The R&D Manifesto

 

Welcome to the future.  You can read all the "standard" info about R&D Cigars on the TU website in the R&D Lab.   Essentially, R&D Cigars are small batch, TU Certified cigars created with an educational purpose: educating your mind and palate.  At TU, we want to be about something (#beaboutsomething); we believe in substantive professionals and products.  We see more hyperbole and cult-of-personality marketing in the premium cigar industry than in perhaps any other.  Yet, there is enough substance, history, and tradition in the luxury tobacco industry that exaggerations are unnecessary.

While contemporary cigar marketers are busy creating outlandish and tantalizing brand names, using "sex" to sell, or trying to convince you that the picture of them inspecting leaves in the fields are authentic, retail tobacconists are working with consumers, face-to-face, on a daily basis.  While a cigar vendor can type up a bunch of alluring words on a website or for an advertisement, retail tobacconists are being accountable, honest, and educating their customers so they will return and become satisfied regulars.  Trust is the cornerstone of credibility and every successful retail tobacconist knows that.  It is easy to sit around in an office all day and concoct fancy words, but the real premium cigar industry exists in the retail tobacconists store because that's were the consumers are.  Retail tobacconists do not have the luxury of BS-ing customers: they must #beaboutsomething.  

With that said, we do recognize that marketing in the cigar industry is exciting and interesting.  There is so much innovation and communication happening that it is hard to keep up.  And at the very least, its never boring.  But, TU is not about exaggeration and empty words.  We want to #beaboutsomething.  Ultimately, if you call everyone a "master" or "legend" or if everyone is like "family" or your "brother",  then those words will lose their value.  The words we use at TU mean something; that's why we have the largest glossary in the industry, and we take those words seriously (ie. Flavor = Taste + Aroma,  Maduro is both a color description and fermentation process, and our certified retailers have a "real" store, not just a virtual one). 

At TU, we want to #beaboutsomething, and R&D is.  As you will see in the R&D Lab, extraordinary efforts have been made to educate your mind and palate.  While taste is, and will always be, subjective, we can teach and illustrate facts, history, and enhance your appreciation of luxury tobacco in the process.  While we look forward to many years of researching and creating educational products, we also hope that TU R&D will help and inspire others in the industry to take it to the next level and #beaboutsomething. 

In the future, when you come across R&D Cigars at a TU Certified Retail Tobacconist (CRT), you will know that everything about those cigars is authentic and the tobacconist who is curating them is credible because he/she is the first professionally certified tobacconist that had to pass a test to sell you a certified cigar.   Furthermore, all of the personal and product certification standards are transparent and freely available on the TU website: including but not limited to our Code of Ethics & Standards, the TU Academic Curriculum, our Glossary, Tobacconist Tips, FAQs, and all of the standards of TU Certification.

 

#beaboutsomething