Meet Pierre Rogers of PuroTrader in Newport Beach

Today we’d like to introduce you to Pierre Rogers.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I grew up in small rural town in northern New England. I grew up poor, my home phone was often shut off due to non-payment. Heat, food and resources where always far more sparse than one would have liked. Single mom with a drinking problem provided a toxic home environment and I moved out when I was 16 years old. The worse things about growing up in a rural area is there is no line of sight to a better path.

Nobody has a nice house, nobody has a nice car or job. I was a terrible student, barely attending high school little alone actually doing any classwork.

I was a born entrepreneur, I mowed lawns at ten years old and got my friends to work for my “landscaping” business. At one point, I had 20 accounts that we were mowing lawns for. I bought bulk candy in junior high and sold it to my classmates out of my locker until I nearly got expelled. Hustling was in my blood, school was not.

After my high school guidance counselor told me to “lower my sights” when I attempted to get into collage. Then I had to figure out how to pay for the application fees, $120 to me at that time was a princely sum.

In my early 20’s, I moved to Boston, no job, no prospects no direction. But I knew there was line of sight to success here. After stumbling around with temp jobs I got an entry-level job answering phones at a mutual fund company. I worked my ass off. I was the first one in and the last one out. I became a student of the business, found mentors and dove in with both feet. I worked a second job as a bartender just so I could afford rent because my finance job paid so little. I worked weekends, built relationships with senior members of the company. I was not the smartest, I didn’t have the knowledge base or skill set the other guys did on the sales desk. But I had insane work ethic, you simply couldn’t outwork me. I became the youngest Senior Vice President in my firms history. By 27 years old, my firm moved to California and while I had this great corporate job, I was bored. I excelled at my work, I hit every sales based incentive program and accolade but I was low key miserable. The money and the title weren’t enough to keep me still. I wanted more. I was restless and hungry.

The story of how I started PuroTrader is an ironic one, as it all started with one cigar. Back in 2003, I was living in Boston and Senior Avo the famous owner of Avo Cigars was celebrating his birthday by throwing a birthday bash at Boston staple, Abe & Louie’s Steakhouse. Of course back then you could actually smoke cigars indoors and Senior Avo had rented a private room upstairs to celebrate his 77th birthday Senior Avo used to commemorate his birthdays by releasing a limited edition cigar called the Avo 77. So there I was, listening to Senior Avo playing jazz on the piano while smoking a wonderful cigar bearing his name. The steak was black and blue, the wine was almost as smooth as the jazz off of Senior Avo’s fingers as he tickling the keys. This was an amazing evening to be remembered.

Smoking an Avo cigar while dining at a fine steakhouse is a rare treat indeed. The evening progressed on and the conversation flowed as well as the wine. The beautiful thing about cigars is how they bring people from all walks of life together. There were regular blue collar guys mingling with partners at law firms, lobbyists and congressmen. This is the power of the cigar. We all collectively knew how amazing the night was and the crowd swelled around Senior Avo as we enjoyed his piano skills and is amazing cigars.

Having purchased a box of that rare cigar to remember the evening, I went on my way. Laying this box down for years to properly age them. More then five years later, I moved my collection of cigars across the country to northern California. Months pass and I move my collection from several large cabinets to my newly completed walk in humidor. While unpacking my collection and taking stock of my inventory I discover a horrific sight. There is one cigar missing from my box of Avo 77’s! How could this be? I didn’t smoke it, it just disappeared! As any collector knows, you either have a complete box or you don’t, there is no in between. I am stunned and once I get over the shock I am pretty ticked off.

So after I finish sobbing and clean my self up, I crawl over to my computer and fire up the internet. Of course I start scouring the internet trying to find someone who still has one of these rare cigars. The year is 2008, its been five years since to release of that cigar and yet they all seem to be gone from dealers inventories. So next I take up looking and posting on nearly every cigar forum I could find. Still no luck! Is it really possible that all the cigars are gone and have been smoked?! I spend the next couple of years poking around the net trying to uncover this cigar to complete my box.

Then it hits me, why can’t we search through cigar collectors humidors? If I could just peek at every cigar collectors humidor I was bound to find the single Avo cigar I need to finish off my box. The funny thing is, nobody had ever done it. This was a lightning bolt of inspiration, I need to create a platform where collectors can come together to buy, sell, trade and discuss all things cigar-related. This would also help create a more liquid market and stop such wild pricing disparities that are so common in brick and mortar cigar retailers. I sat and pondered what this platform would look like, what I as a collector would want out of a platform like this.

As luck would have it, I found myself in Hawaii with a dear friend of mine. We were sitting ocean front with our wives enjoying a fine cigar. I proceeded to tell him my issue and how I had thought that creating a global trading platform could radically change how cigars are bought, sold and collected. He stopped me midway into my story and exclaimed WE need to do this, immediately! We wasted no time and gathered our thoughts what the value component would be to our users. Why would they want to use us? What value could we provide to both the cigar smoker and the cigar retailer? This was no small task! We thought about the investable value of cigars and how rare and aged cigars tend to go up in value over time. We wanted to connect every humidor in the world and allow for buyers and sellers to be able to decide on the value of these cigars. We strive to provide transparency in an opaque world. It shocked us to find out that most cigar shops sell only two types of cigars! Ones they like and ones they think they can sell. There is no more data then gut instinct involved in deciding what you see on the shelves. As PuroTrader grows and more transactions happen, more data will emerge. We can then provide this data back to our users base. Information like the return or appreciation of cigars over time. What parts of the world tend to buy what format and what blends. This data is invaluable for manufactures, retailers and ultimately cigar smokers. Our goal was that if enough users used the platform that the power of pricing and distribution would be put back in the hands of the consumer.

We set off to create the worlds first global trading platform for premium and vintage cigars. Using technology to completely disrupt the antiquated tobacco business while creating a much better experience for collectors and aficionados alike. I sold my Ferrari F430 to raise money to start our new company. Funny thing about starting a business that has never been done before, there is really no place to turn to find advice or guidance. We had many false starts working with web designers who weren’t up to the task. Finally, we pieced together a team that has continued to execute. We were turned down by over 80 credit card processing banks during this process. We had to hire a tobacco lobbyist firm out of Washington DC to interrupt the law and give us guidelines to follow as the law hasn’t caught up too the digital age. Creating a massive database of cigars is no small undertaking either. We have one of the largest cigar databases in the world. Our database has more then 8,000 entires of cigars from pre-embargo to the most recent limited editions. Our users help support that as when they use PuroTrader and if they happen to find a cigar not in our database they alert us of any shortcomings. They, the users have created an amazing platform for all of the puro lovers out there. Fast forward to today, PuroTrader is the largest online cigar trading platform in the world. We have had over 1.2million engagements on social media since launch. We have users in every developed country in the world. This amazing platform we have created is nothing without the overwhelming support we have received form the cigar community. Without the cigar community sharing our platform with there fellow brothers of the leaf, we would be nowhere.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Funny story: Early on my company PuroTrader was doing a fun giveaway to build our social media following. We were giving away a very expensive box of cigars to a user at random. It was a method for us to drive activations and new users. We promoted the giveaway for weeks and then the fateful day arrived, we, at random, picked a user for the giveaway. We announced the winner via email…. to everyone. It appeared we had made a massive mistake as it appeared as if ALL of our users had just won the giveaway. We could barely afford the giveaway as it was!

My team got together and they all agreed, we can’t afford to keep our commitment to giving everyone this pricey gift. Marketing crafted up an apology email and we were all set to blast out our mistake to the world. But I hated it, I felt awful.

At the last minute we decided to sell the pricey item, take the money and buy a few thousand much smaller items. A great relationship with a manufacture saved me here! We were able to send every single user a small gift thanking them for being a PuroTrader customer along with a letter explaining the mistake. Then the feedback started rolling in… people where overjoyed! Not only was nobody upset with us, they shared on social media how great they thought we were. The comments were so amazing as people said gushed about us “stepping up” and making things right. This mistake ended up being the single best marketing effort we had ever done. In every obstacle there is an opportunity

Please tell us about PuroTrader.
Why PuroTrader?

Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently about the world. The way we challenge the status quo is by creating a global trading platform that connects the cigar community to completely disrupt the antiquated way our passion (cigars) are disrupted and enjoyed around the world. Join our platform and change the world….

Why would anyone use PuroTrder? It is a simple question with a complex answer. Currently, if you are a cigar smoker or collector and you are looking for a current production cigar you will most likely head down to your local cigar shop or poke around on the internet for a while. How do you know you are getting the best price? Your local shop rarely has the best price as they have a multitude of costs built into every cigar. Overhead, taxes, currency fluctuations, storage costs are just some of the cost rolled into every cigar bought through a traditional brick and mortar retailer. Of course you knew that already, you make your box purchases online through some of the online discount retailers. Did you know that search results are populated by those who pay the most to be there? That nearly all of the top ten results when search with a browser is because those cigar companies have paid to get there. Those cigar sites need to pass those costs along to you to stay profitable. there is also the fact that most of the larger online cigar retailers only carry the “basics”. What happens if you want something a little more specific, something a little more special? Then what do you so?

That is where PuroTraders platform comes in. We are the worlds only peer to peer cigar trading platform. This amazing platform allows for cigar aficionados for the first time to find exactly the cigar they are looking for by searching the humidors of collectors around the world! The price of the cigars isn’t based on overhead expenses or geographic limitations. The price is based exclusively on the market. This market-based pricing is the most fair, transparent and liquid way of finding the best cigars for the best price.

Many cigar collectors have often lamented that where they live often dictates which cigars they have available to them. For instance, Fuente Opus X cigars are quite difficult to find overseas, as are limited edition Davidoff cigars. Here in America, we have had no access to Cuban cigars for over 60 years. But there are more subtle and less obvious geographic constraints, many boutique cigar lines tend to be regional within the United States. The overall distribution model of cigars from factories to retailers is based on zero market research and based almost entirely on what the shop owner believes will sell and or what the cigar representatives have access to. Often times how good a cigar rep is or isn’t also plays a large part in whether a cigar line is his or her territory. In the digital age this just does make sense.

Retailers both large and small will want to have profiles on PuroTrader as well. It gives them access to the largest audience of cigar collectors in the world. Let’s say a cigar shop orders a brand of cigars that is just not selling well in his or her shop. Instead of being forced to deeply discount these cigars just o get them to move, they can offer them to a much broader audience. This enables them to sell their excess inventory much faster without taking a big hit. Now, let’s look at the other side of that coin, let’s say this same shop orders ( or is forced to order) expensive or rare cigars. The shop owner does not have to sell it at MSRP, he or she can sell it at a possible premium on PuroTrader. As we all know, cigars get better and better with age. Lets say this same shop keeper has old stock that has been sitting around struggling to be sold. Vintage cigars will see at a premium due to their age. This helps retailers recapture the storage costs of properly humidifying his old stock. It does even a better service for the cigar community as aficionados and collectors alike gain access to well maintained vintage cigars.

Once a trade is completed between two people the pricing data for that trade is captured by the PuroTrader platform and is reported back to our user base. Think of this platform more like the S&P 500 index for cigars. PuroTrader has a unique feature that once the pricing data is captured we report it back to you the user. You will know the current market price for your entire collection of cigars, your portfolio. As users place trades across the platform and the value of different cigars change in price, you will be able to see the value of your personal collection change on a real-time basis. While we have put together some of the best developers out there our site is incomplete without one thing, you. We need you to join PuroTrader and share our revolutionary platform with your cigar circle of friends.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would have raised money from venture capital and angel investors much sooner. Capital provides fuel for you to brake free of earths gravity. You need capital to hire top talent and to provide marketing horsepower. There is so much attention for eyeballs these days that growing organically is nearly impossible regardless of the quality of your content. You need to do something meaningful and powerful to send a message that attracts users to your brand.

Contact Info:

• Website: purotrader.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @purotrader
• Twitter: @purotrader
• Other: pierrerogers.com

Image Credit:
Photos by: Jack Ambriz @zimbra

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