The Arturo Fuente brand is widely valued in the wide world of tobacco.
Its cigars are synonymous with quality, recognition that has been forged with
work and dedication during its one hundred and ten years of existence in the
market.
Arturo Fuente, a Cuban immigrant, created the factory in Tampa, Florida,
shortly after arriving from Cuba. At that time, in that American city, there
were more than 200 cigar manufacturers who made their products with the tobacco
leaves bought on the Caribbean Island.
He started out in the back of his house, where he rolled and blended
tobacco with the help of his wife and his sons Carlos and Arturo. In little
more than a decade it had grown so much that it employed 500 workers, although
the facilities soon burned down and production was closed for more than 20
years.
They restarted activities in 1946 and ten years later, his son Carlos
acquired ownership of the company, seeking to expand the business in a very
difficult market at that time, due to the fact that Cuban cigars dominated the
market and smokers were not willing to try new brands.
With the beginning of the United States embargo against Cuba in 1960,
the opportunity arose to supply Cuban imports of cigars in the United States
market, which the company took advantage of to expand its production, although
the inflationary decade of the 70s forced Carlos and his son, Carlos Jr., to
move the production to Nicaragua. Numerous vicissitudes forced them to move to
Honduras, until in 1980 they opened a factory in Santiago, Dominican Republic,
where they have been ever since.
Carlos Jr., “Carlito”, together with his father, played a fundamental
role in the transformation of Arturo Fuente into one of the most famous premium
cigar manufacturers in the world. He was a pioneer in making the Dominican
Republic a breeding ground for premium cigar wrappers. There he bought an
estate he called Chateau de la Fuente, where he created Fuente Fuente OpusX,
one of the brand's most acclaimed cigars.
Today, after 110 years and four generations, the factory is still
family-owned, making more than 30 million cigars a year. Arturo Fuente enjoys
the prestige of being one of the most valued manufacturers of premium hand-rolled
cigars outside of Cuba, an achievement that was possible because from the
beginning they focused on quality, which is why they decided to cultivate the
best tobaccos to have excellent leaves for wrapper, binder and filler.
Another of his efforts has been to renew the best of the historic
tobacco industry to keep quality crafts alive. This has meant training his
cigar rollers to make cigars of ancient shapes and sizes, creating some of the
most remarkable cigars of his generation.
Although the new generations have joined the family group,
"Carlito" is still the president of the company and his name and
presence remain in force as one of the great visionaries of the industry, also
associated with the innumerable charitable activities of the family, both in the
Dominican Republic as in the United States.
