The Connoisseur’s Choice

Scandinavian Tobacco Group asked for our expertise in delivering an exceptional packaging experience for the 2019 edition of its award-winning premium cigar: the Cohiba Spectre.

The Challenge

Once a year, Scandinavian Tobacco releases an extremely limited number of Cohiba Spectre cigars. A box of ten cigars retails for over $900. The packaging is reimagined for each annual release, making it a collector’s item.

Our Richmond office worked closely with the client to bring their design to life and ensure it would be manufacturable and on budget without sacrificing the sleek luxury feel that the Cohiba brand is known for. The project also required an accelerated timeline in order to showcase the finished product at the most important industry trade show of the year.

The Solution

The Richmond team immediately jumped into a design sprint and produced a prototype. They devised a wooden box with an acrylic lid clasped in the center by a magnet medallion. The entire box was painted with a piano black finish.

For the individual cigar packages, they fabricated acrylic tubes with a process that involved injection molding and RF welding. The tubes also featured intricate embellishments that were screen printed and painted.

When the original concept for removing the cigar from the tube turned out to not be feasible for low volume production, the Richmond team proposed an alternative that stayed true to the original elevated design. They created a click-to-open mechanism with a subtle, but satisfying clicking sound that recalls opening a premium bottle of liquor.

Manufacturing was handled by our partner plant in China, who shipped the fully assembled boxes to the client’s facility in the Dominican Republic where the cigars were added. With the exception of the cigar and cigar band, Stephen Gould manufactured all components of the cigar box, accessories, and packaging.

The Result

The final product epitomized the premium luxury that the Cohiba Spectre represents. The cigar industry agreed. The Cohiba Spectre was awarded Most Collectible Cigar of 2019 by the Robb Report. It also tied for first in industry publication Halfwheel.com’s packaging award for the second year in a row.