Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG) has announced the acquisition of Thompson Cigar, a major online retailer based in Tampa, Florida.
Thompson Cigar has been rumored to be on the market for some time and was founded in 1915 before being sold in 1960 to Robert Franzblau. Thompson’s is America’s oldest Mail Order Cigar Company and it is believed they have over 600,000 active customers nationwide and on average 167,800 people visit their website monthly.
STG which was founded in 1961 continues to put a hurt on independent retailers by offering deep discounts designed to take customers away the brick & mortar retailer as they form a monopoly in the online sales market.
Originally named British American Tobacco, the company renamed to Scandinavian Tobacco Group in December, 2008. In April of 2010, an agreement was signed to form a new company by combining all the tobacco business of Scandinavian Tobacco Group AB with the cigars and pipe tobacco business of Swedish Match.
In addition to owning brands such a s Captain Black Pipe Tobacco, the company owns cigars brands such as Macanudo, Punch (US), Partagas (US), Cohiba (US), CAO (acquired in 2007) and Torano (acquired, 2014).
STG also own Cigars International which suffered order fulfillment issues last year causing many customers to find alternatives. In May it was announced that STG earnings slipped due to these issues and the company announced their organic growth shrunk down to negative 10%.
Purchase price was $62 million and the acquisition will be financed by existing cash at hand.
