Monday, January 02 2012
By David Falchek (Staff Writer) | The Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pa)
Fulfilling a lifelong goal of its immigrant forebears, the family that owns
Avanti Cigar Co. has established its famous
Parodi cigars in Italy.
Not only has the Scranton company's brand found a market on the peninsula, but sales are growing. Next year the company expects to have more products in an expanding number of Italian tobacco shops.
"This has always been a dream of my family, to have their product in their homeland," said Dominic Keating, president of Avanti Cigar. "But in the wake of World War II and then trade barriers, it never seemed like a possibility."
It took the creation of the European Union, and then a complex agreement with a Swiss cigar company with a factory in Germany, to fulfill the dream of Avanti's founders, Anthony and Frank Suraci. The brothers left a poor village in Calabria in 1903 and 1906 and built the largest Italian-style cigar maker in the U.S...
Article continues at thetimes-tribune.com...
