Last night was pretty busy night from my perspective as I attended a terrific Oliveros event at Outland Cigars in Charlotte, NC.   However, I really wanted to make a point to catch the webcast of the La Gloria Cubana Serie N virtual smoke featuring Team La Gloria Cubana (Michael Giannini, director of marketing; Rick Rodriguez, cigar master in training; Yuri Guillen, director of manufacturing; and Leo Peraza, master cigar maker) .   I must say, I was extremely pleased that I got the opportunity to view this.

The event was the showcase of a month long promotion being done by General Cigars for the La Gloria Cubana Serie N.  As a part of the virtual smoke there was a chat room and select retailers talked to Team La Gloria Cubana via skype.

Overall, I thought the concept was terrific.  Yes, there were a few technical glitches (screen freezes – and I’m forgiving since I do webcasts for my “other” job regularly), but overall I was really pleased with the event.   There were four one hour webcasts, and I was only able to attend the final one.  Therefore, my thoughts can only pertain to what I saw.  Here are some random thoughts.

• The members of Team La Gloria Cubana seemed genuinely excited and happy.  They really were passionate of their product.  I loved how they all fired up their cigars together (see the picture captured above).   The members all seem to have great chemistry together.  In fact, during the webcast, the team emphasized that they work as a team and it takes a team to get a product out.
• When Benji Menendez made an appearance that chat room went crazy with joy.   No doubt Benji is one of the most appreciated people in this business.
• I liked the segment where they talked about Rick Rodriguez being a “Cigar Master in Training”.   They talked a bit about the process of Rick’s apprenticeship and how he is being groomed to become a full cigar master.  No doubt, La Gloria Cubana (and now CAO) are in good hands with Rick.
• Rick talked about the amount of work it takes to make a cigar.   He made a point by saying with all of the effort put in by so many people to make a single cigar, that it should actually sell for $100.   While he wasn’t serious about that, you can understand where that comment came from.  I agree with him (just hope they don’t do that).
• The best part of this whole thing is that this was “raw feed”.  This wasn’t scripted.  It was four guys sitting around a table on a live telecast – having fun.  This made things real.  It made me wanting to be in the room with these guys.

I look forward to more things like this!