:- [Sean] That was the mega booth. Fuente's booth
Speaker:was probably, they were probably around that time too,
Speaker:but yeah,
Speaker:for the most part, it was small, but there were still,
Speaker:you still had some anchors.
Speaker:- [Rob] That you thought, eh, just gimme a 10 by 10
Speaker:or a table.
Speaker:- [Sean] Well, by the way, we had no idea anything.
Speaker:We didn't know what the show was gonna be like at all.
Speaker:And I, I think we only peeped our, you know, was able,
Speaker:we were able to look in there to, so we,
Speaker:we didn't know what to expect.
Speaker:We just knew that we couldn't get in.
Speaker:We knew that we had just dialed up a contract manufacturer
Speaker:and had ordered a product being made.
Speaker:We had to pay for that product. We had to come,
Speaker:we had to sell it. And so we said, well,
Speaker:we can't get a hotel room. Let's come up with an RV.
Speaker:Let's slap some.
Speaker:- [Tim] Banners on it.
Speaker:- [Sean] Big banners.
Speaker:The Humidipak bag is what it was all over it.
Speaker:So Humidipak wasn't the company,
Speaker:the company was SEIYGE Humidic Control.
Speaker:So the cigar company,
Speaker:the Cigar Box Company, the cigar, the humidor maker,
Speaker:his company was SEIYGE humidor or SEIYGE Cigar Box Company.
Speaker:So that folded and, and basically went irrelevant.
Speaker:And then we formed a new corporation with the 6 of us and
Speaker:called the company, SEIYGE Humidic Control Corporation.
Speaker:Humidic,
Speaker:wasn't a word, but we thought, Hey, we're not humidity,
Speaker:we're kind of controlling. So let's come up with humidic.
Speaker:We have this brand new word that we, and so that,
Speaker:that's what we with corporations spelled out SEIYGE Humidic
Speaker:Control Corporation. So the product was Humidipak.
Speaker:It was the, the Humidipak was the whole bag.
Speaker:The inside pouch was SEIYGE. That's what we called it.
Speaker:SEIYGE system 70 inside.
Speaker:And so we printed labels up. We had these bags,
Speaker:we slapped labels on them in the kitchen,
Speaker:in the house off a block off of Como Lake in, in St.
Speaker:Paul, I was single
Speaker:- [Rob] Your home.
Speaker:- [Sean] My home. I was single. I wasn't married.
Speaker:And so I'd get up.
Speaker:Used to be the attic was the master bedroom,
Speaker:walked down the stairs, opened the door.
Speaker:And, and we hired some like high school,
Speaker:just outta high school kids.
Speaker:2 of them, maybe 3 guys
Speaker:we had hired.
Speaker:We had a office in the kitchen, office
Speaker:in the living room, office in the dining room, office
Speaker:in the spare bedroom. That's 1, 2, 3, 4,
Speaker:and then one eventually in the spare bedroom, downstairs,
Speaker:five offices networked together on a phone system with,
Speaker:with 5 lines.
Speaker:We used Act! Contact Management software.
Speaker:We had bought a database for $500, which was like,
Speaker:oh my gosh.
Speaker:And we were just calling up retail stores to ship samples,
Speaker:load up the samples in somebody's car,
Speaker:bring them to the post office. And that was our routine.
Speaker:Every, that was the sales process.
Speaker:And then we would follow up 30 days later after they got the
Speaker:samples to get an order in.
Speaker:- [Rob] The desks were made out of filing cabinets
Speaker:and doors.
Speaker:- [Tim] Yep.
Speaker:- [Rob] On top of them.
Speaker:- [Tim] If you look through Sean's house, I mean,
Speaker:it was just a barrage of wires going everywhere. I mean,
Speaker:it looked like it was a server room.
Speaker:- [Rob] Don't trip.
Speaker:- [Tim] Just like, yeah. Going through all. I mean,
Speaker:through the kitchen and the family room into the bedrooms
Speaker:and down the stairs.
Speaker:- [Rob] It's like Steve Jobs starting in a garage.
Speaker:- [Tim] From that very first show in,
Speaker:it was in Orlando in 1997. As we went there,
Speaker:as you were speaking to earlier is we didn't have a booth.
Speaker:So we did the RV.
Speaker:We didn't know anybody,
Speaker:but we planted the RV in the parking lot of the Marriott.
Speaker:That's where the show was being held.
Speaker:And we would go into the entrances to get into the show full
Speaker:of the back, backpacks with samples on it.
Speaker:We'd go into the bar, we'd go into the restaurant.
Speaker:We'd go around. If we went to dinner that night out,
Speaker:down the street, we'd ask everybody, you know,
Speaker:are you part of the show? You selling, you buying?
Speaker:And, and we stood out there and we just tried to,
Speaker:we were taking orders.
Speaker:- [Sean] You take this door, I'll take this door.
Speaker:And by the way, back then you've been to the shows nowadays.
Speaker:It's nothing like it was back then. I mean,
Speaker:this was like a mob coming in.
Speaker:So it was a great opportunity for us really to sell.
Speaker:As a matter of fact, who knows, maybe we did better in the,
Speaker:in that fashion than we would've.
Speaker:If we would've had somebody's booth. And we,
Speaker:we were just going, hey, have you heard of Humidipak?
Speaker:Have you heard of the Humidipak bag?
Speaker:And of course nobody's heard of it,
Speaker:let me tell you about it. And so we would take,
Speaker:we didn't have order forms.
Speaker:We took business cards and we're writing, you know,
Speaker:orders on there, on the back.
Speaker:Okay. You'll take a case.
Speaker:And, and so on, we would get kicked out.
Speaker:The, the show coordinators would say, you can't do this.
Speaker:This is against show policy. You can't be selling out here.
Speaker:You know, you guys don't have a booth.
Speaker:And so we would just keep our eye out and,
Speaker:and just keep selling.
Speaker:- [Tim] But as Sean said, we, we couldn't get in.
Speaker:And then Bill,
Speaker:I remember his name Bill Fedder was the president of RTDA.
Speaker:And he tracked us down and kicked us out.
Speaker:And then they had the security guards watching for us.
Speaker:So we'd back away from the entrance, try and get him,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:maybe coming down the hall and then they would chase us and
Speaker:we'd go to the other one and we'd go change clothes.
Speaker:- [Sean] Oh yeah.
Speaker:- We were doing absolutely.
Speaker:- It didn't, it didn't.
Speaker:We had to, we had to get orders in.
Speaker:And we, that was,
Speaker:that was the only option. Whatever has to get done.
Speaker:We had to do it.
Speaker:- [Tim] We were inviting people out to the RV.
Speaker:We were smoking in the RV.
Speaker:- [Rob] Smoking in the RV, which you're not allowed to do.
Speaker:- [Tim] Well back then. You probably were.
Speaker:We, we didn't get in with the security.
Speaker:- [Rob] What cigars were you smoking in the RV?
Speaker:Because they were pretty nice cigars.
Speaker:- [Tim] Tony Borhani's Bahia Golds.
Speaker:- [Rob] Bahia Golds.
Speaker:- [Tim] We bought a box or two of those Tony Borhani
Speaker:back in 1997 who
Speaker:he was, he was like up and coming.
Speaker:I mean he was big. He was.
Speaker:- [Rob] Were these Cuban cigars?
Speaker:- [Tim] No, no.
Speaker:He was made them in Costa Rica actually. Yeah.
Speaker:- [Rob] Okay. Bahia Golds.
Speaker:- [Tim] Bahia Golds.
Speaker:- [Sean] B-A-H-I-A, Bahia. So he was brand new,
Speaker:but he became very popular as a cigar brand.
Speaker:- [Tim] Well we ended up doing a deal with,
Speaker:with Tony probably in that
Speaker:99.
Speaker:- [Sean] 99, 2000 era. Right before Fuente actually.
Speaker:- [Tim] Yeah.
Speaker:Before Fuente and we did a 4-pack for him up Bahia bag.
Speaker:It was an orange bag. Had a bigger window on it.
Speaker:You could see the cigars in it.
Speaker:So he was one of our other first customers.
Speaker:Developed a fairly good relationship with him.
Speaker:- [Sean] He was a visionary. He,
Speaker:he kind of bought into the vision of how we wanted to
Speaker:change, how cigars are merchandised.
Speaker:And by the way,
Speaker:the films that we had at that time didn't work fast enough
Speaker:to replenish the lost air.
Speaker:What would happen in a normal wood humidor. So we,
Speaker:our product wasn't engineered yet to be the,
Speaker:the standard in a desktop humidor.
Speaker:And so that came later after the new Boveda membrane,
Speaker:the phenomenal membrane,
Speaker:the one we were talking about with Carlito
Speaker:and the strength of
Speaker:it and all the one that we, we still use today.
Speaker:And so we started to do a lot of research in our lab and you
Speaker:know,
Speaker:one of the issues was also bringing that box to equilibrium
Speaker:or, you know, what's called seasoning that humidor.
Speaker:And so Dr. Saari
Speaker:did an awful lot of testing and analysis on what it's gonna
Speaker:take.
Speaker:What's the right humidity level to get it into the wood
Speaker:properly at the right rate.
Speaker:So you don't shock the wood because if you,
Speaker:when you do traditional methods of wiping down that box with
Speaker:water or putting a reservoir of water,
Speaker:you do run the risk, depending on the humidor is made to,
Speaker:to cause unnecessary expansion of the wood and,
Speaker:and really change the geometry of that box.
Speaker:And so how you season it's really important. So we said,
Speaker:well,
Speaker:why don't we come up with a product for seasoning these wood
Speaker:humidors that does it really effectively where, you know,
Speaker:beyond a shadow of a doubt where you, where you,
Speaker:where it's done, right.
Speaker:So it's scientific.
Speaker:We knew how many grams needed to get into a typical humidor.
Speaker:We knew how long it took for those grams, those, that water,
Speaker:that water vapor to absorb into that wood.
Speaker:And it's a 10- to 14-day process.
Speaker:And so this is all over a lot of testing and,
Speaker:and we were probably, we probably could have come out with,
Speaker:you know, the product for humidors sooner than we did,
Speaker:but we were really anal about making sure that it works
Speaker:properly. And, and maybe that was,
Speaker:maybe we didn't need to be that perfectionist kind of.
Speaker:- [Rob] No, I think you did.
Speaker:I think I love it because I know whatever we come out with
Speaker:is tested and tried and it's not just.
Speaker:- [Sean] That's right. You know.
Speaker:- [Rob] The innovation is there.
Speaker:The science is there.
Speaker:- [Sean] And the need for revenue was there too.
Speaker:So we were able to hold back a little bit on that to make
Speaker:sure we understood the performance of it.
Speaker:And then we also understood how we market it what's the best
Speaker:way. So we went through a lot of ideas of, you know,
Speaker:do we call this, is this just a stabilizer and so forth?
Speaker:And we started using it with,
Speaker:in conjunction with the existing devices out there. And,
Speaker:and so we needed to test through all of that over time and
Speaker:not just accelerated, but real-life testing.
Speaker:And that's where the time goes into it.
Speaker:We finally determined that this product is gonna be best on
Speaker:its own. And so we wanted, we, by this time,
Speaker:Humidipak with Fuente and so forth, they're starting to get,
Speaker:you know, recognition in the marketplace.
Speaker:And so people were coming up with Humi this, Humi
Speaker:that, Humidi Puck, and so on.
Speaker:And it was such a generic name.
Speaker:Even some people who worked for us couldn't pronounce Humi
Speaker:right. I mean, it was Humipack, Humidity Packet.
Speaker:It was weird. And this is, you know,
Speaker:so Humidipak was too generic in our eyes. And so we said,
Speaker:you know what?
Speaker:We've got an opportunity now where we've got the films,
Speaker:we've got the product.
Speaker:The performance is phenomenal where the world's first
Speaker:two-way humidity control for desktop humidors.
Speaker:This is timing is right. We put together the story,
Speaker:we drafted a website for it and, and all of that.
Speaker:And then we said,
Speaker:we need to come up with another name because Humidipak,
Speaker:you know, it's, there's limitations of that.
Speaker:And we're still early, you know, at this point, of course,
Speaker:we've been around for, you know, 5, 6, 7 years, 6 years.
Speaker:So if that's, that's an eternity at that time for us,
Speaker:but we knew that we were just, just getting started and,
Speaker:and that we could afford the opportunity to do the right
Speaker:brand name. And, and we thought, wow, you know what you do.
Speaker:You know what this really does?
Speaker:In essence, this,
Speaker:this product creates such an awesome environment that you're
Speaker:allowing cigars to improve over time, rather than degrade,
Speaker:we're creating an aging vault.
Speaker:And so we started, you know,
Speaker:thinking about an aging vault as really you're transforming
Speaker:your, your desktop humidor,
Speaker:not just into something that has humidity in it, but you're,
Speaker:you're creating an aging vault.
Speaker:- [Rob] Because they do that at the factory.
Speaker:They have the aging room that's humidity controlled.
Speaker:- [Sean] And I think some of them probably call it
Speaker:an aging vault as well.
Speaker:So we're looking in, Tim started looking at books like
Speaker:Latin, French, and everything else for vault.
Speaker:And so Spanish word for vault is, is Boveda.
Speaker:We didn't know how to pronounce it.
Speaker:Boveda we were saying. We were saying,
Speaker:we were saying Boveda because of Aveda.
Speaker:The, the company in town here.
Speaker:- [Tim] Skincare, Aveda.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah. The salon products.
Speaker:And so we're thinking it must be pronounced Boveda.
Speaker:- [Rob] And who corrected you?
Speaker:- [Sean] We didn't like the name we had,
Speaker:but it was just the process of elimination.
Speaker:We didn't like any of the other names.
Speaker:And finally it's like, my gosh, we, it was the,
Speaker:that was the hardest thing.
Speaker:And we just kept procrastinating too much because it's like,
Speaker:ah, but it finally it's like, alright,
Speaker:we just gotta go with it.
Speaker:Let's just do Boveda.
Speaker:And so we said, Boveda is it.
Speaker:We went down to Carlito,
Speaker:told him here's our product for desktop humidors.
Speaker:It's the world's first two-way humidity control for desktop
Speaker:humidors, Boveda. And he looked at it.
Speaker:He says, that's not how you pronounce it.
Speaker:This is a Spanish word. It's it's Boveda.
Speaker:- [Tim] It's Boveda.
Speaker:- [Sean] And he said, alright, we'll call it Boveda.
Speaker:- [Tim] We were so excited to share it with him. He,
Speaker:he kind of looked at us like we were dummies. He was kind,
Speaker:you dummies, that's a Spanish word.
Speaker:But we did like the way that the word looked, you know,
Speaker:as Sean said,
Speaker:it's a really hard process to- you just don't fall in love
Speaker:with something typically right away.
Speaker:And we looked through so many different books,
Speaker:French and Italian, Spanish, Latin, anything.
Speaker:And, but we kind of keyed in on that word vault, just,
Speaker:you know, once we saw that word, it was like, okay, that's,
Speaker:that's kind of cool.
Speaker:- [Rob] I remember the display at Tobacco Grove
Speaker:that weighed about six tons.
Speaker:- [Tim] The metal one. Yes.
Speaker:- [Rob] The metal one.
Speaker:- [Sean] You remember that?
Speaker:- [Rob] Oh, it, I would have to dodge it every time.
Speaker:- [Sean] I think it was 100 pounds.
Speaker:I think it was 100 pounds.
Speaker:- [Tim] Yeah. They were about 110 pounds.
Speaker:- [Rob] It was a ton.
Speaker:- [Tim] Yeah.
Speaker:- [Rob] We never moved it.
Speaker:Because God knows you don't wanna move it.
Speaker:- [Tim] You wouldn't, you didn't have to.
Speaker:- [Rob] And then it had all the different RH levels.
Speaker:- [Tim] We tried to make it really, really simple.
Speaker:So the, the, the name up at the top was, you know,
Speaker:the storing and storing and aging cigars.
Speaker:So we were trying to change mentality of people.
Speaker:- [Sean] Storing and aging cigars at home.
Speaker:- [Tim] At home. Yeah.
Speaker:And then we try to make it really easy and say,
Speaker:it's a three step process. 1, 2 and 3.
Speaker:This is all you have to do. 1 season it, 2 pick this,
Speaker:you know, pick this RH, and 3
Speaker:just then get on the automatic reorder and then they'll show
Speaker:up at your door.
Speaker:- [Rob] So if I were a retailer, I'd be like,
Speaker:how am I gonna sell this?
Speaker:But until the customer realizes the convenience,
Speaker:the mess-free. And no worries.
Speaker:- [Tim] And that it works.
Speaker:- [Rob] And it works.
Speaker:- [Sean] We were lucky because at this time the internet,
Speaker:the internet and so forth is starting to pick up momentum.
Speaker:You know, you had Amazon out there and,
Speaker:and now eCommerce was starting to be, you know,
Speaker:accepted and so on. And it was just all theory.
Speaker:You know, it started to pick up momentum, which was ideal.
Speaker:We needed that because nobody wanted our product.
Speaker:And we said, we, you know,
Speaker:we used to eat breakfast every Friday morning on our weekly
Speaker:meeting.
Speaker:We ate here at Original Pancake House here in Wayzata.
Speaker:And we said, you know, it's like, ah, no, one's gonna just,
Speaker:you know, we can't get a distributor on this thing.
Speaker:You know what, that's great.
Speaker:You know, what's the best thing ever.
Speaker:You know, why,
Speaker:because we're gonna sell this thing direct to consumers.
Speaker:We're going direct. We're gonna build a webpage.
Speaker:Luckily the,
Speaker:the thing that really made the product pick up momentum was
Speaker:Cigar Aficionado said, hey, we will write up a
Speaker:one pager for you guys in our Good Life section.
Speaker:And that was really the turning point.
Speaker:And so they wrote Boveda,
Speaker:this brand new product for your humidor,
Speaker:our phone was ringing off the hook.
Speaker:- [Tim] It was crazy.
Speaker:- [Sean] It was,
Speaker:I mean we're talking months and months worth of,
Speaker:we were down here at this time.
Speaker:And we are, we in this office in,
Speaker:we are picking up the phone. It was,
Speaker:it was not the eCommerce like today. It was, it was,
Speaker:you guys remember the term Sneakernet, it was Sneakernet.
Speaker:You would get an order and you would fax, you know,
Speaker:you'd get an order online that would come on the fax or,
Speaker:or whatever, or online.
Speaker:And then we'd fax over the order to the warehouse.
Speaker:You know, to ship it out to consumers.
Speaker:And eventually we would set up, actually, we would start it
Speaker:right here. We would ship them from here.
Speaker:And we would have assembly lines every day.
Speaker:Just like pretty soon it just got burdensome and just the,
Speaker:you know, every day operation.
Speaker:And then it went up to North Branch, Minnesota,
Speaker:where they started shipping product to consumers and,
Speaker:and you look at a lot of high profile people.
Speaker:So every now and then we would take a look at our who's,
Speaker:who it's going to and who, if we didn't who they are,
Speaker:we'd Google them.
Speaker:- [Tim] Now everybody at home has Coolerdors,
Speaker:and you know, any plastic container.
Speaker:- [Rob] You would never get that with one-way
Speaker:humidification.
Speaker:You'd be you. That would be a full-time job.
Speaker:To go through your entire collection, humidify it,
Speaker:and then in 2 weeks you gotta do it again.
Speaker:- [Tim] Because you're getting a hundred percent humidity
Speaker:in there with a, with a, with a wet device.
Speaker:- [Sean] There were two things that really
Speaker:resonated with the market.
Speaker:And both of these two things are equally important because
Speaker:we spend a lot of money on cigars, you know, $10, $15,
Speaker:sometimes $20, depending on what state you live in,
Speaker:they're expensive.
Speaker:And so if you just want to have a smoking experience,
Speaker:go ahead and buy a Dutch Masters or, or a Swish Sweets, or,
Speaker:or whatever. But if you want to enjoy the dynamic character,
Speaker:that's in tobacco, you want to care for it properly.
Speaker:And so eliminating those fluctuations and allowing the age
Speaker:is a big deal. But the other thing that just so happens,
Speaker:it's the easiest thing to use in the world.
Speaker:You put the correct number of Boveda inside the humidor,
Speaker:close the lid and you're done.
Speaker:And it was that compounding effect that I think really
Speaker:clicked. It was one, they're better.
Speaker:They tastes good. Like Carlito had said,
Speaker:I want to eat this thing now.
Speaker:So that's really critical what we do to cigars. But,
Speaker:but the other thing,
Speaker:we live in a society that wants simplicity. And so we
Speaker:meet that goal as well.
Speaker:And it's those two things together that are everything in
Speaker:this product.
Speaker:- [Rob] Right. And I think too, like the expense wise,
Speaker:I look at it now and it's like, okay,
Speaker:my 100-count humidor cost me like $63.85 for
Speaker:the whole year.
Speaker:And how many hundreds of dollars of cigars did I have in
Speaker:that humidor for the whole year?
Speaker:So for $63,
Speaker:I have perfect cigars for a whole year revolving
Speaker:constantly. And I'm smoking them and I'm enjoying them.
Speaker:That was priceless to me.
Speaker:Some of the highlights of Boveda, where Boveda
Speaker:has been placed, are definitely notable.
Speaker:And I think some of the people out there should notice some
Speaker:of these because they're not always readily available.
Speaker:2004 Rolls-Royce
Speaker:Phantom car places Boveda inside the car humidor.
Speaker:What was that conversation like? Rolls-Royce calls up
Speaker:Humidipak and says, yeah, we want your technology.
Speaker:- [Tim] We tried to trade 8 Boveda packets for two Phantoms
Speaker:and it didn't go over well.
Speaker:- [Rob] Trade up that minivan we're getting
Speaker:Rolls-Royce Phantom.
Speaker:- [Sean] Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:Forzaro.
Speaker:I forget the name of the company out of London
Speaker:got a call from their, you know,
Speaker:they're contracted with Rolls-Royce to make this glove box
Speaker:humidor. And matter of fact, they sent us the actual,
Speaker:you know, the three-cigar metal heavy-duty.
Speaker:It's totally what you'd think of Rolls-Royce.
Speaker:In terms of a pocket humidor and that pocket humidor,
Speaker:I mean, it was really neat.
Speaker:The glove box would open and this, this little metal,
Speaker:three-cigar humidor would sit in the,
Speaker:in this little cradle in the glove box.
Speaker:And when you'd press the button on the humidor would open up
Speaker:and fold out.
Speaker:And here's your three cigars to take outta there. You'd,
Speaker:you'd push it down. It was really neat.
Speaker:$280,000 car with a with and they,
Speaker:and it was Humidipak in there.
Speaker:- [Rob] Do you still have replacements going out for
Speaker:those or?
Speaker:- [Sean] I don't. I doubt it.
Speaker:No idea. I don't even know if they still have the model.
Speaker:Subzero did a model too. Just very similar.
Speaker:So Subzero's big wine fridge, this came years later,
Speaker:their big $8,000 wine cellars, think of a big fridge, glass
Speaker:door, and a bunch of shelving. In the middle shelf,
Speaker:there was a wood humidor made in the U.S.A.
Speaker:Really nice wood, mahogany.
Speaker:And that was built for Humidipak, Boveda actually. Built for
Speaker:Boveda. We were Boveda by this time.
Speaker:And so this was an option for their Subzero products.
Speaker:- [Rob] MLB bats and baseballs.
Speaker:- [Sean] We, we, back in early 2000, maybe 2004-ish.
Speaker:In that time period,
Speaker:there was an article in Wall Street Journal where the,
Speaker:the Colorado Rockies were taking some heat because they had
Speaker:built this humidor. And so other teams were saying, hey,
Speaker:what's going on here? You can't, you know,
Speaker:have a, you know,
Speaker:you're doing an unfair advantage when in fact what they were
Speaker:doing is just following the instructions of Rawlings,
Speaker:the manufacturer for all Major League baseballs.
Speaker:And you want to keep baseballs in the 50% range of relative
Speaker:humidity between it's just like wood. Believe it or not,
Speaker:the materials in there behave similar.
Speaker:You want to have it between 45, 55%-ish,
Speaker:40 to 60% relative humidity in there.
Speaker:And we started to then called I,
Speaker:I sent the letter to the commissioner's office in New York
Speaker:City. Hey, we've got this technology and to control
Speaker:baseballs, we read the article, we might be able to help
Speaker:on all that and said,
Speaker:got a call back from one of their not executives, per se,
Speaker:but someone who's heavily involved in Major League baseball,
Speaker:former Hall of Fame baseball player, as a matter of fact,
Speaker:and from St. Louis, played for the Cardinals.
Speaker:And he was now in the Major League Baseball's administrative
Speaker:offices. And so on.
Speaker:And with this connections with Rawlings,
Speaker:so we started to do some testing and it's amazing when you
Speaker:dry down a baseball, how different it is when you have it,
Speaker:water logged and how, like, for example, if you have low,
Speaker:proper, and high humidity, the recoil impact on a,
Speaker:on a ball just like dropping them from the same level off
Speaker:the floor and the amount of bounce you get.
Speaker:And so it is an unfair advantage around the league,
Speaker:depending on where the water activity is of those baseballs.
Speaker:- [Rob] Yeah. The dryer, it is, I would assume the,
Speaker:the easier it's gonna pop up.
Speaker:It's not gonna absorb all that energy.
Speaker:- [Sean] There there's a,
Speaker:there's a right humidity there and it changes.
Speaker:And it's amazing
Speaker:the dramatic changes to a baseball. Major League Baseball
Speaker:should use Boveda in all of their packaging to bring them to
Speaker:equilibrium.
Speaker:Now, if every humidor, every team has a humidor, okay.
Speaker:Maybe they have it covered in, in that type of environment,
Speaker:but maybe the answer would be a big pail and they should
Speaker:have Boveda.
Speaker:Every one of them should be stored with Boveda
Speaker:it's a big, it's a,
Speaker:it is a big deal. They didn't wanna pay for a product.
Speaker:And then eventually we were thinking, well,
Speaker:let's just do this thing for free,
Speaker:but it was just hard to get in there.
Speaker:Nothing ever happened to it. But this to this day,
Speaker:we would probably make, standardize the rule book,
Speaker:let's just say that way in terms of home runs and,
Speaker:and so on,
Speaker:because the balls will behave the same now with Boveda,
Speaker:whether you're playing in Florida or Colorado or Seattle
Speaker:or Minnesota.
Speaker:- [Rob] And the bats as well, the bats,
Speaker:they had bat bags with Boveda in there
Speaker:to make sure the wood of the, the bat was properly.
Speaker:- [Sean] We heard that Ichiro,
Speaker:remember the Japanese player, Ichiro, played
Speaker:for the Seattle Mariners
Speaker:and eventually played for the Yankees. He had a,
Speaker:he had a personal bat bag and he would put Boveda in his bat
Speaker:bag.
Speaker:So that picked up a little bit of word of mouth within the
Speaker:league, Marucci or Marucci bats believe, you know,
Speaker:were rumored to use it.
Speaker:Another bat company used it in a sleeve
Speaker:and so on. That never picked up momentum either.
Speaker:But bats also need to be at a ideal equilibrium to get the
Speaker:proper flex recoil. And, and impact on the ball.
Speaker:- [Tim] They're wood. Yeah. You know, I mean, they they're,
Speaker:they're affected by the environment just like anything else
Speaker:would be.
Speaker:- [Rob] I thought really interesting was right after 9/11,
Speaker:the government reaches out to you guys to control basically
Speaker:patches for bioterrorism.
Speaker:- [Sean] That lab that you're talking about in
Speaker:Albuquerque for biotech, whatever that was for that patch.
Speaker:And then there's another one for their MREs, meals
Speaker:ready-to-eat and Natick, Natick in, in Massachusetts.
Speaker:And so they,
Speaker:but everything was top secret that for the most part and
Speaker:sort of, and,
Speaker:and we never got any results in their testing or,
Speaker:or whatever. And
Speaker:those were opportunities that never really materialized.
Speaker:- [Tim] You're going down a list. I mean,
Speaker:these are things over the years,
Speaker:we've had such unique opportunities that have come our way
Speaker:where it,
Speaker:you get to understand products that you never ever thought
Speaker:of that might have some sensitivity to moisture. And, and.
Speaker:- [Rob] Trust me, I know.
Speaker:Starting out in customer service here.
Speaker:You get some really weird phone calls.
Speaker:Say what? Alligator eggs that was unique.
Speaker:Boeing called us for the bags that they were shipping the
Speaker:wings in or something like that.
Speaker:And the bag that they wrapped it in needed to be humidified.
Speaker:- [Tim] Oh, we've had, yeah.
Speaker:Car parts, you know, little plastic nylon pieces that,
Speaker:that are kind of like fasteners.
Speaker:Those would break if they're not there.
Speaker:- [Rob] Too dry, yeah.
Speaker:- [Sean] Crickets was a interesting one.
Speaker:A local cricket company. So crickets need to be in a,
Speaker:if it gets too dry, they don't live very long.
Speaker:And so they need to have a more humidity.
Speaker:And so they had these chambers and there was a local company
Speaker:here in the Twin Cities and they,
Speaker:it was buying some product.
Speaker:- [Tim] Lizard and snake food.
Speaker:- [Sean] Oh yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker:They're for their reptiles. They feed the, the bait,
Speaker:you know, bait or feed, I guess.
Speaker:- [Tim] And they won't eat them they're dead.
Speaker:So they need them to be live in order for the reptiles to
Speaker:eat them.
Speaker:- [Rob] See.
Speaker:Boveda's just helping out the next reptile
Speaker:to get a good meal.
Speaker:- [Tim] That's right.
Speaker:- [Rob] I'm sure there's more questions out there.
Speaker:Post your questions. We will get to them in the comments.
Speaker:We have a whole team that looks at this stuff and I don't
Speaker:know. I can't
Speaker:thank you guys enough. Not, not only for my job,
Speaker:but for changing the industry for us,
Speaker:for making us enjoy cigars that we want to eat,
Speaker:even though we don't,
Speaker:but we want to eat them because they taste so good for just
Speaker:the whole thing. We can't thank you enough.
Speaker:- [Sean] Awesome. Thank you, Rob.
Speaker:We appreciate what you do. Thank you, Mr. Boveda.
Speaker:- [Rob] Yeah. Right, right, right.
Speaker:By the way, I don't own the company.
Speaker:These guys here. It's not, you know, I'm just on camera.
Speaker:I'm the face. So.
Speaker:- [Tim] Well, it's been fun,
Speaker:but what has been exciting is bringing science to a very old
Speaker:industry that has done way things for a hundred years
Speaker:sometimes doing them them right.
Speaker:But not because they were scientifically doing it.
Speaker:They just through experimentation of their own. And, and,
Speaker:but as a company what's really fulfilling is that we get to
Speaker:educate people. You know,
Speaker:we have smart people like you on our staff and Dr.
Speaker:Al and Bob when we started and,
Speaker:and that's just continued to expand. And,
Speaker:and we get to look at it a different way,
Speaker:we're, we're a packaging company that has expertise.
Speaker:You know, we're not cigar makers.
Speaker:We'll never pretend to be. We love them.
Speaker:So we get nerdy in it. And like, how's this work?
Speaker:Why is it working that way? But we've, we've been blessed,
Speaker:you know, to be in an opportunity to,
Speaker:to change the industry. And, you know,
Speaker:Carlito said it to us. He goes, if you guys say what you do,
Speaker:if you do what you say, you do,
Speaker:you will change the industry.
Speaker:And he, he was right.
Speaker:I think we really have changed the industry for the, for
Speaker:the better.
Speaker:- [Rob] There's another episode of Box Press.
Speaker:This one was behind-the-scenes of Boveda.
Speaker:25 years being in the business. We're celebrating this year.
Speaker:Again, if you need more Boveda head over to bovedainc.com.
Speaker:If you want to explore the science, we have tons of videos,
Speaker:tons of how to's, check out our FAQs.
Speaker:And again,
Speaker:hats off to Sean and Tim and the rest of the crew for
Speaker:starting Boveda 25 years ago,
Speaker:we would be up a creek without a paddle without it, so.
Speaker:Thanks, guys.
Speaker:- [Sean] Awesome. Thanks Rob. - [Rob] Thank you.
