EPC: Well, it's been bad, because I think in the long run very few of them are really going to make it.

SS: You think they're going to stop smoking? I meant the newcomers that were smokers.

EPC: Oh, the cigar smokers.

SS: That's a good thing, right?

EPC: That's wonderful. <laugh>

SS: But the new shops, honestly I can not believe it, I've only been coming down here for about eight years, but it's so different when I go down 8th street.

EPC: Well down on 8th street there's, let me see, from here to 17th Ave. I think there's like eight storefronts.

SS: Yeah, and most of them, are brand new. I know that Moore and Bode has been here a while...

EPC: Yeah, she's been here about five years, four years, something like that.

SS: And other than that was there anybody, other than you?

EPC: No, no. We were it.

SS: And I know the Padrons, their office was on West Flagler.

EPC: On Flagler, right. We had all the cigar makers here, we had before this boom, there were four or five. Then after the boom, all these people have opened up.

EPC: That's right.

SS: You had what - forty rollers, maybe?

EPC: No, we had thirty-eight.

SS: But at one point you went way down, didn't you?

EPC: One time we had twenty-five. We lost a lot. It's a shame because all those people are out of work now.

SS: Have any of them come back to the door asking for their old jobs?

EPC: We've had a lot of people come back.

SS: Do you bring them back into the El Credito fold?

EPC: No, I don't bring them back, not because I hold any grudge against them or anything, but we just don't need them now. We just don't need them. I mean when I needed them, they should have stayed, because now the people that are with me, they are making the most money. They're happy because they didn't get greedy.

EPC: They made a smart decision staying here. Other than that, unfortunately some of them opened up their business and they're not doing too good; other people have no work or they work in small factories, whatever. So they were good for a year, but most of the people that have been with me, I have people that have been with me twenty years, thirty years, some five - six years.

SS: Now your rollers, and I look around the gallery, it seems to me the average age is forty - forty-two, somewhere in there?

EPC: Right, right.

SS: There is also a lot of young blood.

EPC: Forty -two isn't that old.

SS: <laugh> How old are you again?

EPC: Forty-five. For cigar making, we had at one time when my father was here, the youngest one was I think was sixty-two years old.

SS: Sixty-two?

EPC: You know, retired people. Not because of making more money. Younger people are starting to get into the cigars from Cuba. We have a lot of people from Cuba, most of them.

SS: Now, for you, to maintain the staff here, are you going to train people from Little Havana or will you probably bring some of your rollers from the Dominican up to work in the Miami factory?

EPC: No, no. I'm not going to, there are plenty of people in Miami, that you don't have to train or bring people from outside.

EPC: Right.

SS: I know that when I talk to people in the area they have very strong opinions about Cuba and Castro. What's the meaning of the flag being there? What does it represent?

EPC: Well, I'm not trying to represent anything, I just want people to kind of know that this is a Cuban establishment. That we have Cubans in here and that we're proud of it.

SS: Remind them of their heritage?

EPC: Right. I mean it's not that were not proud to be in America, it's a great country, but I'm still Cuban.

SS: I understand...my father was an immigrant and I have strong feelings toward where he's from also...

EPC: That was always something my father made me understand about the heritage, the fact that Cuba was a great country, despite everything they said about it. Cuba was one of the greatest islands, one of the most advanced, the most, one of the best places to live in the world. Believe it or not.

SS: Speaking of Cuba, what's your personal opinion regarding Cuban cigars?

EPC: Well, Cuban cigars - whether I agree with the government or not is beside the point - I don't think their cigars should suffer. I don't agree with the policies of the Cuban government. I think Cuban cigars are great, I think they're what everybody tries to emulate, to imitate. The workmanship, the tobacco, there's nothing like it anywhere in the world.

SS: Surprisingly, you're two lead brands, the "El Rico" and the "La Gloria Cubana" are probably the two most compared to having that Havana-like flavor.

EPC: That's what I try to strive for. I mean there's no secret about it, I always try to come as close to a Cuban taste as possible through whatever tobacco I buy.

EPC: Well, if Castro is in Cuba, I don't think I do any type of...

SS: Castro is gone, democracy is put in.

EPC: I would definitely move to Cuba.

SS: You would? That's very interesting. You think you would leave these brands alone and make new brands or do you think you would add maybe some Cuban ligero to your existing brands?

EPC: No, I would, if that came to be, I would change the blends. Because I think Cuban tobacco provide great tastes, you can't get any better than that. Although the blends we have now I think, to me, I like them...

SS: I consider them exceptional.

EPC: Yeah, I think they are, I really do. But I think they're similar enough to Habanas that the people that are accustomed to La Gloria Cubana and El Rico would notice a difference, but adding Cuban tobacco would be very much accepted.

SS: I don't know how aware of this you are or not, but you are really a folk hero on the Internet. I would estimate in the last year within the UseNet discussion groups there have been literally thousands of posts written about you, your cigars, how much people like them, what they go through to get them. Does that surprise you?

EPC: Well, it does surprise me, it does surprise me. When I was playing drums, you always have your heroes. My heroes would be like Tony Williams, Steve Gadd, Elvin Jones, Buddy Rich, so I always try to read up and find out about those things. Now that it's being done about my cigars and stuff it makes me feel good.

It makes me feel good to see that people are really interested and appreciate what I'm trying to do. It's a good feeling.

EPC: That's right. But we're in this for the long term and I think eventually people are going to get tired of paying seven, eight, ten dollars for a cigar.

SS: It's hard to smoke three cigars a day at ten dollars a piece.

EPC: Well, that's hard. Some of the cigars are worth it - so you smoke less but at least you smoke well. But I think a lot of the cigars that are being made aren't really worth that kind of price.

SS: What is your number one selling cigar? It's probably La Gloria, but what size is the one you sell the most of?

EPC: Probably the three sizes we sell the most of is the Churchill, the Corona Gorda, and the Wavell. Those are the three best selling sizes.

SS: Where's that name "Wavell" come from?

EPC: That's from a British Commander named Wavell, I think.

SS: Is that a name that your father picked for the...

EPC: That name has been around for a long time. I think it was first used by Dos Gonzalez.

EPC: Well we're going to as soon as I find time, we're now building a second plant and it's taking up a lot of my time. Marketing has to be done whether you're popular or not because you know that saying "out of sight - out of mind" . What we're doing now we're trying to spread the cigar out more to everyone, to a lot of states. I think it's only to have some publicity, to make sure that people don't forget that your around.

SS: Here's something that I'm really curious about...obviously cigar ratings have become very popular in the last few years, a variety of publications have different styles of rating. What's your opinion about these type of ratings? Do you think they're beneficial, do you think they're harmful? I look at some of your cigars... like for example I remember when your Torpedo No.1 got that exceptional rating, which was just unbelievable, but then the next time it was rated it was kind of put in the middle of the pack.

EPC: Well you gotta remember something...cigar making, regardless of what anybody tells you, no two cigars are alike. If you have the best materials in the world, cigars are still made by humans and sometimes humans have their problems, their mind is somewhere else and that's only human, so you might give a guy the best tobacco in the world and if he's not concentrating on what he's doing, he's going to mess up the blend. That's something that you try to avoid, but unfortunately it happens.

SS: It's a handmade product...

EPC: It's a handmade product. A lot of companies are taking steps to try to control this.

SS: Particularly the bigger firms like General and Consolidated.

EPC: Right, they give them everything. I like to let the person improvise.

It's an art form. You shouldn't try to control that. You should know that if a guy does it on a consistent basis he won't be around for long, making cigars. In our case it happens once in a while. It's not something that happens all the time so I try to let the person making the product, the cigar, more or less have free leeway. That's the way it's always been.

EPC: No, I think the quality of the cigars are going to, especially now that we're in the Dominican Republic because we're going to have the space, we have a lot of good contacts there, we're processing a lot of tobacco, we're curing a lot of tobacco, I think it's going to improve. We've only been there now a year and two or three months, I think it's going to take me two, maybe two and a half years, I think we're going to have probably an even better cigar than we have now.

SS: Honestly, I've been very impressed with the cigars coming through the Dominican factory, in fact when I got my very first bundles coming from the DR, I actually sat down and I smoked one from here in this hand and one from the DR in the other hand, and honestly, I couldn't tell the difference. I thought the flavor was on and I thought the structure was on, too. If anything, I thought the structure was a little better on the DR cigar.

EPC: Well the DR cigar you will find, because we age them longer, that they are little bit firmer, there's a fuller taste. Of course when you get those cigars, you put them in the humidor and keep them there then that's when you can really see that they're almost the same thing.

SS: You really have no space here to age cigars...

EPC: No.

SS: You pretty much roll them and ship them?

EPC: Yeah, what we produce here we sell in a day or two.

SS: That's amazing. I saw the UPS guy, you're going to kill him, I saw him... he was hauling box after box...

EPC: <laugh> We ship about sixty to sixty-five individual orders daily, and about anywhere from twelve to twenty stores.

EPC: No, as a matter of fact when I told Marvin this, when he first came in here he was thinking about doing the cigar magazine, I didn't have much faith in what he was doing, because the cigar industry wasn't really going anywhere, it was just slipping along. Then after the magazine came out, it just had an effect on it like I'd never seen anything in my life.

SS: You were really inundated, weren't you?

EPC: Oh, yes.

SS: Your now beginning to climb out of the hole?

EPC: Yeah, we're starting to experience a change. We learned how to do things a different way. And I have my wife working here now. She's done a great job distributing cigar, making sure that everybody gets cigars. We did a show everybody was so happy they had cigars for the first time they were getting, not a whole lot, but at least they were getting a decent amount.

SS: Final question: I want to know what the most important thing regarding the cigars, the cigar business or maybe just life, that your father taught you?

EPC: Well the most important thing that he taught me was to follow your instincts. Don't do anything you don't want to do, and just treat people the way you want to be treated. I think if you kind of do that in life, you'll do all right. He always did what he wanted to do. He was never afraid of being out of money, he came to the United States from being a rich man to washing dishes and doing all kinds of things, just to make a living. When he started this business with five thousand dollars. He left something for me that I wouldn't have been able to have done. If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have this business. What he did, I don't think I would ever have been able to do. That's basically the most important thing he taught me. Always do what you want to do, regardless of what people say. It doesn't matter.