You gotta hear this story to believe it. Great factoid to share at the cigar lounge—"hey, did you know that the founder of Serino Cigars started in..." Listen and find out!

Who's On this Box Press Cigar Podcast:

Patriarch Tony Serino (founder) and his son, Carson (vice president and creative director) of Serino Cigars, a small batch cigar maker and private label cigar manufacturer. Interviewed by cigar podcast host, Rob Gagner at PCA 22, International Cigar Trade Show in Las Vegas, baby.

Listen to great life lessons from one cigar smoker to another:

00:00 Cold open

00:24 How well do you know me? Tony versus Carson Serino!

14:52 Who runs Serino Cigars?

17:42 Who manufactures cigars for big cigar companies?

18:37 What's a private label cigar?

20:02 Serino, the makers of cigars for other people's brands—the goal is getting cigars out to more people in the world

26:11 How many cigars does the Serino cigar brand make a year?

29:43 Getting into the cigar business as a hobby

37:50 I might as well tell you the whole story of opening the first video franchise store in the U.S.

46:02 Imagine if the dad videotaping your youth hockey games was the Blockbuster Video guy?

49:42 Well, cigars is a big thing right now...

59:01 Treat people the way you want to be treated.

59:56 There's good camaraderie in the premium cigar industry

Boveda are those brown 2-way humidity packs you put in a humidor to preserve cigars. When you own a humidor, you need to make sure the cigars inside stay well-humidified or they can be hard to light, burn to too fast or get moldy. With Boveda in your humidor, you'll get better flavor from a cigar. Boveda has been keeping cigars tasting great for more than 25 years.

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

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

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

- [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.

(lively music)

Welcome to another episode of Box Press.

I'm your host, Rob Gagner,

and I'm sitting across from a father-son duo.

Father-son duo-

we're gonna get in to learning everything about them,

but you guys know what this means.

It's a reoccurring segment where I ask each of them,

the father and the son, three main questions.

And now we're gonna see how well they know each other.

How well does Carson know his dad, Tony

and how well does Tony know his son, Carson.

All right, you guys ready to play?

- We're ready to play. - Let's do it.

- All right.

Okay, Carson, I'm gonna ask you,

what is your dad's favorite book?

- "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

- Oh, 100% baby.

Just so you guys know, we are keeping score.

He's 1-for-1 right now. There's three total questions.

Should you get anything less

than two of the questions correct

you will have to dissolve the company, sell all the assets,

and split ways.

Okay?

(all laugh)

Tony's looking at me like - No pressure.

- What are you talking about my company for?

I ain't selling nothing.

All right.

Okay.

Carson, what is your dad's favorite music or band or artist?

- It's The Beatles.

- You sure you want to hang your hat on The Beatles?

- I think so.

- Okay, it's not, it's Thomas Hyman,

who is a dear friend of your dad's.

- Yes. - Tony, who is Thomas Hyman?

We all probably don't know who he is.

- Well, Thomas Hyman is a multi-talented a musician,

plays over nine instruments,

wrote over 400 songs and lived in San Francisco.

He passed away a few years ago,

and we became very good friends through the cigar industry.

He started smoking my cigars and then contacted me,

he found out that I played a piano and was playing guitar

and I told him I was building a house, so he said,

"Well, I'll come down and help you set up your music studio"

because I was building a music studio inside my house.

- No way.

- Yeah, and he said, "When you get your house built,

build a professional music studio inside your house."

And he says,

"I'll come down and live with you for three or four months,

and I'll really teach you how to play."

When three years went by, he got pancreatic cancer,

and he passed away

before he could actually come down and help me

but on the last day that he died,

we FaceTimed each other and I sang one of his songs to him

just before he passed away.

- [Rob] Holy cow.

- He was a very close friend of mine.

- Thank you for sharing that, Tony.

- Yeah.

- I should have went with that one for sure.

- Yeah.

- Did you know about him?

- Yeah, I knew Thomas for sure, yeah.

Yeah. I wasn't going with the, you know.

- Okay, so does Thomas really have any-

- So, Thomas' CDs are in my car

and I play them all the time.

I used to listen to the Beatles

- Yeah, so he's close.

- And Sirius XM, but my heart belongs to Thomas.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so he's a singer.

He was a songwriter, so I know he has hits

for like other people.

I don't know, like off the top of my head.

- So, he's more of a songwriter.

And then the people who take credit

are the artists that he wrote it for.

- Right.

- He was a catalog writer.

- It was a little bit of a trick answer.

- Yeah.

- I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Tony, we're gonna give him credit for the Beatles.

- Okay.

- But I love the fact that we know now

how Thomas really played a role in your life.

- Yeah. - And it was super impactful.

- A big impact. - Totally.

- He's really talented.

- Yeah, it sounds like it.

And a gracious person.

To like offer to come and help you

because you're so passionate about music.

- Yes, absolutely.

- And impart his wisdom.

Like what a cool friend.

- Yeah. - What a cool friend.

- He was a great friend. - Yeah.

- That's awesome.

- Yeah, I even kept all his voicemails.

I have all his voicemails.

- I have my grandma's voicemails

and a few other voicemails that every once in a while,

you listen to them.

- [Tony] Yeah.

- [Carson] Yeah.

- Yeah. - [Tony] Yeah.

- Carson, what would your dad say

his greatest accomplishment is in life?

This is the epitaph.

This is what's going on the headstone.

Tony is known for this.

Tony said that this, out of everything else in his life

was his greatest accomplishment.

- I'm stumped from the last answer.

So I'm either gonna say, building the business.

- Wait, wait, wait, wait.

So, okay, you can say right now that you're gonna say two.

say, choice number one is building the business.

- Or choice number two is raising me and Amber

and the sisters.

- Okay, so now that we have two choices out there,

are you going through your brain and thinking, which one?

Because you can only pick one, and you have to say,

this is the one that my dad said.

So which one is it, Carson?

- Probably number one.

- Number one which was?

- [Carson] The business.

- It was building the business?

- [Carson] Yeah.

- It was building the whole cigar business.

The whole thing

- [Carson] Multiple businesses.

- That we pour all of our energy into,

and we distribute all over the world

so people can enjoy a good time.

- Yeah.

- You were wrong.

- Okay.

- It was the second one.

- Okay.

- But it shows that you're humble, right?

Because you look at your father

as somebody who's hardworking.

- Yeah.

- Who built something. - Absolutely.

- You probably don't look at your father and go,

you did a real good job raising me.

Because, we know our flaws better than anyone else.

- Certainly, for sure.

Absolutely, yeah.

- So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt

on that one as well.

But that's two.

- Okay.

- You got two wrong.

- Okay.

- So we'll see if your dad keeps you around.

- Okay. - Okay?

- Yeah.

- You could still come to Sunday dinner,

but it'll be awkward for a while.

- Certainly. Yeah, for sure.

- Okay.

Tony, you're in the hot seat now, my friend.

- [Tony] All right, here we go.

- What is Carson's favorite book?

- Well, that's a problem

because Carson reads a book almost every day.

- Right.

I know, I talked to you about it over the phone.

- I know.

- So now you have to go and go.

Okay, like, let's go back to the epitaph.

Let's go back to desert island.

You only get to bring one book.

Which book is Carson gonna take with him?

He's gotta take a book

and this book has to entertain him for the rest of his life.

It's only one.

Come on, Tony.

- I don't know.

- I know you can do it. I'll give you some hints.

It has to do with your heritage.

It has to do with how this influenced your son

on how much he reads.

- I just see so many books that he reads.

I don't know.

I don't know.

- Give him a one word hint.

One word hint.

- Do you have a favorite out of all the books you read?

- Yeah.

It was the original back in like high school

that kind of got me going or there is a-

- Carson, I said one word.

- Leonardo DiCaprio.

- Okay, Leonardo DiCaprio.

- Leonardo DiCaprio. - That's your hint.

All right, so just take a minute.

It's Leonardo DiCaprio.

What does he have to do with books?

- I don't know, "The Titanic?"

- It's close, but it's "The Great Gatsby."

- Oh, "The Great Gatsby."

Okay. - It's a tough one.

He reads so much.

- "The Great Gatsby," I'll remember that.

- Around the same time period.

- Yeah.

And all my hints, Carson,

I apologize if they weren't even accurate.

- No, that was a good one.

- Okay.

All right, Tony,

what is Carson's favorite music, band, artist?

What's his favorite?

What is he gonna listen to all the time now?

- Oh boy.

I mean, we both play music together.

- Yeah.

There's a lot of influences.

- I know.

- There's a lot of people you guys probably listen to.

- I don't know, maybe the Beatles.

- Close.

- That was two.

- Paul McCartney?

- No.

You want one more?

I'll give you one more.

- Same era.

- I'll give you one more.

For the redemption.

This is the alley-oop Tony.

- The alley-oop, here we go.

- There was four people in one of his bands, Crosby Stills.

- What is it, Tony?

- Neil Young. - Huh?

- Neil Young. - Who?

- Neil Young.

- Neil Young.

- Oh, I didn't know that.

- Neil Young.

- Yeah, I didn't know that.

- That's all right.

It's Neil Young.

- The Beatles were number two.

If I would've known this was how it was gonna go,

I probably would've led with the easy answer for him.

- Okay, The Beatles.

- Yeah, no, I didn't even know

he liked Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

- I didn't make it easy on you.

I didn't explain any of the rules to them, by the way.

I just asked them the questions and that was it.

- Oh, yeah.

- So you're doing good.

- Okay. - And it's just all for fun.

- We're in the ballpark. We're in the parking lot.

- Yeah.

It's not like, he's like, I have no idea.

You know, some techno band out of France.

Okay, we're good.

We're good.

Tony, what is Carson's greatest accomplishment in life?

- I think his articulate vocabulary,

his reading skills and public speaking.

His education, I believe.

- Okay, we're on a good vein here

because it's learning how to play an instrument.

Learning how to play those instruments

that influence you guys so much.

It takes a lot, right?

- [Tony] Yeah.

- [Carson] A lot of discipline.

- How many instruments do you play?

- Well, I only play guitar and piano.

Right now I'm learning,

but I'm gonna try to learn drums soon.

Like that's in its incipient nascent stages right now.

So, yeah.

That's the next frontier.

- Love it.

- [Carson] We're gonna keep going.

- Always pushing yourself.

- [Carson] Oh yeah.

- Always trying to get the next best thing,

because guess what?

That's what we do when we're excited about something.

- [Carson] For sure.

- And we're passionate about it.

- It's fun being an amateur,

because that's where all the passion is.

- A guy who reads about a book a day

has to be a quick learner.

So, it's a good start to be learning new instruments.

- It's not quite a book a day, but yeah.

I enjoy reading. - So what is it?

- I think it connects you to a lot of different insights

that from the past and future looking forward

that you want to be able to

so I'd say I try to do one every 10 days,

a couple a month.

And I feel like that's a healthy-

- He orders a book a day.

- Yeah. (both chuckle)

Yeah, it's more so like built into my lifestyle now, so.

- Sure.

So I have a friend who on TikTok,

she reviews books in the sense of like,

Hey, I'm reading this book and does like a quick,

30-second plug.

She actually gets paid like 250 bucks

- [Carson] Wow. - to do that.

- She's got like 30,000 plus people following her.

I suggest possibly to help fund all the books.

You start a TikTok because you'd be a real good person

to reference what book to read to somebody like me

because I'm gonna go on TikTok and I follow you

and I'm gonna go, oh man, I should read that.

Do you like social media?

- Well, I run our social media for the company.

I am not on TikTok,

but I have seen like all the use cases

and that's like a good one.

For pick up, just like little quick reads

or for insights into what people are,

the pulse of what people are reading.

- You could give it your top one, two, three,

this is why you should read the book.

Boom, go.

- [Carson] Yeah.

- And if you're reading them every 10 days,

you'd be super valuable to a publisher.

And then they'd send you books for free.

And then on top of that, they'd pay you to read it.

- [Carson] I'm in the wrong business.

- No, it's a side hustle.

Everyone's gotta have a side hustle.

I've just given you some ideas.

- [Carson] Yeah, I'm with you.

- I collect a 25% royalty on all my ideas, okay?

You're cool?

- Works for me.

- Awesome, verbal agreement.

You heard it, Tony.

(Rob laughs)

- It's recorded.

- Yeah, it's recorded.

- Yeah, signed, sealed, delivered.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- All right.

So obviously we learned a little bit

about the father-son relationship that exists right here

in front of our eyes.

But there's stuff that we don't see.

So as people that work together in business

and are also related,

intimately related, father-son relationships,

sometimes some boundaries need to be placed.

Like hey, we're not at work, so let's cut out the work talk.

Do these rules and guidelines exist in your relationship?

Or is it pretty fluid?

You can ebb and flow and it doesn't offend anyone?

- We do have a hard time with that.

- But we do have a lot of things in common.

So sometimes the business does get in the way,

but we kind of break it up with our music skills,

talking about our music

and we really do have a good family.

- Right.

That was your greatest accomplishment

is raising a good family.

- [Tony] My wife and, he's got two sisters

and we all get along great.

- Now, are the sisters involved in the business too?

- [Tony] No.

- How about your wife, Tony?

- [Tony] No.

- Okay, so it's just you two.

- Extended family.

Uncle, my uncle's involved.

- My brothers, they're involved in the business.

- And then everyone with the company,

at the warehouse and the front office,

everyone's been there for 15+ years

so it's like a small family.

We don't have turnover.

- But for you guys,

you guys are kind of on a desert island together

because you have to live this dual life.

You gotta work together and you gotta be related.

- Yeah and it's not, there's no, like,

it doesn't get too hairy at all.

But sometimes you do have periods where it's too work heavy

in that balance.

- Yeah, and you adjust.

- [Carson] Yeah, and you adjust.

- You just gotta adjust.

- And then sometimes you gotta take a step back and be like,

Hey, we're getting on each other too much about work.

- A good apology goes a long way.

- [Tony] Yeah. - [Carson] Yeah.

For sure.

Absolutely.

- A little self-reflection.

- [Carson] Yeah, absolutely.

- [Tony] And that happens a lot.

(Rob laughs)

- [Carson] Especially around trade show time.

- Yeah man, I hear you.

It's not easy to come to a trade show.

- No.

- And on top of it, your line, just for everyone out there,

let's just say a cigar company on average has 20 different,

SKUs, you guys are running

how many different SKUs you got in the portfolio?

Because you're distributing products.

- We literally have thousands

because our main business is manufacturing cigars

for private labeling for other big companies.

- Right.

So you're running distribution.

- In our own core line, in our catalog

with our brand names, we might have 400.

- 400 SKUs?

- Yeah, but then we make cigars for so many.

- Including sizes and stuff.

- Yeah.

- Well, if you're looking at catalog, we've got 400 SKUs.

- I know.

- [Rob] Wow. - But that's ours.

- And then you've got everyone else's.

- [Tony] Yeah.

- Because a shop will call you up and say,

Hey, I need somebody's cigar and you go, okay, I got it

and you ship it out.

- Yeah, we private label for a lot of internet companies,

we private label for

- Okay.

- A lot of big companies that have a lot of SKUs.

- What's private label?

- Well, private label is a company comes to us

because we actually have the factories,

we have three factories in the Dominican Republic

that we're partners with and one in Nicaragua.

And we can turn out a lot of cigars.

So there's a lot of lack of rollers.

- Wait a minute, back to the question.

What does it mean to private label?

- Okay, it means to make another manufacturer's cigars

they don't have the manpower to make enough of their own.

They give us the blend, they give us the packaging,

we make the cigars.

I import it for them, bring it into my warehouse,

and then organize it and ship it to them.

- Got it.

Do they send you the tobacco as well

that they want to use?

- No, they give us a blend or they approve a blend.

- So you're sourcing the raw tobacco as well?

- [Tony] Yeah. - Because you're growing it,

you're curing it, you're sourcing it, you're sorting it.

- Right, exactly.

- Got it.

- And we do this for lots of companies.

That's our main business.

- Got it, that's the brick.

That's what's paying the mortgage.

This is how we keep the lights on.

We are the makers of cigars for other people's brands.

Got it.

And you do that with three factories?

Two in the D.R. and one in Nicaragua?

- Three in the D.R.

- Three in the D.R.

- And one in Nicaragua.

- One in Nicaragua.

So I stand corrected, four factories.

That's a lot of overhead to manage.

- Oh yeah.

- How many employees is that just on a rough number?

- Well, now after the COVID has been over,

we lost a lot of rollers,

but we've had up to 500 or 600 employees.

- Wow.

- Yeah, rollers all combined.

- Carson, what are you thinking?

- Yeah, just interconnected all at like one time,

and there's definitely different parts and different people

who are involved with the company

like Maurice and Sergio and Omar.

And then they're all, you know.

- Who are those guys?

- Those are our partners.

- Partners who run the factory

and farms and fields and all that stuff.

- All right.

They're the boots on the ground.

- [Carson] For sure.

- They're making it happen.

They're making sure the factory's going.

That we got product coming in and we got product going out.

- Yeah, farming.

They're also farming, planting tobacco.

There's a lot of employees.

- And all of those guys are vertically integrated,

so they're all working within their own chain

and their own company as well.

So, yeah.

- What do you mean by that?

Their own company?

Aren't they working for you?

- Yeah, we're all working together.

- Yeah, we work together, it's a partnership.

- Yeah, it's a partnership.

So they have their own farm.

They run the farms in the factory and oversee everything.

And then we go down there and work with them as well.

And vice versa.

They come to The States and work with us.

- So it's not like, Tony, you're from the top.

It's your company, your business and then it trickles down.

It's more like, hey

- [Tony] Yeah, it's a partnership.

- let's all get together and share resources

so we can achieve this greater goal of producing cigars.

- Absolutely.

- The same people have been together, for close to 30 years.

- Yeah. - Wow.

- And we've never even had an argument.

Not even one.

- How do you do that, Tony?

- How do you do that?

- We have a lot of respect for each other.

- A lot of respect.

- Yeah, a lot of respect for one another.

And we're all making money together

and we throw a lot of ideas off each other.

And we're constantly talking, communicating.

- A lot of trust.

- [Tony] Every day, you have to do this every day.

- A lot of trust. - I would say trust

- And a lot of it is trust and honesty, yeah.

- Trust and keeping everyone's best interest

in front of you.

Like our best interest and their best interests-

we're all together.

We want to see them do well and they wanna see us do well.

So I think working earnestly together

is the main ingredient.

- Well said. Because it can get a little selfish sometimes

if you think,

hey man, I'm doing all this work and you're benefiting.

But really what you're saying is,

I'm looking at the big picture here

when I'm working hard and it benefits you

I also get that in return

because we all have each other's best interest in hand,

in mind.

We go into everything we do with that

in the back of our brain.

- Yeah, I would say that's it.

- That's awesome.

- That's the essence for sure.

- There's no other way to do it without any arguments

otherwise, if you get greed, if you get selfish

or if you just get downright evil, it won't work.

Somebody's out.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

And the volume that we do

is an outstanding amount for a small company like us.

I mean, before the pandemic,

we were bringing in a million and a half cigars a month.

- And that's a small company.

- Hang on, Tony.

That's not a small company.

A million cigars. - [Tony] And a half.

- A million and half cigars a month.

- Well, we would bring in 40-foot containers,

which holds approximately 600,000 cigars.

And then in our heyday.

- Wait a minute, 600,000 boxes?

- [Tony] No, cigars.

- Cigars.

- [Tony] Cigars. - Okay.

So let's just do the quick dirty math.

We're like right at 18 million a year in cigar making.

- Well, we would bring in, in our heyday,

we would bring in two containers a month, two to three.

Now it's different.

After the pandemic, we lost a lot of rollers.

- I get that. But let's just stick on the number.

- [Carson] Okay.

- 18 million a year, right?

- Yeah.

- 18 million cigars made a year.

- [Tony] Of all different price points.

- It's not a small business.

Why Tony, does it feel like a small business to you?

- Well.

- I'll let you answer once he's done.

- For sure.

- Well, when you're making cigars for other people

- That's right.

- They're their cigars, they're not ours.

We're just doing it for them.

When we're making very little markup.

- Right. - Okay.

- We're talking about small margins

because you're looking for high volume.

Got it.

- Yeah, high volume, small margin.

And our containers are already pre-sold.

So when they come in, they go out.

- So it's not like one cigar

it's not Serino Cigars which is your brand.

It's doing 18 million.

Serino Cigars is selling how many cigars a year?

- The Serino brand itself is still pretty small.

That's only been around for five years.

- Yeah, give me the number that you sell every year.

A rough number.

- Then we have our APS cigars.

- I get that but let's keep it easy for the consumer.

- A few hundred thousand.

- Yeah. - A few hundred thousand.

- Yeah. - Like less than 500,000?

- That's probably right around where we're at.

- Okay.

Now Tony, I'm tracking with you.

It's a small business because your brand of cigars

is only doing about 500,000 out in the marketplace.

- Now, our bundle cigars is different.

- Right, I get that.

But the bundle cigars still get white labeled.

They still get private labeled, right?

- No, those are our brands.

Those are our brands

that we do private label for other people.

- Yeah, like a shop stick.

It might be a shop stick.

They come unbanded.

They're bundles.

- And we have some branded.

- Yeah, okay.

So again, it's not a Serino brand, though.

You guys pour money, marketing,

advertising into the Serino brand.

You're not gonna do that with the bundle sticks?

- [Tony] No.

- Got it.

Perfect.

Did you want to add anything to that,

or did it clarify it up?

- It clarified

and that was the track I was about to run down

is that having so many other like, side projects

with just brick-and-mortars,

mom-and-pops that are like five stores,

that's where it's all compounding together.

- It's a lot of work for a little return on investment.

- [Carson] Exactly.

- But it's helping everybody sell more cigars

and smoke more cigars.

So at the end of the day,

everyone at Serino or at APS Distribution,

is that the big group?

- [Carson] Yeah.

- APS Distribution is happy, right?

That's what keeps everyone happy.

Moving along.

We're smoking cigars, we're making cigars.

We're making the world a better place.

Love it. - With you.

- Where are the moments that in the beginning

or in the day to day, you just think,

this is gonna fail and I'm gonna have to just chalk it up,

it's over?

It could be a project.

It could be the whole business.

It could be saying the whole business, APS Distribution

I'm out, I'm good.

Buy me out.

Have you ever gotten there?

Have you ever thought that?

- Not yet.

- Not yet.

- Not yet.

- Have you ever had a circumstance that made you think

that that was an option on the table?

Like a forced option?

Like, oh my gosh, we're gonna have to close shop.

- No.

- No.

- No, we have too much business.

- Yeah, too much business.

- The initial stages though, when I was really young.

- Yeah, Tony, go back with me.

Let's go back.

- Yeah, before we got all the big customers.

- A Chrysler Plymouth minivan with tarped up windows,

and he was selling cigars out of it, so.

- Yeah, you're right.

This is a long time ago though.

- Yeah, when I was young.

- Let's go back, Tony.

- The first three years,

the first three years of the cigar business,

remember I got into this business as a hobby.

- Okay.

- Yeah, as a hobby.

- Just a hobby, what year was this?

- 1995, 96.

- The boom, the cigar boom.

The boom ended.

- The boom was just ending.

I got in a few years too late.

- All right. - Just a few.

The boom was like 92, 93, 94.

- Sure.

So it's fizzling.

- [Tony] I caught part of the boom.

- Right.

- [Tony] I caught part of it.

- You're kind of riding the wave.

You didn't ride it the whole way,

but you caught a little bit of it.

Okay, so why so difficult?

It's a great wave.

Jump on.

Let's ride it.

But here we are driving around in a Chrysler minivan

that has tarp over the windows.

Because the window broke?

- Yeah, when I was younger, yeah.

It was tough sledding, I remember that.

- Tough sledding?

- Yeah, like it was tough to launch

and there was definitely when we were really small.

- Yeah well, we started off with a retail store first.

- All right, so you're retailers.

- Yeah, we started off retail.

- You're meeting the customer, you're handing them cigars,

you sell them cigars.

We're good to go.

Then you decide to go back behind the door

and start cooking in the kitchen.

- And make our own brands.

And then get some salesman out in the road.

- So, when you did the, hey, I'm running retail,

now let's go back and start making cigars.

What was it that made you think, oh man,

I shouldn't be back here making cigars, I gotta get out

I gotta get out of the kitchen.

- No, I never thought about that.

- There was never a situation that came up

where you thought that?

- No.

- Okay, then what was the struggle?

Where was the struggle?

- I mean, I would say in the initial, in the beginning.

- Well, you have to know a little bit about my background.

- Okay.

- Okay, so I'm 70 years old.

I've been in this business for close to 30 years.

- Yeah.

- But when I grew up as a child,

I worked as soon as I was able to work.

- You were working.

- [Tony] I was working- - Let's go.

- With my dad. My education, I never went to college.

I never even went to high school.

I went to trade school because I learned to build,

I was a contractor, an electrician, a plumber, I fixed cars.

I could do anything.

And my family had a frozen food factory.

So when I wasn't in school or if I wasn't contracting,

I was working for them.

- I like it.

You had an entrepreneurial family.

And so the big picture.

- [Tony] My father only went to the sixth grade.

- The big picture is, hey, this is our family.

This is how we eat.

This is how we afford to live.

So all hands on deck.

If you don't have a shovel in your hand

or a hammer in the other, get on over here

because we've got some stuff for you to do.

All right.

You're painting a good picture.

- And my dad was a jack-of-all-trades too.

When he started off,

he came from Italy when he was six years old.

Started shining shoes, then he became a cobbler.

Then he had a dry cleaning shop

then he opened up restaurants, then catering companies.

Then he ended up building a really big name

Italian frozen food factory called Sarino's Frozen Foods,

which our whole family worked there.

My brothers, my sisters, everything, all my friends,

everybody.

- I love it.

- And did that until probably about 20 years old.

And then got in a very bad motorcycle accident

where I got run over by a car.

And I was in traction for almost about a year.

- What's traction?

- Well, there's steel pins in my legs.

- Got it. - And in the hospital.

- Oh, got you.

- This is prehistoric surgery.

- An exoskeleton to help you.

- In 1970. - Physical therapy.

Rehabilitation before it was nice.

- Got it.

- Before there was like, all the bells and whistles.

- So Humpty Dumpty needed to be put back together again.

- And I moved to Florida to recuperate.

- Got it.

- Okay.

- Great place to smoke a cigar.

Especially if you're laid up.

- Well, no, I still didn't smoke then.

Never smoked a cigarette in my life

and never really drank and lived in Massachusetts,

Boston, Massachusetts, kind of gray, dirty.

Back in the 60s, it was not like now

it was very dirty, very gray.

- It's a blue collar town.

- Yeah, blue collar town but once I moved down to Florida,

it was like my eyes opened up.

I saw color.

Okay, and I did come down here with a settlement

because it wasn't my fault.

I got run over by a drunk cop.

- Got it. - Okay.

- I'm sorry to hear that.

- Had some money and came down here.

Moved down here all by myself and I mean, to Florida.

- Yeah, I know.

We got it.

- Okay, to Florida and opened up

the very first video franchise store in the United States.

- Was it Blockbuster?

- Well, I'll lead on to that.

So that was before even Blockbuster existed.

There was a street in Fort Lauderdale,

which was called Electronics Row.

And every electronic store that you can think of was there,

and this was when the TVs,

little Sony Trinitron, 13-inch TVs came out.

And I invented this magnifying glass

and a box to slip over a Trinitron.

It's on 13-inch Trinitron

and created the first projection television set.

- So, hey, give me one second here.

You remember the episode of "Friends"?

Where the guy that pounds?

Did you watch "Friends?"

Okay, he pounds on the ceiling when the friends are too loud

all of you out there.

He died, and he gave the people upstairs that annoyed him,

his full apartment.

And in the apartment was a wheelable big magnifying glass.

That you would put in front of a TV.

That was you? - I created the first one.

Yeah.

- Did you even know that your invention

hit the silver screen, that is "Friends"?

- No.

- That's amazing.

- I didn't patent it,

so other people came out with other ones.

- Oh, okay.

So it may not have been your model.

- It might not have been my model.

- Why didn't you patent it, Tony?

- Well, like I said, I never went to college.

I went to trade school.

- Got it.

So it ended up not being super profitable.

- I was not a big reader,

but I just had a lot of ambition.

- Yeah. - A lot of ambition.

A lot of drive.

- You're gonna grind it out until you get there.

- I like to make money.

And so I turned that store.

This was when the very first Sony Betamax came out.

It wasn't even VHS then.

Well, I might as well just tell you the whole story.

- Yeah, let's go.

- Yeah.

I mean, living in Boston, okay.

I lived with a tough crowd.

Tough crowd.

We would do anything to make a buck.

We had to make money.

- Yeah. - So when I moved to Florida,

I saw a movie theater across the street.

I went over to the projectionist and I said,

do you wanna make some money?

And he says, but who are you?

I said, I own an electronics shop across the street.

And I said, I have this big video camera.

I said, let me come in here at midnight

and film all your first run movies

before they even are released.

Because the movie theaters got the movies

two weeks before they released them.

So there was no copyright laws.

Nobody even knew about video recorders then.

- Right now, all of this stuff is protected.

- I had "Star Wars," I had "Grease," every movie

two weeks before they came out of the theater.

- Okay, hang on, let me set the stage.

Right now in today's world,

all of that is protected by copyright.

So at this time, Tony wasn't breaking the law.

Because they didn't even think that this could be a thing

that they had to protect themselves against.

- Sony was worried about stealing.

They were trying to stop the video recorder

from recording TV shows.

- Got you.

- That's what they were trying to stop.

That's what their focus was at.

But then that became that anything that's in the air

is free.

So, if you're broadcasting it,

people have the right to record it on TV.

- Sure.

- I went the other direction.

I got a big video camera,

and then I had a room with 100 video recorders

and just started making movies

and selling them for $75 a piece.

Now I'm 20 years old.

I made my first million dollars in cash.

And then from there on, I opened up five stores.

Then I franchised it and sold 100 stores.

And remember, no big education.

And at that time, when I was 15 years old,

I started practicing the piano for five hours every day.

So at my house, I had a grand piano.

I thought I was Elvis Presley. I was buying people cars.

I'm buying people houses.

- 25 years old.

- Lived with eight girls at one time.

Had a swimming pool right inside my house.

I could build.

I was an electrician, a plumber, a carpenter.

I built all my houses, I built all my video stores.

And that's when Wayne Huizenga heard about me.

- And who's Wayne Huizenga?

- Wayne Huizenga owned Waste Management

and owned Blockbuster Entertainment.

Owned the Miami Dolphins, the Florida Panthers,

the Florida Marlins, and AutoNation

and hundreds of other companies.

- Sure.

He's a tycoon.

He's got it all.

- Okay, and then we got other people involved in it.

Sumner Redstone, Sumner Redstone owned Viacom

Viacom which Wayne ended up buying

a lot of the movie studios.

And Sumner Redstone owned almost every radio station

and every drive-in theater.

Sumner Redstone was from Massachusetts.

When I was 13 years old, my father's factory burned down

and it took about three months

to get it back up and running.

I went to work for Sumner Redstone when I was 13.

Ended up, once Wayne hired me as a consultant.

He hired me as a consultant.

His partners were Sumner Redstone and Richard Branson.

Richard Branson owned Virgin Records.

So Wayne opened a company called Blockbuster Music.

He liked the way that my stores,

I had search lights, I had big parties,

big festivals to get people to come to my store.

I had actor lookalikes.

- Hang on one second because it's iconic.

When you talk about searchlights,

it's the big giant light that shoots up into the sky.

And on a decent cloudy night

it really, really amplifies itself.

And it's the only way you try to get people's attention

to say, where should I go right now?

What is that light off into the distance?

This is Blockbuster's iconic symbol.

- Yeah, they got that from me.

They got that from me. - This is cool stuff.

- He liked the way that I promoted my store.

- Am I the only one geeking out here, Carson?

Or are you there right there with me?

- I'm right there with you.

Yeah, for sure.

- And you've heard these stories before?

- Oh yeah.

I used to bring him up into Wayne's office.

- I don't remember but yeah.

- Nobody talked to Wayne.

I mean, Wayne was way up here.

He had all kinds of companies.

- But you had a different relationship with him.

- Well, he put me, not just him,

but his marketing department

they put me in charge of grand openings.

My job was, I opened up,

I did the grand openings for 4,000 Blockbuster video stores.

And my job was to try to get 5,000 people to a store

for a grand opening.

Remember, it's very easy because everybody watched movies.

He gave me like a 40, $50,000 budget.

All you really had to do was,

he put a Blockbuster Video every three miles

almost every three miles.

Every three miles, there was a Blockbuster Video.

And so all you had to do was canvas that area

with grand openings and we had giveaways.

It was kind of like pester power came from McDonald's.

The vice president of McDonald's came to work for Wayne

as the vice president of marketing for Blockbuster.

And he was a really close friend of mine.

And we kind of did the pester power

like McDonald's made the Happy Meal

because the kids wanted the little toy in the box.

So that's called pester power.

So we gotta say,

well, how do we get pester power into Blockbuster?

- Wait a minute.

- We gave free toys away to kids.

- Pistol power or?

- Pester.

Pester power. - Pester.

- When your children, mommy, I want the Happy Meal.

I want to go get the little clown

that comes inside the Happy Meal.

- Okay, here it is.

Here it is.

I'm gonna break it down.

Pester the parent for the toy.

- Pester the parent for the toy.

- So it's called pester power.

- [Tony] Pester power.

- I'm so glad I clarified

because I was hearing a lot of other P words

that I didn't quite understand.

- [Tony] Why do you think they have the Happy Meal?

The kid wants the toy.

- Yeah, I did.

And they released a brand new toy and they advertised it.

- We did the same thing at Blockbuster.

- Got it.

- We gave little toys to kids.

You come on in during the grand opening,

you got all kinds of toys, you got watches,

you got balloons, you got giveaways.

And that's how we did our grand openings.

And we did the searchlights.

And we had movie star lookalikes.

Well, once in a while we'd have a real movie star there.

But they were opening up like this, almost one a week.

One a week.

And they had their own realty company

and they bought their own stores.

They're all freestanding stores.

- That's some real wealth right there.

You're own real estate.

- And my son played ice hockey

since he was three or four years old

and he practiced six hours a day.

- A lot.

- Six hours a day every single day.

I actually have 3,000 videotapes of 3,000 of his games.

We traveled literally not around the world, but.

- Locally.

- All around the United States and Canada.

- Tony, who's behind the camera?

- Oh, I took all the videos.

Yeah, I took all the videos.

- Hang on, I need you to pause for a second.

Carson, your dad's got 3,000.

- I know.

- Tapes.

- It was a lot.

- Let's just kind of just chalk this up with like,

never missed a practice or a game or a tournament.

How does that make you feel as a son

to see a dad so dedicated to the things that you like to do,

that he wants to be there to experience it?

- I'm really proud of that.

Yeah.

- It kind of makes me a little teary.

- Yeah, absolutely. - I'm not gonna lie.

- And I think it's a lot of like,

where I get like my work ethic

and dedication to things as well.

- Hang on, Tony.

He did work hard? - [Tony] Oh, yeah.

- But you showed up.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

But he worked hard though.

- Oh no, for sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

- Do you miss hockey? Do you still play it?

- Every once in a while.

There's other things in my life.

Life happens. - He likes music now.

- But I miss it certainly, for sure.

And I try to get back to it when I can, but.

- I got the same thing.

I danced competitively from third grade until I graduated.

- [Carson] Wow.

- And people ask me, do you still dance?

Unless it's at a wedding. - I hope so.

- That's about it.

And you just kind of move on,

but you never forget how fun

and how impactful that whole team sport camaraderie was.

It really does shape who you are

and you learn so much trying to work together as a team.

Always for the greater good. Let's go back full circle.

When you guys told me APS Distribution

does everything for the greater good, I kind of see it.

I see how it's been ingrained in your whole hockey career

now with the whole thing, with you being dedicated,

being at every single game, every single practice.

I get it.

- Now, I wouldn't have left Blockbuster, but Wayne retired

after AutoNation.

He sold out to Sumner Redstone.

He sold out Blockbuster to Sumner Redstone

then he opened up AutoNation. I helped him with AutoNation.

AutoNation kind of was like a bust in the beginning

because they took the CarMax approach

just selling used cars.

You can't make money selling used cars.

All the money that you make from cars

comes from warranty work

and used cars, there's no warranty work.

- Not in today's world right now.

We're making lots but back then, that was the case.

- So once he retired and I left there,

then I had nothing to do. And somebody just said,

well, what are you gonna do now?

And I said, I don't know.

But I had money saved.

I had money saved. - A little bit.

Just a little.

- So somebody just said, well, cigars is a big thing now.

But it was, but took me about three years

to learn the business.

And those three years, that was the boom.

And it took me three years to learn the business.

- Gotcha.

- And I would say in that three years,

that's where I was talking about like.

- All the struggle.

Where we had the struggle.

- There wasn't much experience there.

And it would just be from a passion to a business.

- Were you ever thinking like, dad, what's going on?

Like, you don't have to do this?

- Me personally, I was pretty young

and he was taking me to the shops.

I was working at the shop too.

At the retail store at a young age.

- I love it.

You always gotta be doing something huh, Tony?

How old are you?

- [Tony] 70.

- You're 70 and you're still traveling.

You're still selling cigars.

- I'm selling cigars, that's all I do now.

And play music.

- And play music.

Do you ever want to just retire, just do the music?

- Yes, I do.

I do. - Why don't you?

- I don't have enough money saved.

- Carson's eyebrows went up a couple of times.

Do you know the dollar amount?

Do you have an idea?

- [Carson] I don't, no.

I'm in the dark on that.

- I've lived kind of a lavish lifestyle.

Like remember I told you about no college,

no real financial back, education.

- So, do you think you spent too much?

- I spent it faster than water.

(Rob laughs)

- So, okay, we're going back.

- Let's just put something in perspective.

I have five pianos in my house. I have almost 50 guitars.

I go overboard in everything I do.

I've had every kind of car there is.

I've had my own planes, my own cigarette boats,

my own race boats, my own jets, not jets, twin engine board.

My own pilots.

I mean, when I grew up, I bought every girl that I dated,

I bought her a house.

Every girl I dated, I bought her a car.

Every Christmas, I bought everybody in my family a car.

I thought I was Elvis Presley.

- I freaking love it.

- That's who I grew up with.

I grew up listening to Elvis and Ricky Nelson.

The Beatles was an after fact.

- That was like the calm stage of your life.

- I used to serenade all these girls.

I had eight girls living with me.

I'd play the piano, sing songs to them.

I had a crazy life.

I had a fun life, I had a blast.

I had a blast.

- Would you change anything?

- No.

- So you wouldn't even go back to yourself and say,

Hey, why don't you hang on to a few bucks?

- Well yeah, that would've been nice

but I'm learning that now.

I'm gonna hang on to some money now.

I would like to retire in a few years.

- Got it.

- I would like to retire and not retire, retire,

but be able to not have to work as hard.

I go to work every day.

Every single day.

I wanna get it to the point where

I don't wanna get out of the business.

- Like once a week maybe.

- No.

I don't want everything to have to rely on me.

I take all the full pressure.

My brother's helping me now.

My son's helping me take some of the pressure off.

We're coming up with different ideas too.

We're coming up with some of different ideas.

Only because now we can't do the volume of cigars

because the rollers just aren't there.

After the COVID, the rollers aren't there.

The wood to buy the boxes for the wood.

- [Rob] Not there.

- There's a shortage of wood.

There's a shortage of labor to make the bands.

A band that used to take five weeks takes four months.

A box.

A box that used to take three or four weeks now takes,

you have to put your order in six months.

Six months in advance.

- It's hard.

- It's gotten a lot harder.

- We have to go somewhere else for boxes.

Maybe it's not wood anymore.

- We're gonna come up with our own brands.

- Which we've started to do.

We have the butcher wrap paper.

- Maybe it's biodegradable.

- Yeah, exactly.

- So we all always made brands for other people.

And then our own brands, we always sold wholesale.

But now we have to make some new brands and

sell them retail.

- Got it.

- That's what I think.

We have to have a combination of all three.

Makings for other people, which is really low profit,

high quantity.

It kind of pays the overhead.

That pays the overhead.

- We got the lights on.

We're doing the work.

Now let's go on and get that retirement savings.

Let's go fund our 401K.

- Now, our wholesale is still profitable,

but it is not that big money.

Like, something that I sell for a few dollars.

I see it on the internet for five times as much

as I sold it to that person. I want some of that money.

- Got it.

- [Tony] I want some of that.

- You got it.

Let's get into that.

So now that's where we're at with Serino.

- [Tony] Different brands for that.

- Right.

- [Tony] I'll create different brands for that.

- That's the Serino brand?

That's the Elenor Rose.

- Well, we're gonna have to come up with new brands

because these were still selling to brick-and-mortar stores.

I don't wanna compete with my brick-and-mortar stores.

So we'll come up with new brands.

- So, you're not at that third stage yet?

- [Tony] Not yet.

- Got it.

- [Tony] That's what I think I'll be able to retire on.

- Got it.

We're waiting for the third stage.

Carson.

- [Tony] We're working on it.

- Are you helping in the third stage or where are you at?

You back at stage two, where we at?

- I'm focusing on designing brands and yeah,

with Serino stuff right now

we all kind of have our own roles within the company.

- What's your role?

- I do a lot of the marketing, branding,

working with all the sales people,

traveling around the country.

- Are you professionally trained to do all that

or did you just pick it up?

- [Carson] I picked it up.

- How'd you pick it up?

- Just being around here for a long time.

I grew up in the industry

and went to school for marketing and branding.

And my general like interest always comes to like design

and branding and those things.

So I've really like leaned into teaching myself photography,

coming up with different branding concepts, all that stuff.

So like, that's more of the passion that comes through.

- Right.

It's really trying to figure out how to get the product

to connect with the customer.

- [Carson] Exactly.

- And it's not necessarily,

I don't like it when people say

that it's smoke and mirrors or it's just a story.

It's not just a story.

I'm trying to communicate to you when I can't be present.

So I have to do it in the way my box looks.

I have to do it in the way my logo looks

and then I have to do it in the way

the collateral speaks to you.

Because I can do a cigar that has motorcycles

and the whole riding life

but then I'm not speaking to the guy

who's out on the golf course driving a Mercedes-Benz.

- [Carson] Yeah.

- Right?

- [Carson] Mh-hm.

And that's one thing I try to get away from

is smoke and mirrors.

And I think a lot of people think they can just like

throw a cigar in a box and it's just the same.

I really do believe you should try to connect with people

and try to forge some chemistry there.

- So, how are you doing that?

How are you doing that so that you can do that

with the brands that you're working on?

- I think you have to find the right cigar.

The right cigar, the right story behind imagery

and really try to connect, be transparent about the process,

which we do with social media,

showing people why the brands we make them, the way we do,

the people behind the brand as well.

And show them from the seed to the end,

all the work that goes into it

just so that we can build some kind of essence to our brand

that connects with people that doesn't with other brands.

And that's not to dog anyone else's brands or anything.

It's just like we try to really build a narrative

and the right product, so.

- Yeah.

You gotta build the right narrative

that makes the customer go, oh gosh, yeah, I gotta try this.

- Yeah.

For sure.

- A lot of cigars do taste the same.

So, then it boils down into your customer.

You treat people the way that you wanna be treated.

I honestly believe I don't have one enemy.

I treat people the way that I want them to treat me.

- You know what, Tony?

- When you have a good reputation and people like you,

they'll try your product.

- Yeah, even from the phone conversation.

- [Tony] But we also do make sure the product's good too.

- Yeah, yeah, quality's gotta be good.

- The quality has to be good

but everybody here has good quality.

So what makes you different? You just have to be kind.

And generous.

- You know what?

It's the guy that makes you happy.

You're just happy to be around him.

And I'm feeling the vibe

and I hope it's coming through across the camera

or through the sound on the speakers, because this truly is.

- I think we all need each other.

- Yeah and I do think in every industry

people, like you said,

when there's that client/supplier,

like you can nip at each other's heels.

And one thing about the cigar industry,

it's pretty collaborative.

Like I do feel like everyone's in it

to try to help each other and other different periods,

the arc of other people's careers,

there's always people lending a hand to somebody else.

- Yeah, this is a very friendly business

as far as I can see.

- Yeah, oh my god.

- Everybody helps, pitches in and helps out.

- Yeah, it's not a cutthroat business.

If you need help.

- It's not a cutthroat business.

- We'll help you because guess what?

All ships rise when we can allow everyone

great opportunities to smoke great cigars

at all different price points, flavors

expressions of artistic ability.

The world of cigars

is only as limited as the imagination will let it go.

You know what I mean?

We only are gonna put limits on it

if we really just stop imagining what we can do.

If we stop trying to help each other,

then the growth will stop.

- [Tony] Yeah.

- Yeah, I think that's well said.

- Yeah but I didn't really say it, you guys did.

I'm just trying to paraphrase it back.

You guys,

this whole conversation was unbelievable for me.

- [Carson] Likewise.

- Tony. - [Tony] Likewise.

- I listen to a lot of podcasts,

and I get hooked into a story

of somebody who's lived a unique life,

and I wish I had the money and the knowledge

to produce you as a podcast.

If anyone's out there looking for the next podcast/story

to kind of tell,

it'd be real cool to reach out to Tony

and figure out if this is a viable option.

I'm just gonna throw it out there.

I think it is.

It would be a story that I would grab onto

and listen to until I just couldn't take anymore.

Are you with me? - I'm with you.

- You know what I'm talking about.

- It's an interesting story for sure.

- It's a ride. - It's a ride.

- And everyone likes to be entertained

and you had an entertaining life.

- Oh, I definitely did.

I definitely did.

- Thank you, both.

Carson.

- Thanks for hosting us, having us on.

- Thank you so much for being on here.

- Absolutely.

I know you didn't get to talk a ton.

- [Carson] Oh, it's okay.

- But I hope you still felt that there was value in it.

Tony, thank you so much for opening it up

and telling us all about your lifestyle.

The mistakes, the trials and tribulations and the triumphs.

The excitement and the opportunity

to just live a lavish lifestyle like fricking Elvis Presley.

- Well, thank you for having me on your show.

- If there's anything you should take from this,

it should be that the dedication, that not only men,

but Tony and Carson have

with no matter how educated you are, the grind,

the ability to get back up when you get knocked down,

the ability to think twice and reshape it.

Maybe I gotta do this, maybe I gotta do that.

I'm not gonna give up because if I do, it's poor me

and waa-waa-waa, who cares?

The only person that can make your life better is you.

And I think that's the lesson I've learned here today.

That's another episode of Box Press.

I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did,

go ahead and like, and subscribe.

Have a blessed day.