"We gotta put our pants back on. We'll be down there in a minute." Business start-up tip: even if you're already in your pjs, you get dressed when Carlos Fuente, Jr. invites you to a late-night dinner to talk packaging cigars exclusively with your new two-way humidity control.

2022 marks Boveda’s 25th anniversary! Learn how the award-winning innovation for humidors and cigar packaging came to be from Sean Knutsen, CEO and Tim Swail, EVP of Sales with Box Press host Rob Gagner.

Website: https://www.bovedainc.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bovedausa/

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/bovedainc

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bovedainc/

Rolls-Royce, Ichiro Suzuki and Boeing are just a few big names who've used Boveda for its moisture protection. Listen to the highlights:

00:43 Carlito just called, put your pants back on

04:29 Fuente's exclusive deal with Boveda

08:43 Visiting the Fuente factory and estate—Opus A

10:47 Boveda Sean Knutsen’s best cigar moment

11:25 Be prepared for nausea when you tour a cigar factory

14:18 Boveda revolutionized the cigar industry

18:25 How to work your way into a cigar trade show

20:09 Using an RV for guerrilla marketing

22:37 Apple started in a garage, Boveda began in a house in St. Paul

23:47 Smart tactics to get into an industry trade show

25:36 Boveda revolutionizes humidor seasoning and cigar storage

28:52 Why did Boveda change its name from Humidipak?

30:48 The world’s first two-way humidity control for desktop humidors

30:53 How do you pronounce Boveda?

31:57 How to properly store and age cigars at home

32:06 3 steps to protect cigars with Boveda

35:04 To enjoy the dynamic character of tobacco, care for cigars properly

36:20 Rolls-Royce Phantom humidor and Boveda

37:44 Subzero wine cellar humidor and Boveda

38:12 MLB baseballs and Boveda

40:56 Ichiro Suzuki and Boveda

41:48 MREs, alligator eggs, airplane parts and car components and Boveda

- [Rob] There's a story inside every smoke shop,

with every cigar, and with every person.

Come be a part of the cigar lifestyle at Boveda.

This is Box Press.

(relaxing music)

- [Tim] 9:30 at night.

So we're hopping into bed.

And then the phone rings.

And like, it's Carlito.

He said, "Okay, I'm gonna be there in 5.

I'm gonna be there in 5 minutes.

- [Sean] Or he says, "I'm here," maybe even.

- [Tim] He might have even said.

- [Sean] Yeah, he was here.

"I'm down below.

I'm here to pick you guys up."

- [Tim] Yeah.

- [Sean] I'm just laying there, I'm in bed.

I got my sleep shorts on.

Tim's sitting there, he's got his sleep shorts on.

All right.

All right, Carlito, well, we're here.

We'll put our pants back on, and we'll come on down.

Like, "What, did you just say that right now?"

- [Rob] I mean, I mean we're ready. We'll be right down.

- [Tim] Yeah, didn't really filter through what it

sounded like.

- [Rob] Well, you had to get dressed.

You guys got ready for bed. - [Tim] But hey, here we are.

Well, I think I said something like,

"Yeah, Sean's right here. We gotta put our pants back on.

We'll be down there in a minute."

- [Rob] He's going, "Who am I getting in business

with here?"

- [Sean] They're not ashamed, putting in the work.

You know, people eat dinner at 6 o'clock

or, you know, whatever.

So this is probably going on 10 o'clock now.

We were like, "Holy cow." We're like,

you know, you're getting groggy.

You're now starting to like-- - [Rob] Right.

- [Sean] All right, I'm kinda looking forward to

going to bed now, after a full day of traveling.

- [Tim] Traveling.

- [Sean] You travel through New York

or Miami, wherever we went to.

- [Rob] Exhausted.

- [Sean] And we were beat.

And it's like, "Oh, man."

- [Rob] Yeah.

- [Sean] And so

so we went, we scrambled.

And we went down, we met with,

remember the name of the restaurant?

It was

Paparazzo?

- [Tim] Paparazzo.

- [Sean] The restaurants down there,

there's a handful of maybe 3, 4 in Santiago,

high-end restaurants.

They are good, they are top-notch,

because down there, the factory owners and so forth,

they're wealthy people, very wealthy and so on.

It's a third-world country,

but there are some restaurateurs down there,

these small, little boutique, privately-owned restaurants.

And this was one of the happening spots down there.

And by the time we got there, it was probably 10:30

at night, and place was packed.

- [Tim] Jam-packed, absolutely.

- [Sean] I mean, people driving up in their Mercedes,

getting dropped off.

We ate dinner with Carlito, of course,

his dad, Carlos Fuente Senior,

and then Juan-- - [Tim] Sosa.

- [Sean] Juan Sosa, who was Senior's right-hand man

at the factory.

And so it was just the 5 of us.

We were like, "We're with legends right now."

- [Tim] Yeah.

- [Sean] We were like, "Holy cow."

- [Rob] This is happening.

- [Tim] This is happening, yeah.

- [Sean] And we were, like, fired up.

I do remember aspects of that dinner.

I remember the brick walls in the restaurant.

And the steak was one of the best steaks

we've probably ever had.

I mean, who knows, maybe it wasn't.

Maybe it was a bad steak.

But at the moment, that thing was so good.

- [Rob] The setting, the experience, the company.

Same thing with cigars.

- [Sean] Smoking cigars, smoking Opus

right there in the restaurant.

And this is the time of day where the smoking bans,

even in Minnesota, even in the U.S.,

maybe only California had a smoking ban, nowhere else.

New York, no smoking ban nowhere.

I mean, so smoking during dinner was just normal,

especially in the Dominican Republic.

- [Rob] It's the best thing, to be able to smoke

while you eat.

- [Sean] Yeah. - [Tim] Yeah, we enjoyed it.

But the other part of the experience is,

is all the other cigar, you know,

some other cigar makers were there.

And I can't remember who came by,

other than Cynthia was there eating.

She came over and said hi.

- [Rob] Carlito's sister.

- [Tim] Yeah, Carlito's sister.

We got to. - [Sean] Remember that.

- [Tim] The first time we got introduced to her.

but other people would come by their table

and pay respects, say hi, and.

- [Rob] Because this is like the godfather.

- [Sean] Oh yeah, Carlos Fuente Senior, I mean.

- [Tim] Yes. - [Rob] Yeah.

- [Sean] Really, but they're equal partners starting out,

when they both got going.

So I mean, yeah, but Senior.

- [Rob] No, I meant the other cigar makers are like.

- [Sean] Oh, going to, yes, pay their respects.

- [Rob] If I saw Carlito, yeah.

- [Sean] No question about it.

- [Rob] I'm not gonna walk by and not say anything.

I'm gonna say hello.

- [Sean] Yeah. - [Tim] Oh yeah.

- [Rob] Goodbye, you know?

- [Tim] Yeah. - [Sean] Oh yeah.

- [Tim] It's kinda the who's who of the night, yeah.

- [Rob] Kiss the ring, you know, whatever.

- [Rob] So you're sitting there, it's 10:30.

- [Sean] We had great wine and scotch, I mean, cigars, meal.

- [Tim] And it's like, this thing is happening.

- [Rob] And is there any business talk?

Are you guys talking business,

or is it just getting to know him?

- [Sean] Well, we were talking exclusivity.

I remember that part of the conversation.

I remember one of the, I think it was this dinner,

and it could've been a different one.

It's like, all right, Carlito.

We can head-start or whatever, you know?

Small company exclusivity rarely is good, you know?

That kinda hurts, and we need that kind of growth.

So he kind of understood that, you know?

But I'm kinda stepping out here.

So okay, great, well, what about Cuba?

Let's leave Cuba available.

If we're able to somehow do a deal there to get in,

which we did try, by the way, but that never.

- [Tim] Never happened.

- [Sean] That's a different story altogether.

But he says, "That's a great idea, no problem.

Yeah, you can get Cuba, that would be good.

Fuente, and if Cuba,"

so we were kinda gaining some agreement in that.

- [Rob] But you gave him the exclusivity basically for.

- [Sean] Couple years.

- [Rob] Couple years?

- [Sean] Yeah. - [Tim] Started it at 12.

And then we extended it as things were.

- [Rob] 12 months.

- [Tim] 12 months, yes.

- [Rob] And extended it.

- [Sean] 12 more. - [Tim] Another 12.

Things were going good.

We had a good relationship with them.

We had the humidor bags that were selling very, very.

- [Rob] Did you have people calling you? Wanting-

- [Tim] Yes.

- [Rob] And you were turning them down, saying, "I can't."

- [Sean] And the same people who said, "I don't need this.

All my cigars sell fast enough.

Why would I put this in?

It's way too expensive.

Nobody knows what it is anyway.

Why would I do this kind of thing?"

And then, you know, Fuente puts it in there.

"Hey, you know, we kinda like to look at that."

- [Rob] That sucks though, that you had to say no.

- [Sean] Yeah. - [Tim] Yeah.

- [Rob] Okay.

- [Tim] So that night, you know, dinners take forever.

They don't just sit down and wolf down a steak

and get outta there, I mean.

- [Rob] This is not an hour ordeal.

- [Tim] No, we were, I think until 1 o'clock, 12:30.

- [Rob] 1 o'clock.

- [Tim] I mean, it was pretty late.

- [Sean] One o'clock, yeah.

- [Tim] I mean, you sit down by 10:30.

And then, you know how it is.

You have a two-hour, that's already 12:30 right there.

That's not hard to do. - [Sean] We're 30 years old.

We're talking about the plans.

We're putting together our business.

- [Rob] I'd be done at nine.

- [Sean] Hey from 1:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.,

we were putting together our future business

plans with Carlito.

- [Tim] That's right.

- [Sean] We couldn't sleep at-

- [Rob] 9 or 10 out of 10, man I'd be in.

- [Sean] We couldn't sleep at all. No, no, no.

We were, and we were, yeah, we gotta have,

them come up to our offices in Minnesota.

We, he, when he dropped us off, we were gonna,

we were gonna just go to bed and it's like, hey,

do you wanna have another cigar? Yeah,

let's have another cigar.

So we walked into the, sat down in the casino area,

you know, not ton, you know, not busy at all.

Just, just,

just relaxed and just to unwind from the dinner and how

exciting it was.

And just talked about, you know, things that, you know,

look at, you know, talked about the future and wow.

This could be you know, really a, a catalyst to,

you know, get some momentum and, and so on and time flew.

I mean, next thing you know, it it's like, all right.

Probably had a couple too many scotch, you know, just in,

you know, got lost track of time and,

and probably didn't have 1 cigar, probably had 2 or

3, you know, throughout that time.

- [Rob] Knowing you guys. Yeah.

2 or 3, maybe 4.

- [Sean] And it's like, you know, Carlito's gonna

pick us up here in a few, you know, a little bit here.

We better.

Maybe we should just go to bed right now.

And I think we, they don't close.

Okay. I don't think they close.

They didn't at this time. They do nowadays.

When you go there, you can't even do that.

You can't even smoke in the hotel anymore.

You can't smoke in the casino anymore, but back in the day.

So that's what we, that's what we were doing.

We were truly planning the future of being in the boxes.

What are some, how do we leverage this thing?

And you know,

we gotta get Carlito to come and visit us in Minnesota.

I remember that kind of, you know, talking about that,

we're be we're, we're like this now, you know,

we're thinking.

And so we were, we were on cloud nine.

We were, we were, we had, we,

we had too much adrenaline to go to sleep.

There's no possible way we could go to sleep at that time.

And we were, we were on cloud nine.

I don't, I don't remember.

I mean, that's one of the, I think the peak enthusiasm,

enthusiastic times that I remember, you know, period.

- [Tim] Oh yeah.

- [Sean] And when we got, we got to bed and when that,

then I think the phone rang, you know,

because it rang the other night at 9:30.

This time it rang at 9-

- [Tim] 9:00 a.m.

- [Sean] We probably got, you know, two and a half hours

of sleep. We needed about 18 hours.

Just on that one.

- [Tim] Part of our enthusiasm was knowing that, okay,

he's gonna pick us up and we're gonna go to Fuente factory

and we're gonna, you know, see where Opus X is made and,

and just, we're hanging out with him next day, all day.

- [Rob] The curtain is gonna be pulled back a little bit.

- [Tim] All day, you know?

He's just a great.

- [Rob] So he picks you up. You're a little hungover.

- [Sean] Might be the most hungover I've ever been.

For myself,

at least that's how I felt. Just didn't feel good.

You're in a third world country just got there. You know,

did you drink any of the water,

maybe some got in when you're brushing your teeth, you know?

So they're all kinds of things that are working on the

system.

And so, and plus the way that they drive in the D.R.

It is just like this stop, gun it, stop. I mean,

it's like this doesn't work. This isn't, you know,

I'm just in the back seat, just like just kind of like.

- [Rob] Crossing your toes,

hoping to God you can just hang on to it.

- [Sean] Let me just please try to take some breaths

so I don't, you know, ruin his car and we got in there,

we got into his office and he knows, I guarantee you,

he probably kinda knew this.

He handed us and I remember it, we're and he was,

they were renovating their office. So he, this was his old,

old office not renovated yet. And we're sitting right here.

We,

we sit down and we spent the whole morning and he's right

there and we are right there. He's got his computer here,

he's on the phone talking to us at times, computer at times.

And we're just like sitting right here. And,

and as soon as we sat down, he handed us a, an Opus A.

I mean, this is a awesome from the mid nineties,

probably mid to, you know, 90 ish.

We're thinking this was, you know, well, in hindsight we,

it's probably 95, 96, 97 era of the cigar.

Of this Opus A and even being,

not feeling the best and feeling nauseous and, and,

you know,

part was it from the night before the car ride over?

Not really sure, but it was like, man, this is like,

just got off the tilt-a-whirl. It doesn't feel the best.

And that's cigar, even in that environment was like,

this cigar is spectacular.

- [Tim] Oh, it was amazing.

- [Sean] It was, that might be the best cigar experience

I think that I, it's up there and it might be the best.

- [Tim] Yeah. Sitting in Carlito's office.

He hands you a Opus A, and you sit there

and you smoke it in his office having a

conversation with him. And it's.

- [Sean] By the way, about 10 years later in, you know,

the Connoisseur Corner in Cigar Aficionado

where they rate old cigars?

This 1997 Opus A

got like a 98 or 100. I mean, one,

one of those.

- [Tim] A really high rating.

- [Sean] It was up there.

It was like, which was probably the vintage that we,

he gave us

at that time.

And so I, I remember it's like, you know, it was,

it was tough going through the factory.

And when you're in the factory,

a lot of people who are the first time in the factory,

they throw up because of the amount of ammonia that all the

processing and the tobacco it's all factories are like that.

And so just that process you get, it's just a different.

- [Rob] Yeah. Very astringent.

- [Sean] Yeah, you don't, you don't, you don't feel good.

I'm telling you,

especially when it's your first time and you add up

everything, you know, no sleep and you know,

the car ride and drinking the night before and,

and everything. It was a tough, tough day.

Here's the greatest day, you know,

at that moment in business.

And, and enjoying it so much,

but yet feeling the worst you ever felt because of the,

the hours, the night before.

- [Rob] Right.

Love it.

- [Sean] Yeah so he, he, he gave us a personal tour of that.

We spent all day, then we got in the car and he picks up,

we drove out to the farm.

- [Tim] We get to go to the farm for the first time. I mean,

there you are at Chateau De La Fuente,

which is really spectacular. I mean,

it looks like a Disney World now compared to what it did

then. But back when we went, it was, it was like,

that. I mean to us, it was unbelievable.

- [Rob] Right.

- [Tim] It's like, here you are.

And they've got, you know,

the tobacco barns and it's got the fields and all these

rocks that line

the roads that are painted in white and he is got a gazebo

where you can go and sit and smoke and takes you up to the,

up to the top where there's a helicopter pad and,

and around another gazebo. So you kind of go and see,

and you get up on the top and you look around and see all

the mountains and all the fields and the river.

- [Sean] All the roads are paint or have lined

with rock that are painted white.

He's got on the hillside,

a bunch of rock in different colors showing the Opus X band.

I mean, it's immaculate, you're out in the middle of,

you know, how long an hour outside of the city?

- [Tim] About an hour and a half, half hour.

- [Sean] Hour and a half outside.

- [Tim] Yeah. But it's just beautiful.

Like Sean said,

in the side and he's since expanded it now, but he had,

you know,

rock designs out there in green grass and then the Opus band

in, in full color, you know,

the reds and the blacks and the golds. And it just,

you know, outlined in white, it just popped, you know,

it was just, it was just a great experience.

- [Rob] Had you guys gone to TPE or RTDA at that point?

- [Tim] We had been, yes,

because our first one was 97 where we didn't have the booth.

We had the RV, we did get into the next one.

So this was when the launch officially happened was in Tampa

2001.

- [Sean] Yeah.

- [Tim] So we're talking, you know,

this was a couple year journey here to get to where we were.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- [Sean] Yeah. It was four years after our founding.

But one, one more story really quick back when,

after we went to Malio's and we went back down there,

we were, now it was official.

We're going in all of the boxes.

And we had a chance then that we were in Carlos Fuente

Senior's, the factory he's in.

And he came out there with his head agronomist and his head

agronomist didn't speak any English,

very well educated though

in agronomy and understood tobacco and,

and understood all the things that we were learning in our

lab in terms of water activity, moisture content,

oils, and sugars,

and how do you get the cigars to improve over time and,

and all of that, and this idea of removing moisture.

And so when, when we were, you know, Carlito's dad,

when we were, you know,

we were talking through this and he then would speak in

Spanish to the head agronomist, his right-hand man,

the guy and the guy really influential over there. And his,

this agronomist started speaking Spanish back to Senior.

And he, Senior said,

he just told me that this is like going from a horse and

buggy, the way things are done now, to the automobile.

With this technology, this is revolutionizing.

This will change the industry.

And that was the head of agronomy. I thought, okay,

that's pretty cool.

- [Rob] We're onto something.

- [Sean] Yeah. - [Tim] Yeah.

Good affirmation.

- [Sean] So we, we were, this is when, when Carlito took it,

this was when we had already been designing two-way humidity

control.

If we're the world's first two-way humidity control,

that must mean everything else is one-way.

We'd have to say that it kind of conveyed that in,

in the design, the way we defined it.

And so then we started to pick up some momentum with

communication in the marketplace, and he's,

he sent a nice letter to all the retailers and so forth

talking about, hey, you know,

these cigars are gonna be like capturing the, you know,

the climate that's in Chateau De La Fuente.

And so you know that by having the water drop on the box.

And so we always told them, you know, first of all,

resources are limited and this is a custom product.

So we need to get half that. When we get an order,

we need to have a lot of lead time.

So we need 4 months before film can get ordered,

then it's get printed.

It goes to the factory to get formed and filled and sealed

into a product. Then,

then it's gotta take on the container and it's gotta go down

to, to Tampa.

Then from Tampa,

it's gotta go on down to the Dominican Republic.

You need 4 months for that scenario to happen.

And so somewhere after a little bit of time,

that lead time was lost on the purchasing side in there.

And so we got an order and you know, maybe in 90 days,

like we need this in 90 days.

- [Tim] They need fast. Yeah.

- [Sean] We scrambled, we, we couldn't ship it in time.

So they had to start shipping box product to the marketplace

without Humidipak inside and without the water drop.

So we got a call from Carlos Senior and said,

what in the hell is going on? You don't ever, you know,

do this again, you know,

like we need product here to show up on time. It's like,

well, okay.

And we know that, and retailers were actually saying, no,

I don't want these.

I want the ones with the water drop on the box.

And so, because that's what my customers are,

are looking for.

They want to have the one with the water drop.

- [Rob] You don't turn down Fuente product.

- [Sean] Yeah.

- [Tim] So one of those one way calls back in was from

Senior that day.

And you know, in his raspy voice says, you know,

I really like you and your brother, you know,

he always called us brothers,

always thought we were brothers.

And he goes, but if you ever don't ship on time.

- [Sean] We're not doing this.

- [Tim] We're not, this business is over.

- [Rob] Fire the machines back up. Wow.

- [Sean] We started to print extra. And just.

- [Rob] Yeah, I was just gonna say that.

- [Sean] Held it in inventory at that point.

- [Rob] A little overstocking won't hurt you.

Good.

Oh my gosh.

So obviously just even breaking the ground in the

marketplace to consumers,

you gotta go to RTDA, the biggest show in the world on this,

you know, then it was IPCPR, and now it's PCA,

but we know today, but you guys couldn't get in.

You had no tickets.

You had no space.

- [Sean] Yeah. This was going back to what.

- [Rob] You couldn't even get in as consumer-based tickets.

- You couldn't walk the show.

- [Sean] We were incorporated July of 1997.

So remember back in the story of the dinner, that dinner we

had was April of 1997.

So May, June, we, we were 90 days,

less than 90 days from the trade show.

By that time, during the boom years, you couldn't get,

the booths are all sold out.

The hotels are sold out.

So what did we do? We called they had, I think I,

I remember 900 or something exhibitors.

We called virtually every single company.

- [Tim] We split the list up between the 3, 4 of us.

And we just started calling every exhibitor.

- [Rob] Can I, can I get space in your booth?

- [Tim] Can we borrow? Can we, yeah,

can we share it? Can we get a little spot?

We want to get into the show.

No, no, no, nothing.

- [Sean] Zero.

- [Sean] Zero.

- [Rob] And they weren't having the big mega booths

that they have now.

It was all very small.

- [Sean] Well, there were some mega booths, you know,

you had General Cigar, that's a mega booth, you had

Consolidated Cigar that.

- [Rob] But for the most part, everyone's pretty just.

- [Sean] That was the mega booth. Fuente's booth

was probably, they were probably around that time too,

but yeah,

for the most part, it was small, but there were still,

you still had some anchors.

- [Rob] That you thought, eh, just gimme a 10 by 10

or a table.

- [Sean] Well, by the way, we had no idea anything.

We didn't know what the show was gonna be like at all.

And I, I think we only peeped our, you know, was able,

we were able to look in there to, so we,

we didn't know what to expect.

We just knew that we couldn't get in.

We knew that we had just dialed up a contract manufacturer

and had ordered a product being made.

We had to pay for that product. We had to come,

we had to sell it. And so we said, well,

we can't get a hotel room. Let's come up with an RV.

Let's slap some.

- [Tim] Banners on it.

- [Sean] Big banners.

The Humidipak bag is what it was all over it.

So Humidipak wasn't the company,

the company was SEIYGE Humidic Control.

So the cigar company,

the Cigar Box Company, the cigar, the humidor maker,

his company was SEIYGE humidor or SEIYGE Cigar Box Company.

So that folded and, and basically went irrelevant.

And then we formed a new corporation with the 6 of us and

called the company, SEIYGE Humidic Control Corporation.

Humidic,

wasn't a word, but we thought, Hey, we're not humidity,

we're kind of controlling. So let's come up with humidic.

We have this brand new word that we, and so that,

that's what we with corporations spelled out SEIYGE Humidic

Control Corporation. So the product was Humidipak.

It was the, the Humidipak was the whole bag.

The inside pouch was SEIYGE. That's what we called it.

SEIYGE system 70 inside.

And so we printed labels up. We had these bags,

we slapped labels on them in the kitchen,

in the house off a block off of Como Lake in, in St.

Paul, I was single

- [Rob] Your home.

- [Sean] My home. I was single. I wasn't married.

And so I'd get up.

Used to be the attic was the master bedroom,

walked down the stairs, opened the door.

And, and we hired some like high school,

just outta high school kids.

2 of them, maybe 3 guys

we had hired.

We had a office in the kitchen, office

in the living room, office in the dining room, office

in the spare bedroom. That's 1, 2, 3, 4,

and then one eventually in the spare bedroom, downstairs,

five offices networked together on a phone system with,

with 5 lines.

We used Act! Contact Management software.

We had bought a database for $500, which was like,

oh my gosh.

And we were just calling up retail stores to ship samples,

load up the samples in somebody's car,

bring them to the post office. And that was our routine.

Every, that was the sales process.

And then we would follow up 30 days later after they got the

samples to get an order in.

- [Rob] The desks were made out of filing cabinets

and doors.

- [Tim] Yep.

- [Rob] On top of them.

- [Tim] If you look through Sean's house, I mean,

it was just a barrage of wires going everywhere. I mean,

it looked like it was a server room.

- [Rob] Don't trip.

- [Tim] Just like, yeah. Going through all. I mean,

through the kitchen and the family room into the bedrooms

and down the stairs.

- [Rob] It's like Steve Jobs starting in a garage.

- [Tim] From that very first show in,

it was in Orlando in 1997. As we went there,

as you were speaking to earlier is we didn't have a booth.

So we did the RV.

We didn't know anybody,

but we planted the RV in the parking lot of the Marriott.

That's where the show was being held.

And we would go into the entrances to get into the show full

of the back, backpacks with samples on it.

We'd go into the bar, we'd go into the restaurant.

We'd go around. If we went to dinner that night out,

down the street, we'd ask everybody, you know,

are you part of the show? You selling, you buying?

And, and we stood out there and we just tried to,

we were taking orders.

- [Sean] You take this door, I'll take this door.

And by the way, back then you've been to the shows nowadays.

It's nothing like it was back then. I mean,

this was like a mob coming in.

So it was a great opportunity for us really to sell.

As a matter of fact, who knows, maybe we did better in the,

in that fashion than we would've.

If we would've had somebody's booth. And we,

we were just going, hey, have you heard of Humidipak?

Have you heard of the Humidipak bag?

And of course nobody's heard of it,

let me tell you about it. And so we would take,

we didn't have order forms.

We took business cards and we're writing, you know,

orders on there, on the back.

Okay. You'll take a case.

And, and so on, we would get kicked out.

The, the show coordinators would say, you can't do this.

This is against show policy. You can't be selling out here.

You know, you guys don't have a booth.

And so we would just keep our eye out and,

and just keep selling.

- [Tim] But as Sean said, we, we couldn't get in.

And then Bill,

I remember his name Bill Fedder was the president of RTDA.

And he tracked us down and kicked us out.

And then they had the security guards watching for us.

So we'd back away from the entrance, try and get him,

you know,

maybe coming down the hall and then they would chase us and

we'd go to the other one and we'd go change clothes.

- [Sean] Oh yeah.

- We were doing absolutely.

- It didn't, it didn't.

We had to, we had to get orders in.

And we, that was,

that was the only option. Whatever has to get done.

We had to do it.

- [Tim] We were inviting people out to the RV.

We were smoking in the RV.

- [Rob] Smoking in the RV, which you're not allowed to do.

- [Tim] Well back then. You probably were.

We, we didn't get in with the security.

- [Rob] What cigars were you smoking in the RV?

Because they were pretty nice cigars.

- [Tim] Tony Borhani's Bahia Golds.

- [Rob] Bahia Golds.

- [Tim] We bought a box or two of those Tony Borhani

back in 1997 who

he was, he was like up and coming.

I mean he was big. He was.

- [Rob] Were these Cuban cigars?

- [Tim] No, no.

He was made them in Costa Rica actually. Yeah.

- [Rob] Okay. Bahia Golds.

- [Tim] Bahia Golds.

- [Sean] B-A-H-I-A, Bahia. So he was brand new,

but he became very popular as a cigar brand.

- [Tim] Well we ended up doing a deal with,

with Tony probably in that

99.

- [Sean] 99, 2000 era. Right before Fuente actually.

- [Tim] Yeah.

Before Fuente and we did a 4-pack for him up Bahia bag.

It was an orange bag. Had a bigger window on it.

You could see the cigars in it.

So he was one of our other first customers.

Developed a fairly good relationship with him.

- [Sean] He was a visionary. He,

he kind of bought into the vision of how we wanted to

change, how cigars are merchandised.

And by the way,

the films that we had at that time didn't work fast enough

to replenish the lost air.

What would happen in a normal wood humidor. So we,

our product wasn't engineered yet to be the,

the standard in a desktop humidor.

And so that came later after the new Boveda membrane,

the phenomenal membrane,

the one we were talking about with Carlito

and the strength of

it and all the one that we, we still use today.

And so we started to do a lot of research in our lab and you

know,

one of the issues was also bringing that box to equilibrium

or, you know, what's called seasoning that humidor.

And so Dr. Saari

did an awful lot of testing and analysis on what it's gonna

take.

What's the right humidity level to get it into the wood

properly at the right rate.

So you don't shock the wood because if you,

when you do traditional methods of wiping down that box with

water or putting a reservoir of water,

you do run the risk, depending on the humidor is made to,

to cause unnecessary expansion of the wood and,

and really change the geometry of that box.

And so how you season it's really important. So we said,

well,

why don't we come up with a product for seasoning these wood

humidors that does it really effectively where, you know,

beyond a shadow of a doubt where you, where you,

where it's done, right.

So it's scientific.

We knew how many grams needed to get into a typical humidor.

We knew how long it took for those grams, those, that water,

that water vapor to absorb into that wood.

And it's a 10- to 14-day process.

And so this is all over a lot of testing and,

and we were probably, we probably could have come out with,

you know, the product for humidors sooner than we did,

but we were really anal about making sure that it works

properly. And, and maybe that was,

maybe we didn't need to be that perfectionist kind of.

- [Rob] No, I think you did.

I think I love it because I know whatever we come out with

is tested and tried and it's not just.

- [Sean] That's right. You know.

- [Rob] The innovation is there.

The science is there.

- [Sean] And the need for revenue was there too.

So we were able to hold back a little bit on that to make

sure we understood the performance of it.

And then we also understood how we market it what's the best

way. So we went through a lot of ideas of, you know,

do we call this, is this just a stabilizer and so forth?

And we started using it with,

in conjunction with the existing devices out there. And,

and so we needed to test through all of that over time and

not just accelerated, but real-life testing.

And that's where the time goes into it.

We finally determined that this product is gonna be best on

its own. And so we wanted, we, by this time,

Humidipak with Fuente and so forth, they're starting to get,

you know, recognition in the marketplace.

And so people were coming up with Humi this, Humi

that, Humidi Puck, and so on.

And it was such a generic name.

Even some people who worked for us couldn't pronounce Humi

right. I mean, it was Humipack, Humidity Packet.

It was weird. And this is, you know,

so Humidipak was too generic in our eyes. And so we said,

you know what?

We've got an opportunity now where we've got the films,

we've got the product.

The performance is phenomenal where the world's first

two-way humidity control for desktop humidors.

This is timing is right. We put together the story,

we drafted a website for it and, and all of that.

And then we said,

we need to come up with another name because Humidipak,

you know, it's, there's limitations of that.

And we're still early, you know, at this point, of course,

we've been around for, you know, 5, 6, 7 years, 6 years.

So if that's, that's an eternity at that time for us,

but we knew that we were just, just getting started and,

and that we could afford the opportunity to do the right

brand name. And, and we thought, wow, you know what you do.

You know what this really does?

In essence, this,

this product creates such an awesome environment that you're

allowing cigars to improve over time, rather than degrade,

we're creating an aging vault.

And so we started, you know,

thinking about an aging vault as really you're transforming

your, your desktop humidor,

not just into something that has humidity in it, but you're,

you're creating an aging vault.

- [Rob] Because they do that at the factory.

They have the aging room that's humidity controlled.

- [Sean] And I think some of them probably call it

an aging vault as well.

So we're looking in, Tim started looking at books like

Latin, French, and everything else for vault.

And so Spanish word for vault is, is Boveda.

We didn't know how to pronounce it.

Boveda we were saying. We were saying,

we were saying Boveda because of Aveda.

The, the company in town here.

- [Tim] Skincare, Aveda.

- [Sean] Yeah. The salon products.

And so we're thinking it must be pronounced Boveda.

- [Rob] And who corrected you?

- [Sean] We didn't like the name we had,

but it was just the process of elimination.

We didn't like any of the other names.

And finally it's like, my gosh, we, it was the,

that was the hardest thing.

And we just kept procrastinating too much because it's like,

ah, but it finally it's like, alright,

we just gotta go with it.

Let's just do Boveda.

And so we said, Boveda is it.

We went down to Carlito,

told him here's our product for desktop humidors.

It's the world's first two-way humidity control for desktop

humidors, Boveda. And he looked at it.

He says, that's not how you pronounce it.

This is a Spanish word. It's it's Boveda.

- [Tim] It's Boveda.

- [Sean] And he said, alright, we'll call it Boveda.

- [Tim] We were so excited to share it with him. He,

he kind of looked at us like we were dummies. He was kind,

you dummies, that's a Spanish word.

But we did like the way that the word looked, you know,

as Sean said,

it's a really hard process to- you just don't fall in love

with something typically right away.

And we looked through so many different books,

French and Italian, Spanish, Latin, anything.

And, but we kind of keyed in on that word vault, just,

you know, once we saw that word, it was like, okay, that's,

that's kind of cool.

- [Rob] I remember the display at Tobacco Grove

that weighed about six tons.

- [Tim] The metal one. Yes.

- [Rob] The metal one.

- [Sean] You remember that?

- [Rob] Oh, it, I would have to dodge it every time.

- [Sean] I think it was 100 pounds.

I think it was 100 pounds.

- [Tim] Yeah. They were about 110 pounds.

- [Rob] It was a ton.

- [Tim] Yeah.

- [Rob] We never moved it.

Because God knows you don't wanna move it.

- [Tim] You wouldn't, you didn't have to.

- [Rob] And then it had all the different RH levels.

- [Tim] We tried to make it really, really simple.

So the, the, the name up at the top was, you know,

the storing and storing and aging cigars.

So we were trying to change mentality of people.

- [Sean] Storing and aging cigars at home.

- [Tim] At home. Yeah.

And then we try to make it really easy and say,

it's a three step process. 1, 2 and 3.

This is all you have to do. 1 season it, 2 pick this,

you know, pick this RH, and 3

just then get on the automatic reorder and then they'll show

up at your door.

- [Rob] So if I were a retailer, I'd be like,

how am I gonna sell this?

But until the customer realizes the convenience,

the mess-free. And no worries.

- [Tim] And that it works.

- [Rob] And it works.

- [Sean] We were lucky because at this time the internet,

the internet and so forth is starting to pick up momentum.

You know, you had Amazon out there and,

and now eCommerce was starting to be, you know,

accepted and so on. And it was just all theory.

You know, it started to pick up momentum, which was ideal.

We needed that because nobody wanted our product.

And we said, we, you know,

we used to eat breakfast every Friday morning on our weekly

meeting.

We ate here at Original Pancake House here in Wayzata.

And we said, you know, it's like, ah, no, one's gonna just,

you know, we can't get a distributor on this thing.

You know what, that's great.

You know, what's the best thing ever.

You know, why,

because we're gonna sell this thing direct to consumers.

We're going direct. We're gonna build a webpage.

Luckily the,

the thing that really made the product pick up momentum was

Cigar Aficionado said, hey, we will write up a

one pager for you guys in our Good Life section.

And that was really the turning point.

And so they wrote Boveda,

this brand new product for your humidor,

our phone was ringing off the hook.

- [Tim] It was crazy.

- [Sean] It was,

I mean we're talking months and months worth of,

we were down here at this time.

And we are, we in this office in,

we are picking up the phone. It was,

it was not the eCommerce like today. It was, it was,

you guys remember the term Sneakernet, it was Sneakernet.

You would get an order and you would fax, you know,

you'd get an order online that would come on the fax or,

or whatever, or online.

And then we'd fax over the order to the warehouse.

You know, to ship it out to consumers.

And eventually we would set up, actually, we would start it

right here. We would ship them from here.

And we would have assembly lines every day.

Just like pretty soon it just got burdensome and just the,

you know, every day operation.

And then it went up to North Branch, Minnesota,

where they started shipping product to consumers and,

and you look at a lot of high profile people.

So every now and then we would take a look at our who's,

who it's going to and who, if we didn't who they are,

we'd Google them.

- [Tim] Now everybody at home has Coolerdors,

and you know, any plastic container.

- [Rob] You would never get that with one-way

humidification.

You'd be you. That would be a full-time job.

To go through your entire collection, humidify it,

and then in 2 weeks you gotta do it again.

- [Tim] Because you're getting a hundred percent humidity

in there with a, with a, with a wet device.

- [Sean] There were two things that really

resonated with the market.

And both of these two things are equally important because

we spend a lot of money on cigars, you know, $10, $15,

sometimes $20, depending on what state you live in,

they're expensive.

And so if you just want to have a smoking experience,

go ahead and buy a Dutch Masters or, or a Swish Sweets, or,

or whatever. But if you want to enjoy the dynamic character,

that's in tobacco, you want to care for it properly.

And so eliminating those fluctuations and allowing the age

is a big deal. But the other thing that just so happens,

it's the easiest thing to use in the world.

You put the correct number of Boveda inside the humidor,

close the lid and you're done.

And it was that compounding effect that I think really

clicked. It was one, they're better.

They tastes good. Like Carlito had said,

I want to eat this thing now.

So that's really critical what we do to cigars. But,

but the other thing,

we live in a society that wants simplicity. And so we

meet that goal as well.

And it's those two things together that are everything in

this product.

- [Rob] Right. And I think too, like the expense wise,

I look at it now and it's like, okay,

my 100-count humidor cost me like $63.85 for

the whole year.

And how many hundreds of dollars of cigars did I have in

that humidor for the whole year?

So for $63,

I have perfect cigars for a whole year revolving

constantly. And I'm smoking them and I'm enjoying them.

That was priceless to me.

Some of the highlights of Boveda, where Boveda

has been placed, are definitely notable.

And I think some of the people out there should notice some

of these because they're not always readily available.

2004 Rolls-Royce

Phantom car places Boveda inside the car humidor.

What was that conversation like? Rolls-Royce calls up

Humidipak and says, yeah, we want your technology.

- [Tim] We tried to trade 8 Boveda packets for two Phantoms

and it didn't go over well.

- [Rob] Trade up that minivan we're getting

Rolls-Royce Phantom.

- [Sean] Yeah. Yeah.

Forzaro.

I forget the name of the company out of London

got a call from their, you know,

they're contracted with Rolls-Royce to make this glove box

humidor. And matter of fact, they sent us the actual,

you know, the three-cigar metal heavy-duty.

It's totally what you'd think of Rolls-Royce.

In terms of a pocket humidor and that pocket humidor,

I mean, it was really neat.

The glove box would open and this, this little metal,

three-cigar humidor would sit in the,

in this little cradle in the glove box.

And when you'd press the button on the humidor would open up

and fold out.

And here's your three cigars to take outta there. You'd,

you'd push it down. It was really neat.

$280,000 car with a with and they,

and it was Humidipak in there.

- [Rob] Do you still have replacements going out for

those or?

- [Sean] I don't. I doubt it.

No idea. I don't even know if they still have the model.

Subzero did a model too. Just very similar.

So Subzero's big wine fridge, this came years later,

their big $8,000 wine cellars, think of a big fridge, glass

door, and a bunch of shelving. In the middle shelf,

there was a wood humidor made in the U.S.A.

Really nice wood, mahogany.

And that was built for Humidipak, Boveda actually. Built for

Boveda. We were Boveda by this time.

And so this was an option for their Subzero products.

- [Rob] MLB bats and baseballs.

- [Sean] We, we, back in early 2000, maybe 2004-ish.

In that time period,

there was an article in Wall Street Journal where the,

the Colorado Rockies were taking some heat because they had

built this humidor. And so other teams were saying, hey,

what's going on here? You can't, you know,

have a, you know,

you're doing an unfair advantage when in fact what they were

doing is just following the instructions of Rawlings,

the manufacturer for all Major League baseballs.

And you want to keep baseballs in the 50% range of relative

humidity between it's just like wood. Believe it or not,

the materials in there behave similar.

You want to have it between 45, 55%-ish,

40 to 60% relative humidity in there.

And we started to then called I,

I sent the letter to the commissioner's office in New York

City. Hey, we've got this technology and to control

baseballs, we read the article, we might be able to help

on all that and said,

got a call back from one of their not executives, per se,

but someone who's heavily involved in Major League baseball,

former Hall of Fame baseball player, as a matter of fact,

and from St. Louis, played for the Cardinals.

And he was now in the Major League Baseball's administrative

offices. And so on.

And with this connections with Rawlings,

so we started to do some testing and it's amazing when you

dry down a baseball, how different it is when you have it,

water logged and how, like, for example, if you have low,

proper, and high humidity, the recoil impact on a,

on a ball just like dropping them from the same level off

the floor and the amount of bounce you get.

And so it is an unfair advantage around the league,

depending on where the water activity is of those baseballs.

- [Rob] Yeah. The dryer, it is, I would assume the,

the easier it's gonna pop up.

It's not gonna absorb all that energy.

- [Sean] There there's a,

there's a right humidity there and it changes.

And it's amazing

the dramatic changes to a baseball. Major League Baseball

should use Boveda in all of their packaging to bring them to

equilibrium.

Now, if every humidor, every team has a humidor, okay.

Maybe they have it covered in, in that type of environment,

but maybe the answer would be a big pail and they should

have Boveda.

Every one of them should be stored with Boveda

it's a big, it's a,

it is a big deal. They didn't wanna pay for a product.

And then eventually we were thinking, well,

let's just do this thing for free,

but it was just hard to get in there.

Nothing ever happened to it. But this to this day,

we would probably make, standardize the rule book,

let's just say that way in terms of home runs and,

and so on,

because the balls will behave the same now with Boveda,

whether you're playing in Florida or Colorado or Seattle

or Minnesota.

- [Rob] And the bats as well, the bats,

they had bat bags with Boveda in there

to make sure the wood of the, the bat was properly.

- [Sean] We heard that Ichiro,

remember the Japanese player, Ichiro, played

for the Seattle Mariners

and eventually played for the Yankees. He had a,

he had a personal bat bag and he would put Boveda in his bat

bag.

So that picked up a little bit of word of mouth within the

league, Marucci or Marucci bats believe, you know,

were rumored to use it.

Another bat company used it in a sleeve

and so on. That never picked up momentum either.

But bats also need to be at a ideal equilibrium to get the

proper flex recoil. And, and impact on the ball.

- [Tim] They're wood. Yeah. You know, I mean, they they're,

they're affected by the environment just like anything else

would be.

- [Rob] I thought really interesting was right after 9/11,

the government reaches out to you guys to control basically

patches for bioterrorism.

- [Sean] That lab that you're talking about in

Albuquerque for biotech, whatever that was for that patch.

And then there's another one for their MREs, meals

ready-to-eat and Natick, Natick in, in Massachusetts.

And so they,

but everything was top secret that for the most part and

sort of, and,

and we never got any results in their testing or,

or whatever. And

those were opportunities that never really materialized.

- [Tim] You're going down a list. I mean,

these are things over the years,

we've had such unique opportunities that have come our way

where it,

you get to understand products that you never ever thought

of that might have some sensitivity to moisture. And, and.

- [Rob] Trust me, I know.

Starting out in customer service here.

You get some really weird phone calls.

Say what? Alligator eggs that was unique.

Boeing called us for the bags that they were shipping the

wings in or something like that.

And the bag that they wrapped it in needed to be humidified.

- [Tim] Oh, we've had, yeah.

Car parts, you know, little plastic nylon pieces that,

that are kind of like fasteners.

Those would break if they're not there.

- [Rob] Too dry, yeah.

- [Sean] Crickets was a interesting one.

A local cricket company. So crickets need to be in a,

if it gets too dry, they don't live very long.

And so they need to have a more humidity.

And so they had these chambers and there was a local company

here in the Twin Cities and they,

it was buying some product.

- [Tim] Lizard and snake food.

- [Sean] Oh yeah, yeah, exactly.

They're for their reptiles. They feed the, the bait,

you know, bait or feed, I guess.

- [Tim] And they won't eat them they're dead.

So they need them to be live in order for the reptiles to

eat them.

- [Rob] See.

Boveda's just helping out the next reptile

to get a good meal.

- [Tim] That's right.

- [Rob] I'm sure there's more questions out there.

Post your questions. We will get to them in the comments.

We have a whole team that looks at this stuff and I don't

know. I can't

thank you guys enough. Not, not only for my job,

but for changing the industry for us,

for making us enjoy cigars that we want to eat,

even though we don't,

but we want to eat them because they taste so good for just

the whole thing. We can't thank you enough.

- [Sean] Awesome. Thank you, Rob.

We appreciate what you do. Thank you, Mr. Boveda.

- [Rob] Yeah. Right, right, right.

By the way, I don't own the company.

These guys here. It's not, you know, I'm just on camera.

I'm the face. So.

- [Tim] Well, it's been fun,

but what has been exciting is bringing science to a very old

industry that has done way things for a hundred years

sometimes doing them them right.

But not because they were scientifically doing it.

They just through experimentation of their own. And, and,

but as a company what's really fulfilling is that we get to

educate people. You know,

we have smart people like you on our staff and Dr.

Al and Bob when we started and,

and that's just continued to expand. And,

and we get to look at it a different way,

we're, we're a packaging company that has expertise.

You know, we're not cigar makers.

We'll never pretend to be. We love them.

So we get nerdy in it. And like, how's this work?

Why is it working that way? But we've, we've been blessed,

you know, to be in an opportunity to,

to change the industry. And, you know,

Carlito said it to us. He goes, if you guys say what you do,

if you do what you say, you do,

you will change the industry.

And he, he was right.

I think we really have changed the industry for the, for

the better.

- [Rob] There's another episode of Box Press.

This one was behind-the-scenes of Boveda.

25 years being in the business. We're celebrating this year.

Again, if you need more Boveda head over to bovedainc.com.

If you want to explore the science, we have tons of videos,

tons of how to's, check out our FAQs.

And again,

hats off to Sean and Tim and the rest of the crew for

starting Boveda 25 years ago,

we would be up a creek without a paddle without it, so.

Thanks, guys.

- [Sean] Awesome. Thanks Rob. - [Rob] Thank you.