(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - There's a story inside every smoke shop with every cigar and with every person. Come be a part of the cigar lifestyle at Boveda. This is "Box Press." - We're at Martinez Cigar Factory in Manhattan, New York, and I am with Jesus, the owner, and your father was the original person that opened this up, correct? - Yes, he opened it up in 1974.
He was a roller in Tamboril, Dominican Republic, when he came to the States, and he was working in another cigar shop for a couple of years, then he just decided to open up his own. Right after high school, I'd come in, help him out with packaging and so, you know, I stayed here. We roll all our cigars here. Of our own, we have five different lines and then we make other brands. - I've had like the, the Hangry from Luxury Cigar - Oh yeah, that's right we did- - That as a great cigar.
- That was, yeah, we did really well with that one. - Yeah - Yeah, with the Hangry - And now we're here with Jeff from Amendola. - With Jeff, yeah, Jeff and I- - West Side Story. - Yeah, Jeff and I, we've been friends, for I don't even remember how long. Every time he was in New York, he would pop in and we would just smoke cigars.
He told me rolling his own brand and you know, we used to exchange cigars- - Yeah - Straight up and we became friends and then one day he's like, why don't we do a cigar together? - My first love or passion for cigars started here in New York, in the Bronx first on Arthur Avenue, there's a little factory there. I started hearing about Martinez in Manhattan. So I was just, I was younger, I was 18, 19, but when I came down to visit, see family and stuff, I would try to pop in.
I learned how to roll cigars in 2012. Self-taught, I was watching, I would hang out here a little bit, hang out in the Bronx. I learned how to roll cigars in Ybor City. But when I learned the craft, I needed tools like the molds. - Sure. - These guys wanted me to buy 50 at a time or pallets and I'm like, look bro, I need five. There's nowhere to get them.
I was trying to find, you know, like a couple Robusto sizes, couple Coronas, couple Laguito, just so I could start making them, start selling them, whatever I was gonna do. - Where were you getting your tobacco? - Nicaragua. (indistinct) - Yeah, I had to import her. - You're spoiling the interview. - But yeah, we'll do it without the camera (laughs). I think I called Jesus out of the blue. I was trying to buy some of his hand-me-downs. Jesus started giving me his old hand-me-down stuff.
Molds, Chavetas, He really was influential in helping me start my own factory and becoming a cigar roller where I was living at the time. That's where our relationship started, and then since then we were just became really good friends. Every time I was up in the area, come by, we hang out, we talk business, talk family, smoke good cigars. And here we are today, now we're actually making a cigar for Amendola Family Cigars in this factory, called the West Side Story.
There's a lot of challenges when you're creating a new cigar. I think a lot of people don't realize what really goes into the behind the scenes. Behind the scenes is acquiring the tobacco. We're a smaller brand, some farmers, dealers, maybe don't feel like we're good enough business for them, right? So we have to go find it first. Then we know what we have to work with.
When I first wanted to get into this business, I really wanted to focus on learning how to put tobacco together and be a blender and a roller. Because I don't care if I do anything else. I want to know how to do this. I wanna do it as well as I can, however long it takes. That's the fun part, create. Chris was the same way. He spent hours on the designs and the marketing. His forte is fine tuning all the little details, which I don't have a mind for.
(upbeat music) - West Side Story is something special to us. It had to be born and raised in New York like us. We call it the West Side Story because Martinez Cigars is off of 29th Street on the West Side Highway. So that's where the name came from in the beginning. You know, we were gonna kind of go with one blend, which we had already previously released for another one of our retailers on a really small run. We got a lot of really good feedback on it. - We went out to 500 people.
- Yeah, that was it. We blended an original and then we started tweaking the blend, then we liked that, and you know, one thing led to another where at first we were like, listen, it's gonna be too much of a hassle to put that on Jesus, on Dave [Rivera] and the guys at Martinez to try to get that done two weeks before showtime.
On my end, you know, I was like, man, I don't know how we're gonna, you know, differentiate the two, come up with names now, secondary bands, you know, as far as the marketing side of having two different cigars in the box. So we kind of let it go. Then we ended up having a conversation with Dave and he was like, "Man, which one do you guys want? "You want your original brand? "You want your Arapiraca brand?" And we were like, "Man, we like both."
And then he was like, "Well, what if we could do two?" And my ears perked up. I'm like, "Man, tell me you could do two." And then Jeff was like, "Oh, shit." - Like if they're willing to do it- - If they're willing to do it, then let's do it. And they said that they could do it, they made it happen. The juices started flowing, it kind of grew legs and we wanted to go off of that, like "Gangs of New York" theme.
That's why it's, you know, pick your side, like, bats or knives, kinda old school street fight. - We thought it'd be best suited to do our release parties back home in New York. So this whole weekend, we have four events scheduled, but we're kicking it off here tonight at Merchant's Cigar Bar. The West Side Story is gonna be the feature of the night. We got a DJ, old school DJ, Nino Brown, everyone's gonna get two cigars. If you got a ticket, you got a bourbon tasting.
- We're doing it in our city with our people, people who've been supporting us since day one. It's all about authenticity, man. You know, we don't want sit here and say we're making a New York City cigar that's being made in Nicaragua by a bunch of people that aren't from New York, don't have that vibe. Shout out to everybody who's got, is coming out this weekend, you know, South Shore. Shout out to Merchant's, Harry's and obviously Barclay, Rex, the whole family over there. We love you guys.
We're really appreciative of Boveda the coming out here and putting a spotlight on what we're doing. And I hope everybody in the industry really appreciates it and enjoys it. - We love what we do and this just shows it. And I love being able to come back here and actually release the cigar in our home city. It just represents who we are, you know. It's great. - New York, stand up, this one's for you. (upbeat music)