Wednesday, June 15 2011
Moving a business is a huge undertaking. When it’s a national company, there’s a lot more to it than calling the moving trucks.
By Al Warr | Palmer-Forks Patch
Famous Smoke Shop, based in Forks Township, supplies cigar aficionados across the country with cigars, humidors and accessories. The company maintains a retail operation locally and reaches out to cigar lovers everywhere through catalogs, several Internet sites and social media.
“We’re not only moving, we’re undertaking a major expansion,” said Jeff Brown who is coordinating much of the move. He will be managing the new retail facility and restaurant.
The Famous operation and retail shop is currently located at 1100 Conroy Place in Forks. Some 80 people are employed here. That number is expected to rise to around 100 in the new facilities. Final construction and installation of systems and equipment is underway in the new building, located about a mile away, at 80 Mort Drive.
“The retail shop here will be closed during the move,” Brown added. Closing date is Friday, June 24, with re-opening set for about a week or ten days later.
This company maintains a huge inventory of cigars. Millions of cigars are stacked floor to ceiling in the climate-controlled humidor room. It’s more than a room—it’s 24,000 square feet with ceilings 24 feet high. Forklifts cruise the aisles. Many cigars—especially the premium brands—arrive shipped in the familiar wooden boxes. Others come in bulk for repackaging at Famous.
Brown frequently flies off to the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and other countries where cigars are produced. There, he meets with cigar makers big and small to arrange imports of a very large range of fine cigars—all rolled by hand.
All this means paying close attention to proper storage. The climate-controlled room at the new facility is four times the size of the current humidor room, he said.
“We needed to get the right humidity and air conditioning in the new facility before the move,” Brown said. These affect the quality and shelf life of cigars, and both are critical to the storage of the extensive inventory of more than 300 brands carried by Famous.
The company will be offering more than cigars in the new facility.
“We’re putting in a state-of-the-art kitchen,” he said. It will support the new restaurant and lounge. “Fine dining and events for cigar lovers are planned after we get in and settled. The focus will be a varied menu with fresh foods grown locally.”
Famous Smoke Shop has a long history. It was founded by Dave and Rose Zaretsky in 1939 with a store on Broadway in Manhattan. Son Arthur Zaretsky took over the business in 1984, and in 2000 he expanded and moved the operation to Forks. Now the company is expanding again.
Brown has little time right now for golf, his favorite pastime. For at least the next several weeks or so, every minute will be focused on getting the new retail and restaurant facilities ready. Then comes the actual move. With 80 people and all those millions of cigars, it will be quite an undertaking, but an ongoing business cannot afford interruptions in service to their customers.
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