Frank Llaneza
Llaneza is best known for the creation and manufacture of a number of popular cigar brands in the years after the 1962 Cuban Embargo, including Hoyo de Monterrey, Punch, Bolivar, and Siglo.
[1] During his time as a manager at Schwab-Davis, Llaneza's father launched another company with his three former business partners called José Arango.
[3] Following graduation from high school, Frank Llaneza went to work in the cigar industry full-time beginning at his father's factory as an apprentice selector of tobacco leaf, helping to sort it for size, color, and quality.
[1] Following conclusion of the war, Llaneza returned to work in his father's factory as a tobacco selector before moving to become a foreman supervising the torcedores (cigar rollers).
Suarez suddenly died during Llaneza's stay, however, leaving the young Frank responsible for buying all the tobacco needed by the factory.
Together Frank and his older brother, Joe, began making inexpensive machine-made cigars, carving out a market niche in which they were able to compete with larger firms.
Villazon soon acquired a set of trademarks from the Preferred Havana Company, including the brands Flor del Mundo, Bances, and Lord Beaconfield, among others.
[1] Villazon specialized for a time in the manufacture of inexpensive private label cigars for nightclubs in New York City and elsewhere, barely managing to make ends meet on the low profit margins this particular segment of the business allowed.
[2] An embargo on Cuban products had been correctly anticipated by Angel Oliva, with whom Frank Llaneza worked closely, who managed to export over 2 million pounds of tobacco in the last legal shipment from the island.
The private owners of the brand names of the nationalized Cuban cigar industry initially believed that the situation was temporary.
[2] In 1964, with the government of Honduras actively promoting the expansion of the country's tobacco-growing industry, Llaneza established another company called Honduras-American Tobacco S.A. (HATSA).
[2] Beginning with a daily production of between 10,000 and 15,0000 cigars, the company was the first tobacco factory in Danlí, today a major center of the industry.
[2] Due to lower labor costs, difficulty in finding American rollers, and proximity to the raw materials, during the decade of the 1960s Villazon shifted its hand rolled cigar production to Honduras, retaining only a skeleton production facility in Tampa to make special sizes for an elite clientele, such as Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics and Art Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
[2] With the cigar business in a steady state of decline in the 1970s and 1980s, Villazon purchased facilities which its competitors were abandoning, such as a larger factory space in Tampa, as well as equipment from manufacturers leaving the industry.
