Customers at this business don’t have to venture outside to light one up.
In fact, they can puff away while watching a big-screen TV, sitting in comfy black vinyl chairs.
Welcome to the Akron area’s newest cigar store: Cousin’s Cigars, an offshoot of the longtime family-owned business that began in Cleveland.
“We pulled out all the stops,” boasts John Coleman, manager of the Akron Cousin’s store.
He says this while holding a stogie, standing in front of the store’s gas fireplace — a focal point of the store’s smoking lounge.
Cousin’s Cigars, which moved into the former Akron Tile & Fireplace in the city’s Merriman Valley in April, spent big money on the large walk-in humidor.
That’s the temperature- and humidity-controlled showroom, where walls lined with cedar help keep the store’s thousands of hand-rolled stogies fresh. The sweet scent of cigars and cedar hits customers when they open the glass door to the humidor.
“This is crazy-big for a humidor,” Coleman said, walking around the 900-square-foot space filled with cigars ranging in price from under $3 to about $45.
The Merriman Road store is arriving on the smoking scene as cigar sales are picking up, after a lull following the cigar boom of the 1990s. The increase is due in part to younger smokers.
The store’s opening also comes as some public health advocates are lobbying the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigars. Meanwhile, makers and sellers of “premium cigars” say they should be exempted from the still-unclear possible rules, pointing out their products don’t appeal to younger smokers.
“There’s no one under 18 coming in here,” Coleman said. “A lot of the [possible] regulations deal with cheap, flavored cigars.”
He noted he doesn’t carry mass-market brands — Phillies, Swisher Sweets, Black & Mild — “the drug store cigars.” There’s no cigarettes in stock either, save for a few imported brands. The store also sells imported pipe tobacco.
The humidor’s inventory includes cigars from the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico and many brands from Nicaragua.
“Nicaragua in the ’80s had its industry destroyed by civil war,” Coleman said. “They’ve really made it back; there’s more variety available of Nicaraguan cigars than any other country.”
The store also stocks a “private label,” Coleman pointed out, made by a Cuban expatriate in Miami. It is called Mile Marker 82, a reference to the Cousin’s store in the Florida Keys.
It’s one of the handful of cigar stores owned by Danny Kolod, who took over a business his father, Sidney, started in 1951. In addition to the Florida store, Kolod has four in the Cleveland area.
Cousin’s Cigars paid more than $300,000 for building at 1812 Merriman Road, according to Summit County property tax records. Cousin’s spent tens of thousands remodeling it, removing all but one of the several fireplaces that adorned Akron Tile & Fireplace.
The fireplace “pays homage” to Akron Tile & Fireplace, said the store’s “Tobacco Jack” Shy, who calls himself “a tobacconist.”
Shy explained, “It sounds better than ‘a clerk.’ ”
The fireplace shop quietly closed about 18 months ago. It was an area stalwart, drawing customers to its Merriman Valley building for more than 40 years. The business itself was more than 100 years old.
Shy said he’s not worried that the Merriman Valley store does not get the traffic some other area shopping districts command.
“We’re more of a destination store,” he said. “If they’re avid cigar smokers, they’ll find us.”
Cousin’s Cigars joins several other cigar shops in the area, including the longtime Pipe Rack, on Manchester Road in Akron, owned by Craig Zickefoose.
The Pipe Rack — with roots in a store that operated in Akron’s Highland Square years ago — doesn’t have a smoking lounge, but it carries a wide variety of pipe tobacco, as well as cigars and live bait, tackle and fishing licenses.
It doesn’t want to mix a lot of cigar smoke with the tackle business, manager Bob Young said. He acknowledged, however, that a lounge can be a draw.
“There’s not too many places to actually sit down and enjoy a cigar,” Young said.
Free-standing cigar shops are exempt from Ohio’s smoking ban; existing shops in shopping centers and malls were grandfathered after the state banned lighting up.
Cousin’s opened in Akron shortly before the longtime Village Tobacconist at Summit Mall decided to call it quits and closed its smoking lounge.
Coleman said some Village Tobacconist customers have discovered the Cousin’s lounge.
A lounge is “a part of the culture of cigar smoking,” Coleman said. “It’s a gathering place, like the barbershop and the old general store.”
Katie Byard can be reached at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com.