Keeping a business open for over a century and a half is hard work. Keeping it going in the face of legislation against your product and a shrinking public appreciation for your craft is even tougher. This is the life of a tobacconist nowadays, so how does Iwan Ries, the cigar and pipe specialists overlooking Wabash Avenue, keep going in spite of the governmental roadblocks put up in front of it?
Chuck Levi helms the shop, and continues the tradition of it being a destination for cigar enthusiasts and pipe smokers to this day. Iwan Ries has been in the Levi family since 1857, when Chuck's great-great-uncle opened its doors for the first time.
Levi sat down with Centerstage to discuss the law, history and what makes a good pipe.
It's been a long time. Do you know how the whole business got started?
I'm not 100-percent sure of the very, very beginning, except that [my great-great-uncle] opened a retail store; I don't know where his background in tobacco came from, I've been trying to find that out. But that goes back to 1857, which is a little hard, even on the internet. [laughs] He opened a tobacco shop in 1857 in what was then the Sherman Hotel, which is now the State of Illinois building. Then he opened a tobacco factory on the near West Side, where he made cigars and pipe tobacco, but that was totally separate from the store. He had a distribution where they distributed cigars and tobacco all over.
Then the business got too big for him. He had no children, so he brought my grandfather over from Germany to help him run the business. In 1898 they sold the cigar factory; the original name for the company was E. Hoffman Company. The people they sold it to insisted they change the name of the retail store so there wouldn't be any confusion, and that's when the name was changed to my grandfather's name.
Do you know if that company is still around?
We are still making an E. Hoffman cigar and a tobacco that they made that many years ago. I don't know when the tobacco was first made, the cigar was first made in 1861. The tobacco I haven't been able to find out, except that it was in the late 1800s.
Do the recent anti-smoking ordinances make it hard to do business as a tobacconist?
Of course it does. It doesn't make it hard for us - actually, we just built a huge new smoking lounge for members only. We've always had a smoking lounge in our store, but when they passed the new law we took a warehouse that we weren't using and converted it to a really neat smoking lounge complete with wi-fi and all sorts of stuff. That has worked out very well. It's made it hard in the sense that you can't smoke anywhere, so obviously we're not selling as many cigars as we used to. But business is still good.
We live in a pretty cigar-centric world when it comes to non-cigarette smoking. How much of your business is cigars, and how much is pipes and the rest?
I'm guessing cigars are about 40 percent. Then you've got a lot of the accessories and accoutrements, etc. And pipes and pipe tobacco are [anywhere from] 30 percent to 50 percent. We sell more cigars than we do pipe tobacco, no question.
Are you personally a pipe smoker? Or are you more of a cigar guy?
Or both. I do both.
Can you estimate your weekly intake? I would imagine smoking is hard to avoid, when you're in the store as much as you are.
Frankly, it's several times a week. I can't smoke cigars too much when I work very honestly, because I keep putting them down and I forget where the hell I put them! I don't want to smoke a cigar while I'm taking care of a customer; [it's] kind of rude to have a cigar in your mouth when you're talking to somebody. So I put them down and then I forget where they are, and they're too expensive to keep taking a new one. [laughs]
I was taking a look at your catalog - you've got some pipes in the price range of hundreds of dollars. Why would someone purchase one of those when they could pick up a $5 corn cob anywhere else?
Well, we sell those too. And we also sell a lot of pipes in the $20 to $50 range. Obviously, the more popular [are those] under $75. But what makes 'em is your better pipes are completely handmade, the graining on them makes a difference, the mouthpiece makes a difference, how old the briar is, how it's aged and cured after it's pulled out of the ground, how it's cut, who makes it - is it made by a journeyman or a new guy? How the hole is drilled...there's a million different things that go into it.
How can you tell the quality of a good pipe?
In some cases, some of the stuff today you can tell by the briar, actually. How good it is. The weight has a lot to do with it, the feel, the quality of the mouthpiece - especially on some less-expensive pipes, the quality of the mouthpiece is not the same as it is on a better pipe. Three quarters of the pipe smokers wouldn't know the difference. But it does make a difference. And it obviously affects the price. And then of course today, the euro and the pound make a difference. Ninety-nine percent [of pipes are made overseas].
You seem to attract (by what I've seen on my visits) the discerning gentleman; a higher-end clientele. What's the most you've seen someone spend on tobacco products in one transaction?
Not too long ago, we had somebody spend $9,000. But talking about our customer base, [another customer mentioned] the eclectic group we have in here. We have customers from every walk of life. Every economic background. We try to cater to all smokers the same, whether they spend $9,000 or $5.
I remember overhearing someone in your store say they waited six weeks for a shipment of cigars. I must be a more casual customer, because I can't imagine waiting that long for a specific cigar.
There's a lot of those. Some of the cigars today are in very limited production. People want 'em. Why they want 'em, your guess is as good as mine. They like what they like! As we tell customers who come and say, "What's a good cigar?" I say, "The one you like to smoke." Whether it's two dollars or 30 dollars.
For a pipe of your own, visit Iwan Ries at 19 S. Wabash, 2nd floor, (800) 621-1457.
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