This is the first installment of some thoughts I have for all of you. First, thank you all for helping Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rico Tobacco Corporation and Don Collins Cigars to have a record year. Thanks to all the farmers in the Cooperativa Tabacalera for provided our factory with the most abundant, highest quality tobacco crop ever. Thanks to the factory management and rollers for creating the finest blends and cures we have ever offered to the public. I want to extend special thanks to the office and administrative staff for their over-the –top efforts in answering your calls, letters, e-mail and especially for getting the orders together and out of the factory to you in record times throughout the year.

For those of you don’t know, our history is no story! When reading our History Section of the website you will notice that we give the names of the academic authors from whom we derive our information about our company. We learn more every year. For instance, we didn’t know when we first built the website that the Puerto Rico Tobacco Corporation (originally spelled: Porto Rico Tobacco Company) was in fact charted by the King of Spain in 1493, one year after Christopher Columbus became governor of the island. That makes the Puerto Rico Tobacco Corporation the oldest company in the western hemisphere.

There is nothing that I can say or write that will adequately express my feelings of gratitude for the repeat clients that have really put us in the spotlight this year. You won’t find us trying to compete with the really big dogs at the “big smokes” held all around the country and you won’t find us in the big periodicals that the really big dogs buy their way into. But you will find that we have had the largest growth rate among all cigar companies for the past 15 years and that we are truly the oldest company in the world that makes cigars. Browse our site, maybe find your picture if you have been in our establishment (look in the Customer Photo Section) and then (in the History Section) you can read all about it.

I need to point out a very special thanks to all of our technical support people at Bonito Design Studio, our accountants, bookkeepers, legal consultants, board of directors and of course our promotional crew. These people are the very, very best.

Thanks,
 ~ Don Collins