Smoke and memories - Five Cent Cigar Co. sells shirts bearing cigar advertising - Free-Spirited Enterprise - Brief Article - Company Profile

Nation's Business, August, 1996 by Laura M. Litvan

Another company in the same vein is the Five Cent Cigar Co., of Somersworth, N.H. It doesn't sell 5-cent cigars, or cigars of any kind. Instead, it sells T-shirts that bear the names of defunct cigar brands from early in the century; accompanying those logos is the artwork that adorned the boxes that held such cigars.

The T-shirt with the logo of the long-vanished Bully brand, for instance, depicts a large, tuxedo-clad bullfrog with a cigar clamped in its ample mouth.

(The T-shirts cost considerably more than 5 cents--$19, to be exact. Electoral College T-shirts cost about the same. Five Cent Cigar makes all its shirts extra-large, in the hope that kids won't be walking around touting the virtues of cigars.)

Jake Rosenfield, who started the company last year, says he's making clothing to accompany "the cigar renaissance." Some tobacco shops sell the shirts, Bloomingdale's carried them last Christmas, and, he says, "we're in a number of mail-order catalogs. We're trying to get them where people buy gifts for men who may smoke cigars."

Most of the men we've known who smoke cigars would pass up the T-shirts, though, in favor of a golf shirt or maybe a sweater with little holes burned in it.

Rosenfield acknowledges that to some extent cigars are, indeed, beside the point. "The images are so attractive," he says, "that they transcend the idea" that their purpose was just to sell cigars.

The possibilities here are intriguing for businesses of all kinds. In our own case, when putting out a monthly magazine got too wearing, we could always send you a T-shirt labeled "Nation's Business" instead; the April issue in daffodil yellow, perhaps, and the October issue in an autumnal gold.

But wait a minute--before we could do that, we'd have to ask you to specify S, M, L, or XL on your subscription coupon. So, for the time being at least, we'll have to keep sending you one-size-fits-all magazines...unless maybe you'd like an adjustable baseball cap?

To learn more about Electoral College merchandise, cal] 1-800-ELECTOR (1-800-353-2867).

The Five Cent Cigar folks can be found puffing away at 1-800-81-5CENT (1-800-815-2368).