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TRADESHOW REPORT
2020 Tobacco Plus Expo:
Exhibitors Reshape Tradeshow Landscape TPE continues to grow, adding a surge of premium cigar makers— some who won’t be at PCA 2020. >BY FRANK SELTZER
T
he first trade show of the year is complete, and judging from observations and comments it was a huge success. The Tobacco Plus Expo (TPE) ran from January 29–31 in Las Vegas at the Las Vegas Convention Center. This was the 16th annual TPE show, which is part of Kretek International and its wholesale division, Phillips and King. The show began with a big party for all the attendees and opened with a keynote talk by basketball legend and cigar maker Karl Malone. The show had the feel of an intimate cigar program, nowhere near the scope of the PCA (IPCPR). In the past, TPE had a small premium cigar component, but all of that changed last year when Villiger became the first
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manufacturer to announce it was abandoning last year’s IPCPR show in favor of this year’s TPE. Rene Casteñeda—the president of Villiger Cigars North America—said his move was strictly business. “We realized that year by year, the cost of the IPCPR and now the PCA was getting higher and higher. I was doing the analysis based on the investment for the show and we decided that the last two years when we were at the show to measure the real amount of business we were writing while we were on the show floor and it didn’t add up.“ Villiger had a decent presence at IPCPR/PCA but nowhere near that of the “big boys”—Swisher-Drew Estate, Altadis, General, and Davidoff—who
announced in January that they too were not going to attend the PCA show this summer. Kretek also decided to pull out of the summer show as well. As a result of these decisions it put more focus onto TPE and its premium cigar showcase. While exact figures are not available, roughly a third of the floor space was dedicated to premium cigars. The remainder of the show was taken up with CBD products, and some vape, although there were fewer vape options than previous years. Some of the premium manufacturers were used to earlier years when a lot of c-store operators came to the show and were interested in value products. In speaking with the exhibitors, they were surprised at the number of tobacconists at the TPE, with many saying they wrote good sized orders and opened new accounts. They said they were seeing people who did not attend the summer shows in the past. Part of that may be due to the TPE pushing for
