Arturo Fuente

American cigar brand

Arturo Fuente is a cigar brand founded by Arturo Fuente, Sr. in 1912 in West Tampa, Florida. Following a catastrophic fire in 1924, the brand had a production freeze for 22 years, reemerging in 1946 on a limited, local basis. Ownership was transferred to Arturo's younger son, Carlos Fuente, Sr. in 1958. Following the 1960 United States embargo of Cuba, the Fuente brand began a period of slow and steady growth, emerging as one of the most critically acclaimed makers of hand rolled premium cigars outside of Cuba. As of 2010, the company was producing 30 million cigars per annum from its factory in the Dominican Republic.

The Arturo Fuente cigar brand was born in 1912 in West Tampa, Florida. The brand was launched by a 24 year old Cuban émigré named Arturo Fuente (November 18, 1887 – February 11, 1973) as A. Fuente & Co. Fuente had come to the United States in 1902, leaving his hometown of Güines, Cuba in the aftermath of the Spanish–American War. The original factory used by the company was a three story wooden building, one of nearly 200 cigar making facilities in the city of Tampa alone. He dropped out of school before graduating high school and was married at age 18. Because the cigar business struggled during the 1940s and 1950s, Carlos, Sr. took a job as a baker to help make ends meet, while his wife worked full time in another factory while both moonlighted at Fuente. Throughout the 1950s Fuente remained exclusively a local Tampa brand, with the company's entire production sold in that city on a cash and carry basis. Carlos Fuente, Sr. bought the business from his father for exactly $1—purchasing $1,161 in assets and zero debt. Carlos Fuente, Sr. later recalled the decision to build inventory as decisive:

"When I first started in the Dominican, all our profit, we stuck it back. All our profit was always invested in tobacco. And aged tobacco is the most important thing that you can have. We always had a lot of aged tobacco. And as we started aging more and more, we started doing better." In September 1980 Tabacalera A. Fuente opened a 12,000 square foot factory in Santiago Dominican Republic. The company scored its first success of its "Dominican Period" in the middle 1980s with the launch of the medium bodied Hemingways line — an attempt to break new ground in the market through the use of special shapes. At the end of the 1980s the company began to grow its own tobacco on a substantial scale for the first time, investing in roads and curing barns. The company even took on the challenge of growing its own wrapper leaf—the most difficult and risky component of a cigar to produce.

As of 2010, Carlos Fuente, Sr. and his son Carlos Fuente, Jr. oversaw an operation that produced more than 30 million cigars per year.

The Arturo Fuente line of cigars ranges from the inexpensive to the premium. The full bodied Fuente Fuente Opus X, introduced to the market in November 1995, is regarded the brand's flagship product. The cigar is made in 13 vitolas ranging in size from the 4 5/8 inch by 49 ring gauge "Belicoso XXX" to the massive 9 1/4 inch by 47 "Perfecxion A." The film was scheduled to shoot in July of that year, however—a time after the crop had already been harvested. The company also makes some of the cigars sold by the J. C. Newman Cigar Company of Tampa, Florida. J. C. Newman returns the favor, handling the production of all of Arturo Fuente's machine made product.