On August 26, Cigar Coop announced it was entering in with a partnership with Stogie Geeks.  As we reported last month, the goal of this partnership is to bring the ultimate media framework to the cigar industry. We are combining cigar journalism, podcasting, video, mini-reviews and more under one umbrella.  We have now begun the initial integration process and thus some changes have come to the Cigar Coop side of the house.  As a result, I wanted to discuss these important points to our readers.  As always, I want to thank the readers (and listeners/viewers) for their incredible support.

Sponsors

For three years I have not taken on any form of sponsorship on Cigar Coop.  We are changing this for two reasons: 1) Stogie Geeks already has sponsors and we want to also invite them to be a part of the Cigar Coop brand;  2) This will help us with some costs that will come as part of building our new platform.  Our goal now will be to work with our sponsors in terms of keeping to our core values and our code of ethics.  We hope our readers understand the rationale behind this change and continue to see the value in the 365 day/year publishing cycle of Cigar Coop and the greater value to our audience in the partnership with Stogie Geeks.

Contests

Cigar Coop has resisted contests on our brand, but this is an important part of what we do as a part of what we do on the Stogie Geeks podcast.  Contests are an important a part of the podcast, so we support and embrace it.  Again, our goal here is to keep this within our core values and our code of ethics.

Rating System

One exciting change we are introducing is bringing the Stogie Geeks assessment ratings to Cigar Coop.  I feel that Stogie Geeks has put together an innovative rating system and it makes sense to bring to Cigar Coop.  Going forward, we will replace the old Assessment Ratings of “Pass”, “See What You Think”, “Nice to Have”, “Memorable”, and “Historic” with what the Geeks do.  We will continue to use numeric scores as we think this is important to what is done at Cigar Coop.  As for the “Assessment Ratings”, most of our ratings tended to be “Nice to Have” and “Memorable”.  This new system will allow us to be more granular when looking at the assessment rating of a cigar. There is no direct rating between the Stogie Geeks rating to the old rating.

Here is a description of the Stogie Geeks assessment ratings.  These will be used effective immediately.

1 “Lawn Mulch” – Throw it in front of the lawn mower while mowing.  We won’t be rating cigars on Cigar Coop with this rating as we feel there is enough good cigars to discuss here.

2 “The Angler” – Not bad, smoke on golf course, fishing, grilling, or some other activity.

2.5 “Try One” – Try one for yourself.

3 “The Fiver” – Not quite good enough to drop money on a box but you will want some in you humidor. Here is a situation where the five pack is your friend.

3.5 “Box Split” – Split a box with a friend.

4 “Box-Worthy” – Buy it, try it, smoke it, and enjoy it. Pick up a box if you can.

4.5 “Fight Chuck Norris for Them” – Bring it Chuck!

5 “The Oasis” – Pursue relentlessly. Crawl Across a desert of broken glass to find and build a new humidor to store all the boxes.

All cigars that were deemed Historic/Hall of Fame on Cigar Coop will now be considered “Oasis” level going forward.  The other ratings really have no direct correlation to the new ratings.  The other ratings will not be changed for cigars assessed.

Hall of Fame

October has been a month where we have done Cigar Coop Hall of Fame inductions.  These include the designation of “Historic” cigars.  Right now I am suspending the Hall of Fame until we figure out how it works with our new partnership.  This needs some planning and to rush a Hall of Fame strategy would not work.  We also will now elevate cigars to the Oasis status instead of Historic/Hall of Fame throughout the year.

News and Previews

This month we started to consolidate all “Cigar Previews” under the category of “News”.  At one time we had used “News” to delineate information about a news releae and “Cigar Preview” to discuss blend and size information.  This has created some confusion, so going forward all Cigar Previews will be categorized as “News”.   When we are emphasizing blend and size informaiton, we will note it is a preview as well.