B&M Ageing
BlueRings
Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 367
An idea I have floated in my head from time to time. I dont have the room to age and cigars sitting on the shelf make no revenue. What if your B&M aged it's stock for you? I have my local B&M that has several high end boxes(Anejos and My Father #1) that have been in his humidor stock for anywhere from 6 months to a year. I keep my eye on them and am afraid that someone may buy them out from under me. I would like it if i could reserve these sticks without paying the full price upfront. My thought is this: Place an order with my B&M and place a reserve with at 10% hold/age fee upfront to hold the cigars for you. The Balance is based on the time factor, cigar layaway. 6 months 25%, one year 50%, and two years Paid in full or anytime before that, based on the time you want to age the cigars. You can stop at anytime and collect the cigars from the box you paid for and the remainder returned to regular stock. It can be part of a membership call it the Aged Club. Just thinking outloud, What do you think?
Comments
My B&M does have lockers you can rent at $500 a year. I can buy a new 3000 count for about twice that. Most places require you rent the locker and buy the box. My B&M will allow me to reserve a box for a few days but I would prefer a few months. I find now I ask how long they have held the stock and purchase accordingly. For instance on a recent purchase my B&M had Cain F cigars that were from an event last year. I remember he had about 10 boxes or so and I believe that event was in October so they had 7 or so months on them. He had about 4 boxes left so I purchased a box and was pleasantly surprised how 7 months made a difference. I asked him about cigar layaway and he laughed but I explained my delima with ageing at home. I pitched my idea to him and he was interested. I explained that that same Cain F could have been sold 7 months ago. Even if only 10 to 20% but it was better than no retail income and the cigars taking up space. If he offered this to customers then it would benefit him in future sales and immediate income from the same product that sat there unsold. Space would be a non issue as it still was an unsold box from last year sitting on the shelf. If after a time the sale did not occur he could charge a restocking fee and give what cigars to the customer that was already paid for out of the box. We shall see if this becomes reality after while.
I'm sure there are some rarer/more expensive/less popular boxes that this would work for, because frankly the darn thing isn't moving anyway, but the market for them would necessarily be small or else they'd move.
Finally, this would require a lot of trust, and possibly some sort of insurance/guarantee from the B&M owner, which makes it even less attractive. Lot of things can happen over that year and you might not be happy with the product when all is said and done. While incidents would be rare, if this were to become a wider marketing scheme adapted by many B&M's, it would become an issue.
While it is tempting to be the B&M with the top of the line product, if it doesn't sell all it gets is bragging rights for your living room and a "for rent" sign in the window of what used to be your shop. As far as Walmart and Kmart go, I could be wrong, but I assume you pay more for a product put on layaway than you do if you purchase the same product outright. And besides, K-mart went bankrupt and Walmart makes its profits through sheer volume and treating their employees like dirt, not impeccable business decisions.
As for the original premise, yeah it would make sense for them to make some cash flow on all of the items that hadn't sold over the last year. The problem is that they don't know ahead of time which items will sell and which won't. If they knew a certain box would stay virtually untouched all year, they wouldn't have purchased it in the first place.