Tampa Tribune - November 17, 2005
http://www.tampatrib.com/MGB51LSF4GE.html

	(From left) Marilyn Esperante Figueredo, Vienna LoCicero Santisteban and Lisa M. Figueredo are starting "Tampa Bay's Cigar City Magazine". The first issue of the bimonthly publication is being released this month.

Women Roll Out Cigar Magazine

By Richard Mullins - rmullins@tampatrib.com
Photo by: CRYSTAL L. LAUDERDALE

TAMPA - -- Lisa Figueredo always wondered why Tampa -- with so much history in cigar making -- didn't have its own cigar magazine.

So many Tampa families have parents and grandparents who rolled cigars in huge factories and small shops in the city. Some of the most respected cigar brands in the world trace their histories through Ybor City and West Tampa.

At 2 one morning in July, the idea came to her: Why not start her own magazine?

That's when Cigar City Magazine was born.

"I remember when I was a kid and how my great-grandfather would walk with me around to all the cigar warehouses in Ybor, and I missed those times with him," said Figueredo, a Tampa marketing and graphic design specialist. "So many of my family's roots go back to those times, and I thought, 'There have to be other people who miss those times as well.'"

Chatting with her aunt, Marilyn Figueredo, family friend Vienna Santisteban and colleague Cory Seymour, who all live in the Tampa Bay area, Lisa Figueredo found that they all wanted to sustain Tampa's cigar-making roots. The small group spent the summer gathering stories and photos and cold-calling cigar stores, tobacco companies and anyone else who came to mind to see if anyone would advertise in such a magazine.

Enough advertisers signed on to pay the $13,000 printing cost of the first issue, including real estate developer InTown Properties LLC, Frank Rey dance studio, The Radiant Group energy company and the J.C. Newman Cigar Co.

Three weeks ago, the labor of Lisa Figueredo and the others paid off and 25,000 copies of Cigar City Magazine hit newsstands in south Tampa, Ybor City, West Tampa and the Channel District. More than 50 stores and restaurants agreed to display the magazine, including the Havana Dreams cigar store in Ybor City, two SunTrust bank locations, a Borders Bookstore in Tampa and Sophia's Tea Room in south Tampa.

The magazine found broader distribution when the new Spanish-language weekly Centro Mi Diario agreed to distribute magazine copies as an insert. (Centro is published by Centro Grupo de Comunicacion, a division of Richmond, Va.-based Media General, which also owns The Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and WFLA, Channel 8.)

The magazine draws heavily on old photos of local cigar-making families and stories of how cigar factories worked. The three organizers have an informal partnership with the University of South Florida to use images from the school's library collections of photographs.

The first issue has articles on Carmen Ramirez Esperante, a singer and actress popular in the early 20th century in Tampa. Other stories look at West Tampa's cigar history and the role of "el lector" in cigar factories. Lectors typically would read aloud the morning papers and novels to entertain the cigarmakers.

Ideally, Marilyn Figueredo said, the magazine will attract photos and stories from Tampa families with roots in the cigar industry.

The magazine is free, and there are plans to circulate six times a year, though the owners hope to make the magazine a monthly.

For now the magazine is being produced at their homes, but the three organizers hope to move to workspace in Ybor City to be closer to cigar stores, tobacco dealers and the old cigar warehouses.

"Right now we're running the magazine for the passion and love we have for the topic," said Marilyn Figueredo, who recently retired after more than 30 years with Delta Air Lines as a reservation specialist and manager. "Hopefully we can take this and make it a career as well."

Making that happen won't be simple or easy, said Samir Husni, a professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi who tracks magazine launches in the United States.

"The gates to entry in this industry are wide open, but once you go through that door, there's a huge ravine, and very few people make it to the other side," Husni said.

More than 1,000 consumer magazines were launched in the United States last year, Husni said, on a staggering array of topics: "Military Spouse" magazine, "Memphis Cuisine" magazine and "Low Carb Woman" to name a few.

Only 38 percent of magazines survive 12 months, and just 21 percent of magazines launched in 1994 survived to 2004, Husni said. Most need three years to break even.

"You need deep pockets," Husni said. "The only real magic solution is to sell more advertising."