I've been emailing back and forth with Hans Greibe Hansen at Scandinavian Tobacco Group regarding their ownership and distribution rights to the traditionally UK-only brands (St Bruno is not included in this as British American Tobacco owns the rights to sell this outside of Duty Free shops).

As a Junior Brand Manager he's been monitoring the popularity of some of their holdings and he's noticed that certain tobaccos - Capstan, Mick McQuaid, etc - are becoming more popular in European countries that have traditionally not accepted them. Their concerns are that in the past those brands become stagnant and have slow turnover on the shelf, which is understandable, but I mentioned that there are some brands (namely Esoterica and Sam Gawith) that are only fully in-stock a few times a year and that it hasn't hurt sales. Of course, he's now interested in how American consumers would take to these tobaccos.

If you want to throw your two cents in, email him at hans.greibe.hansen@st-group.com! If this news would go over well at your pipe club or local tobacconist, spread the word! The more people who contact Hans, the better chance we may get at buying some of these tobaccos (even if only periodically)!

Pointing out as a cautionary, when you do, that American pipe smokers of the contemporary stripe are out to smoke one tin of everything ever made. Which will make initial sales volumes deceptive over the long run.

OK - I had to laugh at the responses to this thead. Too true.


It's like a guy with a remote sitting in front of the TV. He doesn't use it to find out what's ON. He uses it to find out what ELSE is on! Perhaps a fine distinction.

Ask him to send out samples to us elite and distinguished bros. We'll post our reviews for the pipe smoking world to see.

Indeed! Why, I can't believe you haven't started a 'sign-up list" yet! lol

Mick McQuaid aged 20 years is heavenly! So is St. Bruno, I have sent an e-mail begging for this to happen.

Me too, Carlos!

This is a fascinating thread. And I think there probably is a market in the US for more traditional flakes and plugs esp the Irish plugs. Having another market (esp one as large as the US) for them is very likely to keep the products manufactured too. Traditionally the marketplace for hard tobaccos was the UK and Orlik/STG has continued that. Unfortunately the UK too is following a tobacco control regimen that is recognizably that defined by the WHO FCTC so various attributes incl packaging, labeling etc are subject to change over time. This is investment from the pov of the manufacturer and each time it occurs they weigh the investment against sales volume. So more and larger markets than just the UK are desirable to keep these old treats on the manufactured list.

There's another side to this that is interesting and that's the TM side. STG doesn't own many Imperial TM's. That they got Capstan is fascinating. STG has been licensed by Imperial to make and market some Imperial brands in specific Euro countries. But I suspect that licensing does not include entering the US market, for the other Imperial TMs that they don't own. STG says they own all the TM's listed on the following page:
http://www.st-group.com/index.php/pipe-tobacco/complete-brand-list

They can probably bring in any of those. The only reason I say probably is there may be some old split TM ownership issues to be cleaned up. They have the rights to those TM's likely world wide. But for example St. Bruno is another Imperial TM that is not theirs and there is a live registered TM (not STG or subsidiary) in the US PTO. Only the TM owner can contract to provide distribution rights for those brands. It looks like Capstan is really the only Imperial TM that they acquired. We can also see that Imperial cancelled their Capstan TM in the US back in Oct 2008 so it really is available to import to the US under that brand name.

But we also see STG bringing in under the Villiger brand as Cocktail Hour something that is remarkably like Three Nuns (another Imperial TM). So although it's heavily camouflaged there are ways to bend the rules.

Historically most of the famous brands that originated in the UK were gobbled up as the companies acquired each other. There are/were three big 'nests' of famous brands corresponding to the three big tobacco makers Imperial Tobacco, BAT, and Gallaher/JTI. STG has been picking up TM's as those three have been willing to part with them. BAT sold them all but Dunhill and Cpt Black back in 2007 so that accounts for TM's that historically were associated with PJ Carroll, Carreras, Murray's, Sinclair, Rothman's etc.

The whole BAT-Imperial relationship is also a big part of history. Fun stuff.