- Cyril Brizard is synonymous with...

Your own marketing talks about

where aesthetic meets functionality.

And we've been familiar as a company

with your craft, your art.

You're the only real...

I guess, all these cigar manufacturers

that we've been talking

to are artists in a sense.

But you're truly doing things

with building humidors

and accessories for this-

- With a lot of passion for what I do.

A lot of excitement.

I've been doing this

for almost 25 years now,

and I just feel that every

day is like a new day.

And every day, I wake up like a toast,

and excited about what the

new project is gonna be,

and what the new leather...

The new woods that I'm going to find,

the new designs that

we're gonna come up with,

because I enjoy what I do passionately.

I happen to really enjoy the

people of the cigar world

who are people who have a

passion for life to start with.

And, you know, cigar is a bond...

In fact, a medium for a

lot of people to connect,

and the one thing that

a lot of cigar-smokers

have in contact is the

passion for the good life.

And when you have a

passion for the good life,

the good food, the good drinks,

the pretty-looking things,

and you address to a clientele of people

that appreciate nice things,

you are happy, you know?

You're happy because you're

making things for people

that recognize the work, and the effort,

and the research, and the

attention to the details

that goes into making a product.

So we're not doing anything

in mass production at our company.

We have the same team, the same people

for the last 20 years,

and they're getting better

and better every year,

that's the thing, there's no rotation,

it's just people that...

Where maybe one was a stitcher,

and one was a leather assembler,

and they have learned

to do something that...

They know they are irreplaceable, and-

- So you're...

So for people to go and

see what you create,

where do they go?

- Well, it's not open to

everybody, okay? (laughs)

My factory is...

I have a...

My main factory of all

the final assembling,

and all the work of...

Leather work is in California,

it's in Canoga Park.

And my humidors are made actually

on the other side of the

border by a team of women.

And the factories can be visited-

- [Person] So is there a website that

they can visit,

I go to "Brizard..."

What's the line for it?

It's "Brizard..."

- "Brizardandco.com."

- "Brizardandco.com."

- "Brizardandco.com", and...

- So I went there this morning,

I spent time looking at

a variety of products,

a variety of accessories, a

lot of beautiful humidors,

but a lot of...

Just sheer beauty.

I mean, the time, and the thought,

and the intention that goes

into this is just remarkable.

- Well, thank you very much for...

It's always a pleasure to hear people

recognizing the beauty

there is in our product.

When you go to our website,

you will see the products individually.

You will be able to see the lighters,

and the cases, and the humidors.

If you go to my Instagram,

you will be able to see my collections.

- And that Instagram is...?

- It's "brizardandco" as well, yeah.

- Okay. I will be adding you in a moment.

- B-R-I-Z-A-R-D-A-N-D-C-O,

"@brizardandco."

And on my Instagram, you

will see all the collections

because one of the unique

things about my company

is that all the products that we create

are designed to match with each other.

So we have collections for golfers,

the Augusta collection

that is using Aston Martin

leather, and green...

Forest green leather, and

we have leathers that we...

In our own factory, we deboss the leather

with the patterns of a

golf ball, for example.

And so, we create a collection

that's completely articulated

around the spirit of golfing.

We also have collections of

ostrich in various colors,

we have antique saddle ostrich,

that would be your cowboy...

You know, luxury cowboy finish.

And we have some more

fancy ostrich where...

You know, blue, and we just did recently

something for Carlito

Fuente in an orange ostrich.

I use Cayman alligator, I use

American alligator as well,

I did a collection for [S.T.] Dupont

that was made with American

Mississippi alligator.

But whenever we create a

collection, it's always...

You can get all your accoutrements,

you know, your case, your cutter,

your lighter, your humidor,

of the same finish.

And every product, we care

to not have only a good case,

but every product we have is...

From a functionality standpoint,

and in aesthetics, but

functionality as well,

we try to get the absolute best products

that we can incorporate into our lines.

- You talk about passion,

and it's intriguing.

Our mission as a company is

to protect people's passions.

So, with our beginnings

in the cigar industry,

the music industry subsequent to that,

and the cannabis industry

relatively recently,

catering to people's passions,

being conscious of what people value,

and giving them the opportunity to enjoy

at a level that's unprecedented,

that's really the ethic behind

our 27 years of history as Boveda.

So the parallel between your

ethic, and your taste...

- So we probably started

about the same time.

27 years, yeah. '96.

- Yeah, '97 for us. Yeah.

- '97 actually.

'96 was a thinking process,

this is how I started-

- What were you doing before this?

- Well, I was manufacturing

high-end leather kits.

Tell you this story, I was manufacturing

very high-end leather

kits that I was filling

with all miniature sizes of amenities

for luxury cruise lines

and private jet industries.

And I was importing from France

all the finer products

from Van Cleef & Arpels.

Oscar de la Renta.

Yves Saint Laurent.

And I happened to be, one day,

at a yacht show in Fort Lauderdale

when one of the yacht owners

that owned a 150-foot yacht said,

"You're making these beautiful,

beautiful leather kits for our amenities,

but I travel with my

cigars in a Ziploc® bag",

and I said, "Can you make

me a travel humidor?"

And I thought, "A travel humidor,

I've never heard about

a travel humidor before,

I've smoked cigars since

I was 18 years old,

but I never heard about it."

So I quickly came up with a prototype,

and I was needing, at

that time, a humidifier.

And that humidifier...

I locally found a company that...

It was a French humidifier, it was...

Brand was Credo.

And the company was this little company

that owned a very big brand,

it was Romeo Y Julieta.

That company got bought

by a company that later became Altadis.

And I was looking for a humidifier,

and they asked me and said,

"We can distribute your product."

And I said, "Why not?"

Because I don't have nobody

in the cigar industry.

And so, they said, "How many

do we need to order it?"

I said...

I pulled a number, said, "A

thousand pieces, no problem!"

And I said...

So I got an $88,000 order,

and I walked up and did a

happy dance on the street,

and a week later, it was so easy,

I came up with a different size,

and they gave me another big order,

so now I've got over

$100,000 in an industry

that I've never done anything!

And so, I started manufacturing,

and this is one of the

most honorable company

that I've ever met, because

once the company got bought,

after they were bought,

they actually decided

to discontinue all the accessories.

And they told me, says,

"Hey, we gotta call you,

got some good news and bad news,"

I said, "What is it?"

"Well, the bad news is that our company

is being bought by another company."

It was the end of the '90s,

it was the end of the cigar boom.

All the stores were

basically closing down,

one after the other.

And at that time, I thought,

"Oh, my God, this is the end of it."

But they said, "Don't worry about it.

Whatever we are gonna do,

we're gonna discontinue,

we're gonna buy the whole amount

because we promised you

that we were gonna do."

- Beautiful.

- And the guy was Brad

Winfield, who's actually with...

He's one of the pioneers of, you know,

the cigar industry in

terms of distributor.

And after they...

I thought I was entering this industry

in the amenity business,

one of my partners passed away in France.

And I said, "Wow, this is too bad,

I got so excited about the cigar industry,

and everything is falling apart here."

So I was hanging out

at a Grand Havana Room,

and I met Joey Pantoliano, and he and I,

we started talking about product,

and I came up with the

idea of making a cigar case

that was made with

leather and cedar inside,

and nobody had ever done a case

that was laminated with

cedar at the end of the '90s.

And he said, "You know, if you made a case

with leather and cedar,

you probably would do very well with it,"

I said, "Yeah, but all the

stores are closing down,"

he said, 'Well, let me try,

because my other business

was kind of falling apart,

because my partner had

passed away in France,

and I couldn't get all the supplies."

So I manufactured, like,

300 cigar cases, and I said,

"I'm gonna go start meeting

the retailers directly,

and I'm not gonna go

through a distributor."

At that time, I was 27 years old,

I had a house in Malibu, had

all the toys in the world.

I gave up everything.

I packed 300 cases in the back of my car,

and I traveled across America

on every single highway

to meet every retailer one-on-one.

- Beautiful.

- And the one thing I discovered

is that all these people...

Because the...

I was...

Always had the portraying

of the tobacco industry

being nasty people, you know?

- Stodgy, yeah.

- And all that.

But the cigar business...

The premium cigar business

is a completely different ballgame.

You have people from all kinds of...

All walks of life.

I met people that were

former firemen, policemen,

doctors, and many of them became friends.

And so, I traveled on

Highway 1, Highway 10,

Highway 30, 40, Highway

70, and across the country,

I met all the best cigar shops in America,

and I built a relationship

with them personally.

And this is how my company started.

- Well, and at the same time,

if you visit that many stores,

and you interact with that many people,

you're gaining invaluable

marketing information

to understand what your customers like.

- Absolutely.

And getting in-

- You know, the affinities,

you start to understand

where people are coming from,

and it shapes your attitude

about what you're gonna create.

- It...

I learned a lot and

everything from my customers.

So we only had a cigar case at that time,

and I couldn't make a living

just selling a cigar case.

But in 1999, I met Carlito Fuente,

and I did the first

limited edition for OpusX.

And those were, like,

three limited editions of 999 cigar cases.

And all of a sudden, nobody knew my name,

nobody knew my brand,

but it was co-designed

by me and Carlito Fuente,

and it was a co-branding project.

It had three Reserve

Fuente Natural

Chateau cigars in it,

and everybody wanted

to get the OpusX case.

So at that time, I started

developing my company,

and creating more products,

bringing in humidors,

lighters, cutters, and this is how I went

from making leather kits for amenities,

to a cigar case, to a

line of cigar accessories.

- That's another parallel

between your adventures and our company.

How many stories have I

heard here at the show

about people whose

trajectory was transformed

by interacting with Carlito Fuente?

Carlito's the reason

we're in this business.

I mean, he really was-

- So we have this big thing...

Absolutely.

- He's the first real believer.

He took a chance, and gave us a chance,

and gave us an opportunity,

and we're forever grateful to that family

for the energy that they put in,

the wind they put in our sails-

- He's a wonderful, wonderful soul,

and he is a man who

cares for other people.

He likes to spread the good word, and...

You know, it's interesting.

He was the reason why my company started,

he was always a big supporter,

but we lost contact for many, many years.

Because we're busy, we

say hello at the show,

and all of that.

And about two years ago...

Year-and-a-half, two years ago,

all of a sudden, I'm getting a video.

It's about a 10-minute-long video

where he stands in front of my display,

and he is talking about the fact

that I made him the best project,

that it was the nicest case he's ever had.

- He's building

you up.

- He loved our collaboration,

that our products are beautiful.

And I was like,

"I didn't ask him to do this.

I didn't have anybody asking to do this."

Out of his golden heart,

he basically spontaneously

stood in front of my display,

and for 10 minutes, did

something that's invaluable.

And so now, we have reconnected again,

and we're planning the launch very soon

of a new limited edition for

Black Pink, his new line.

- That's beautiful. Yeah, it's so...

He's just such an encouraging character,

and a big-hearted human.

- Absolutely.

- He's been nothing but wind

in our sails as a company.

So your reputation precedes you,

your affinity for quality,

it really stands apart

from other products in the

marketplace, I'm just...

I'm thrilled to have a

chance to sit with you.

I'm excited to see what

the next chapters are,

especially with what

you're doing with Carlito.

And this industry, there's a whole...

Like, there's a new chapter

in the cigar industry, I...

We had Sans Pereil in for an interview,

and talking about lux cigars,

there's a lot of beauty,

and a lot of passion

that are going into creating products

that are really high-end.

And you're in a great position

to be a source for that type of art,

where art meets functionality, that's...

Or no, where aesthetic

meets functionality,

I think that's the way you said it.

- But to talk about

functionality, you know, we are...

In the project that we are gonna be doing,

we're going to involve Boveda,

but you know that when I

started building humidors,

and manufacturing my own humidors,

I started making the

humidors with Boveda in mind,

I didn't make humidors and then thought,

"Let's use Boveda."

The Boveda humidors were created...

The humidors, my humidors,

were created for the Boveda product,

which I believe is absolutely

the most extraordinary product that can...

That has revolutionized...

And it's the best thing to use to preserve

and keep the perfect

humidity for your cigars.

So we have created these boxes

that are called the "Airflow Humidor,"

because in a typical humidor,

you usually have the humidity

that drops from the top,

and you have to rotate your cigars

in order to get even humidity.

So the way I build my

humidors, on the side walls,

I build latches in order for

all the lower-layer cigars

to have air to circulate around,

and prevent molding

from growing on cigars.

And then, I took the exact

thickness of the Boveda packs,

and I created a tray at the bottom

that's elevated to the exact

level of the Boveda pack,

and I've created, under the lid,

a piece that's made out of solid cedar,

one solid cedar, that's cut

in the center with a screen,

so you can put the Boveda packs as well.

So your cigars are now sandwiched

between two sources of humidity,

they get 360-degree

humidification powered by Boveda.

- Beautiful.

Well, and that's tremendous.

I'm excited to see the outcome.

I...

And I hope that our companies work...

I know you've had close

relationships with people at Boveda.

I hope that we find ways to help edify,

and lift up your art,

and your presentations to the industry,

we'd love to be involved in that.

- Since last year,

every Brizard accessory,

every Brizard humidor that is shipped

anywhere around the world is shipped

with a complimentary

three-to-four months' supply

of Boveda seasoning pack

and humidification system.

- We can't thank you enough for that.

- And I thank you as well.

- I'm thrilled to have the

opportunity to talk to you,

the beauty, go to Brizard & Co.,

look at the Instagram

account, look at the website,

understand what this gentleman has brought

to the cigar industry as far as...

You know, and you really

nailed it when you said,

"It's where the aesthetic

meets functionality",

I mean, they're beautiful products

that people can be proud of,

and really accentuate their

enjoyment of their passions.

It's so lovely to have

a chance to meet you.

- Well, thank you very, very

much for your kind words.

- It's easy, you do beautiful work!

- I always take it to the heart.

(dramatic orchestral music)