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Metropolitan Cigars - Ybor City

Metropolitan Cigars on 7th Avenue, in the historic Ybor City section of Tampa, Florida features one of the world's largest walk-in humidors with a history dating back to the turn of the 20th century. Two wonderful discoveries in cigars were made on the recommendation of owner Sam Capitano.

Metropolitan Cigars has quite an interesting history that follows the development of Ybor City into the cigar capitol of the world in the early 1900's. The atmosphere of Ybor City demands attention. Brick lined streets overlooked by black wrought iron balconies, shops featuring hand made treasures, and cuisine of Cuban and Italian decent topped off with Cuban coffee and caf? con leche are everywhere.

At the turning of the 20th Century, Ybor City's population was made up of mostly Spanish, Cuban, and Italian immigrants. Tampa was no more than a mosquito-ridden fishing village of some 700 people when Vicente Martinez Ybor, a cigar manufacturer and Cuban exile, came to Tampa to establish his factory.

Before long, the population of immigrants swelled to 30,000 and contributed to making Tampa the cigar capital of the world. Francisco Capitano and Company were famous manufacturers of "high grade Havana cigars" in the early years. Events leading to the Spanish-American War in 1898 led to increased world attention on this growing metropolis.

The cigar workers of Ybor City responded to Jose Marti's plea for men, money, and arms for the insurgents who opposed Spain's rule over Cuba. In 1898, thousands of U.S. troops arrived in the Tampa staging area as Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders prepared for military operations in the Spanish-American war. At the culmination of the war, the population of Tampa once again thrived.

After numerous successful years in the tobacco business, James Capitano, son of Francisco, decided to take the family in a different direction. In 1933 he opened the Metropolitan Pharmacy--named in honor of the $900 loan taken out of his Metropolitan Life insurance policy. The present Metropolitan Cigar Shop grew directly from the Metropolitan Pharmacy. The shop prospered during the era of World War II when the shipyards at the Port of Tampa operated 24 hours a day.

James Capitano's success was based in part by the expansion of the pharmacy's stock to include lunch boxes for the shipyard workers, whisky and alarm clocks - along with an extensive selection of fine local cigars.

Sam "Sonny" Capitano, Owner - Metropolitan Cigars

After thriving for half a century, the cigar industry abruptly fell victim to the automated machine-made cigar. Many of the big Ybor City cigar factories closed and only a few small operators kept the art of hand rolling cigars alive. A centuries old craft was nearly lost. However, the Metropolitan Pharmacy remained.

This isn't the end of Metropolitan's story. Fast forward to the 21st century and discover a newly vibrant Ybor City - a renaissance based on its designation as a Historical District. The festive atmosphere of restaurants and clubs attract diners and dancers every evening. Cigars have made their way from the back room in this century too. Sonny Capitano closed the doors of the Metropolitan Pharmacy in 1992 to open a successful cigar shop inside the historic Columbia Restaurant. Five years later, Sonny found himself establishing another shop - the Metropolitan Cigar Shop of today on Seventh Avenue.

I asked Sam for a couple of cigar recommendations. My first request was for an inexpensive bundled smoke of medium body. He directed me to a bundle of 20 - "Cuban Leaf, Rare Connecticut Habano Torpedos" for $24. That's $1.20 per stick! I have to admit, I was skeptical at that low a price that they would be any good, but I bought them anyway. What a pleasant surprise! They were a steal. He then directed me to his own brand of "Don Capitano Maduro Torpedos" for $7.00. They were excellent!

If you are going to be in Tampa, be sure to visit Metropolitan Cigars, 2014 East 7th Avenue, Tampa, FL 33605. 813-248-3304 or 800-607-3304, and tell them Kevin from Cigar review sent you. Visit their web site at http://www.metropolitancigars.com.

Find more information about premium cigars on http://www.cigar-review.com

About the Author

Kevin Godbee is the editor and publisher of http://www.cigar-review.com, a web site dedicated to cigars and all the things that go along with them including fine food and drink as well as the gorgeous women who smoke cigars.

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WHAT IS LATENT DEMAND AND THE P.I.E.?

The concept of latent demand is rather subtle. The term latent typically refers to something that is dormant, not observable, or not yet realized. Demand is the notion of an economic quantity that a target population or market requires under different assumptions of price, quality, and distribution, among other factors. Latent demand, therefore, is commonly defined by economists as the industry earnings of a market when that market becomes accessible and attractive to serve by competing firms. It is a measure, therefore, of potential industry earnings (P.I.E.) or total revenues (not profit) if a market is served in an efficient manner. It is typically expressed as the total revenues potentially extracted by firms. The market is defined at a given level in the value chain. There can be latent demand at the retail level, at the wholesale level, the manufacturing level, and the raw materials level (the P.I.E. of higher levels of the value chain being always smaller than the P.I.E. of levels at lower levels of the same value chain, assuming all levels maintain minimum profitability).

The latent demand for little cigarette-size cigars weighing less than 3 pounds per 1,000 cigars is not actual or historic sales. Nor is latent demand future sales. In fact, latent demand can be lower either lower or higher than actual sales if a market is inefficient (i.e., not representative of relatively competitive levels). Inefficiencies arise from a number of factors, including the lack of international openness, cultural barriers to consumption, regulations, and cartel-like behavior on the part of firms. In general, however, latent demand is typically larger than actual sales in a country market.

For reasons discussed later, this report does not consider the notion of unit quantities, only total latent revenues (i.e., a calculation of price times quantity is never made, though one is implied). T

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The 2007 Import and Export Market for Cigars, Cheroots, and Cigarillos Made with Tobacco in United States
On the demand side, exporters and strategic planners focusing on cigars, cheroots, and cigarillos made with tobacco in United States face a number of questions. Which countries are supplying cigars, cheroots, and cigarillos made with tobacco to United States? How important is United States compared to others in terms of the entire global and regional market? How much do the imports of cigars, cheroots, and cigarillos made with tobacco vary from one country of origin to another in United States? On the supply side, United States also exports cigars, cheroots, and cigarillos made with tobacco. Which countries receive the most exports from United States? How are these exports concentrated across buyers? What is the value of these exports and which countries are the largest buyers? This report was created for strategic planners, international marketing executives and import/export managers who are concerned with the market for cigars, cheroots, and cigarillos made with tobacco in United States. With the globalization of this market, managers can no longer be contented with a local view. Nor can managers be contented with out-of-date statistics which appear several years after the fact. I have developed a methodology, based on macroeconomic and trade models, to estimate the market for cigars, cheroots, and cigarillos made with tobacco for those countries serving United States via exports, or supplying from United States via imports. It does so for the current year based on a variety of key historical indicators and econometric models. In what follows, Chapter 2 begins by summarizing where United States fits into the world market for imported and exported cigars, cheroots, and cigarillos made with tobacco. The total level of imports and exports on a worldwide basis, and those for United States in particular, is estimated using a model which aggregates across over 150 key country markets and projects these to the current year. From there, each country represents a percent of the world market. This market is served from a number of competitive countries of origin. Based on both demand- and supply-side dynamics, market shares by country of origin are then calculated across each country market destination. These shares lead to a volume of import and export values for each country and are aggregated to regional and world totals. In doing so, we are able to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of both the value of each market and the share that United States is likely to receive this year. From these figures, rankings are calculated to allow managers to prioritize United States compared to other major country markets. In this way, all the figures provided in this report are forecasts that can be combined with internal information sources for strategic planning purposes.

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